As much as I loved Sega and the Genesis as a whole, I never played any of the Toejam & Earl games, I was on a limited budget around this time and side jobs for a high schooler were few and far between (I mainly got work during the summer at a nearby farm, bailing and stacking hay). Some interesting titles had to slip between the cracks for me and Toejam & Earl was one of them.
I always thought it looked interesting but I just never pulled the trigger to buy a copy. That has left me admiring the game from afar for decades, wondering if I made the right choice picking up a couple of used games instead of Toejam & Earl brand new (never seeing it for sale used should have been a tip off that no one was trading it in so it had to be a good game).
Well, I mean there were a LOT of games on the Genesis. I would have been impossible to buy, or even rent them all back in the day unless you were rich. For such an odd title like this, you would almost have to have been able to try it somewhere to pull the trigger on it.
Oh yeah, it seemed like every week there were 10 to 20 new Sega Genesis games appearing at the local game shops. Unfortunately, none had ToeJam & Earl on demo and the staff were all very iffy on suggesting it to me when I asked about it.