I got into RPGs becuase of Palladium as well. Bought the TMNT core book and I was hooked.
I never got into Rifts and I think one of Palladiums biggest mistakes is that when Rifts took off they abandoned the rest of their lines.

Then the N-Gage announcement was a bust from the beginning. On the Palladium forums a majority of members told Kevin not to go to N-Gage because it was a dying system.

I also read an interview with I believe Bill Coffin who said the reason he left Palladium was because KS does not know how to run a bussiness.
Here is the link to that interview:
http://forum.rpg.net/showpost.php?p=144 ... tcount=184

There are two more updates on this, apparently in the first 14 days they made just over $100,000, eneogh to keep them hovering for now, this kind of community support is great for any gaming company, and I hope I see more things like this as time goes on. The two links to follow are updates #3 & 4.

For what it is worth I saw a similar phenomena with Gary Gygax at Gen Con back in the early eighties. There were these fans that followed him around like he was the second coming of *insert deity here*.

Gary was weird, when he was with fans he had one personality, when he was with friends he had one that was completely different, and when running a game he had yet another. And he ran a game with way too many people. (Twenty-five or thirty players. Including the NPC followers there were over a hundred minis on the table at one point... in a dungeon crawl.) I left the game after about an half hour of not being able to do anything.

I may not like Mr. Gygax, but he did not rub me quite as wrong as Mr. S. (And to be honest, if I had more fun at his game I might have an higher opinion of E.G.G. )

I do not think that being surrounded by Gaming Groupies is good for one's mental and spiritual well being.

The Auld Grump