I guess it depends on the country. I have an American friend who said he didn't have many games because cartridges were too expensive in the 90s. Well, I never bought an original cartridge here in Brazil - the pirated ones were like 4 to 8x cheaper, and they were as easy to find as the originals. Now for Saturn and PS1, well, unlike cartridges that had to be imported from Chinese manufacturers, vendors could make copies at home, so games were dirt cheap, same for PS2 - stuff like $1 to $5 per game, while originals were like $30 to $60. My friend said that, as a kid, he never came across pirated games (he was from Detroit).