In the early 90's, if we were lucky enough to have a Sound Blaster, then "MT-32" and "Sound Canvas" were simply options we saw regularly in the Setup menus of games. We knew they were fancy, high-end elite options.
But they might as well have been on the moon, for their inaccessibility to most of us, back then. I've been a lifetime nerd who was fully into my local scene in the early 1990's. Yet I didn't ever physically, in-person, see a Sound Canvas until about 2019, when I imported one from Japan. And even now, I've been in the physical presence of exactly ONE (1) Gravis Ultrasound during my lifetime, and that was in 1995 - I don't expect to ever see another.
Those kinds of devices barely even made it, to a lot of the world's countries. And when they did, it was in tiny tiny quantities. It was basically impossible to even hear one, or know what one sounded like. There was no internet, no Youtube full of clips, no magical VHS you could rent out ("Demonstrations of the World's PC Gaming MIDI Modules, Part IV!"). Just a vague dream...