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On Early Game Packaging Treasures
Thanks to Armchair Arcade for its article discussing the wonders of classic game boxes, as the author reminisces about the "lost art of innovative game packaging from the early to mid-1980's, when there seemed to be an abundance of real thought and care behind the customer's experience beyond the software itself." He points out: "Hardcore gamers appreciate hardcore packaging, with unusual boxes and a handful of feelies... Today, hardcore packaging - if available at all - has a hardcore price. There are still tens of thousands of hardcore gamers like in the past, it's just more profitable to go after the hundreds of thousands of mainstream consumers instead." The article ends with a series of gallery pages, including some of the classic boxes from "the company with arguably the greatest overall packaging", Infocom.
I still have my Hitchhiker's Guide box, complete with destruction orders for my home/Earth, Sub-Atomic Space Fleet, and of course, Pocket Lint.
Sadly, the peril-sensitive sunglasses are long gone. Being the best of all items packed- including the game -they were often shown off, and eventually tore.
I think there was also a "Don't Panic" button that my mom ignorantly tossed away (curses!)
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The classic Electronic Arts "album cover" packaging and their attempts to make game developers into rockstar-like characters.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
On the day I just threw out a pile of game boxes stacked to my waist, I say good riddance. It just marketing trinkets that don't add to the game. Did anyone actually put on the head band pictured every time they decided to play Moebius?
Now don't get me wrong. I like a good manual, and I appreciate a well designed tech-tree poster or map. These things enhance game play by adding what amounts to a second screen for cheap. But most of the things mentioned are so useless they are forgotten about by the second day of game play.
Anm
I still have my Zorkmid. It's one of my favorite "coins." There has to be someone on Ebay that would pay $1000 for it.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
Of course, you can't forget the Legend of Zelda's Golden Cart, which I still have around here somewhere... It was a nice homage to the past that Nintendo mad the Windwaker disc gold.
Hardcore gamers appreciate hardcore packaging, with unusual boxes and a handful of feelies...
Wait, we're talking about video games, not porn, right?
As anyone who was around in the 1980's probably remembers, pirate C=64 games were rampant (maybe even worse than today, especially most copying was done person to person, as opposed to via P2P networks).
In addition to the usual 1541 drive errors, it was common for the copy protection to include secret decoder wheels or references to a specific page in the manual, which provided the code you had to input before running the game. Some manuals even had the code printed such that you needed a red plastic lens to be able to see the code (to prevent photocopying).
Damn those codes were a pain in the butt! And of course, there were cracks and ways to bypass the codes, but the extra packaging, manuals, and maps did provide an incentive to actually buy the game. Today, companies are happy to sell nothing more than a CD-ROM and jewel case - and people are happy to download the game use their own CD-R disc.
The two Lunar RPGs were released on Playstation a few years back (The Lunar series originally having been a SegaCD title). I can't speak to the other title, but I remember my friend being a huge fan of the console RPGs (back when we had time to devote to them), and picking up the Silver Star Story: Complete title. It was a nice deluxe set that came in a box about 2 times the thickness (same height and width) as a double CD case. It included a hardbound instruction manual (with a pseudo-leather cover), a nice fold-up cloth map (nice in the presentation sense, I don't know if it was good for gameplay), and a couple of Audio CDs featuring the soundtrack. It sold for $5 than your standard double CD game would've gone for, and seemed like a pretty cool setup.
Honestly, though, I bet most of the stuff was long since forgotten. Pack-ins are generally just a random thing that most people wouldn't have any use for, and with the exception of a functional map or hotkey guide (for really complicated games), I don't care one way or the other. Now, don't even get me started on crappy manuals, because that is something I truly believe has no substitute, in-game tutorial or no.
Back then the biggest problem was graphics. it was really hard for some people to imagine that they were fighting some big ugly monster with ten heads when all they would see on the screen as representative of the monster was an ascii symbol. I think fancy packaging made up for this deficiency. Today it's no longer a problem. Besides I'd rather have a good game with extra money spent toward better QA or other things that are actually in the game as opposed to collectible junk.
I had a copy of "Pirates! Gold" and whenever you happened to encounter another pirate ship you had to look up the name of the pirate which corresponded with whatever flag it showed you in the manual. I loved the game, so I dug up the CD a year or two ago and started playing, only to realize I'd lost the manual...
:P
If you haven't played Pirates! Gold maybe you've seen Pirates! 2, which I have unfortunately not played..(I'm poor and don't get out much). Regardless, it's a GREAT game which has given me countless hours of entertainment, and the packaging and manual were great to boot (woohoo I'm double-on-topic.. pause..). The linked site has the entire thing in PDF, which makes me regret having now lost my Pirates! CD.. as if the irony in the last paragraph wasn't enough.
"where words meet intent, lies rhetoric's lament"
My Commodore 64 was the best games machine I've ever owned, one game where the packaging really stood out (for better and worse) was "Dr. Who and the mines of terror."
:)
This game was great, the packaging featured a picture of the TARDIS on the front with a image of the Doctors brain on the back, inside (along with the 'tape') were numerous documents that really added a lot to the game.
There was however one item that had gave no clue as to why it was included, a credit card sized piece of card in a protective sleeve with three symbols printed on it.
I played through much of the game (about 90% as it turns out) and didn't find a use for the card, as time went on I lost parts of the packaging (including the card).
When I finally went back to the game I found myself stuck at a door, the door required those three symbols from the card to be set correctly to get though, I was screwed. Not till I obtained an "Action Replay Cartridge" and turned "collision detection" off, was I able to get past that damned door.
I used to love the old Infocom games, but unfortunately, didn't keep most of them around after I stopped playing them. I was wandering around a few years ago and found an independent bookshop going out of business that was selling a bunch of stuff, and lo and behold, I found a copy of Zork Zero, Zork I, Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, and Starcross, all still sealed in plastic, being sold for $0.50 each! I've still got those, although I did break down at one point and open the Hitchhiker's box.
They didn't mention that cool tin can that the Linux version of Quake 3 came in! That was the best.
My favorite game packaging has always been NES games. The box of the game was cardboard and discardable. It was just to sell the game anyway, not to store it in. Every game had black plastic sleeve. 1st party games has the nintendo logo on the sleeve. 3rd party did not. Towards the end of the NES they started selling sleeveless games and it really cheezed me off. The SNES had little plastic covers for games, but the N64 didn't. The Gameboy used to have plastic cases you could put games in. I've still got some, they are awesome.
What was even better that catrdiged containers was the smell. Remember the smell when you opened up a brand nes NES game? It was like nothing else. New car smell is pale in comparison to new NES cartridge smell. It is similar, yet much better than the smell of a new pack of baseball cards. Nowadays with games on disc there just isn't that great aroma of catridge manufacturing plant anymore. Oh, how I long for those days.
I'm not the only one who remembers the smell... right?
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
A massive game in its day (5 disks!), it covered pretty much every aspect of the space-trader genre, including combat, mining, and used "real" equations to match orbits with space stations and target ships given the parameters of the parts you had installed in your vessel. The only downside of the magnum opus was the fact that all the disk swapping made it tedious to play at times.
Ahhh, the memories. I should see if I can find some images of that and throw it on an Atari emulator for a retro trip. Maybe it won't be quite so obnoxious if I don't actually have to physically swap all those disks back and forth. :D
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
You can kind of see it in these pictures of Marathon, Marathon 2 and Marathon Infinity.
(And while not a game, the paint program "Painter" came in a metal paint can. Corel owns that product now, so it probably ships in a well-sealed container so as not to let the crapload of bugs out until you open the box at home.)
As much as many of the mentioned games are timeless classics, I think people need to keep an open mind when they think about box art. The 1980's will probably be remembered as the dark ages of video game graphics so people like to think of more fond images, such as the box art of the time. In comparison to the 1990's box art, the 1980's box art was crude and unprofessional looking, not to mention featured more focus.
Universe 1
:)
Universe 2
Universe 3
Admittedly, these are the DOS ports (...or rather aren't the Atari ports, I haven't the foggiest idea which version was first), so the nostalgia might not be perfect. Running them shouldn't be a problem for DOSBox. Home of the Underdogs is a beautiful thing
The poor capabilities of older consoles often made the pack-ins a neccessity. Many Odyssey (Not Odyssey^2, but the original Odyssey) games were essentially glorified board games with (sometimes minor) interaction with the video game... the system often didn't even keep score for you (mostly due to the fact that it had no way of displaying the score, since displaying numbers on screen was too much for the system), so a lot of the games used paper money or score counters. You certainly couldn't make a football game in the early 80's without a playbook, since there was no way to actually display diagrams of the plays themselves on-screen. Getting a complete set of Odyssey items can be difficult, since the games came with so many pieces.
I like the idea of including things like Ultima's cloth maps, but I have to admit that I don't see much point in some of the Hitch Hiker's Guide junk that was included with the game. It's certainly neat to have though.
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
I for one welcome the new-small-boxes-that-fit-on-our-bookselfs overlords.
... like "Maniac Mansion" and "Zak McKracken" came with a bunch of stuff in the box. Some of it was used for copy protection, but there were many clues (as well as deceptive ones!) in the documentation. That would also serve as an incentive to actually own the game rather than copy it. Sort of like with CDs now, where most of the time the packaging is really lame (compared to LPs).
Best game evar!
http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/Elite.jpg
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Ever since the NES days, consoles have really gotten the low end of the spectrum in regards to extra goodies. Since the boxes all had to be a uniform size, according to Nintendo's strict rules, the packaging didn't offer much room for more than the game, the manual, some advertising, and maybe a small poster if you were lucky. There were some exceptions-- Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy, if I recall, had larger-size manuals than their predecessors; and Startropics' infamous water-sensitive letter was another notable exception.
Later on, during the SNES days however, it started to become obvious that the manuals had to be improved and the extra goodies were considered optional. Square didn't listen, of course, and every Square game back then came with the thick manual and at least one poster (I think I still have the two that came with FFIII, and the ones from Chrono Trigger as well).
The Playstation is what killed the idea of extra goodies. Packaging was reduced from an impressive paperback-sized box to a mere CD jewel case, with manuals becoming more and more thin and space at a total premium. Sure, some games (like the aforementioned Lunar) came in bigger boxes with more impressive presentations, but for the most part the smaller packaging(brought on by cost concerns, it was cheaper to use a standard jewel case than having x,000 custom boxes made) killed the idea of goodies once and for all for consoles.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
...and say that I don't think that fancy packaging is a really good idea.
While fancy packaging might help roll boxes off the shelves, software (at least in my experience) doesn't usually come from retail anymore -- one orders it online.
And ultimately, all the trinkets you get are just that -- trinkets. They wind up in the wastebasket, taking up space. Marathon's triangular boxes did it, Quake's tin box did it, etc. I was actually rather pleased with my purchases from Linux Game Publishing, Tribsoft, and Loki, which all simply came with a card and a CD or two in a DVD case. No waste, no having to dispose of tons of packaging materials, no blowing money on something that I'll see once that then forget about.
I have no idea how much it cost to put Quake III in a custom-embossed tin box, but let's assume that it was about 50 cents. I have no idea how many units Quake III sold, but I would assume that it is at least half a million units. Given only those assumptions, there's five artists that could have been hired for a year's work each to add more textures and better graphics to Quake III. That's an awfully tough tradeoff. I'd rather have the game itself be nicer, to be honest.
There are still a few convincing reasons to ship things in a package. Most of the time, I'd prefer to have my documentation in plain text, if I can get it. It's easier to search. However, sometimes things wind up in PDF on a CD. It's good that they can't get lost, but it's also rather annoying to read through a PDF, and a pain to print out hundreds of pages. Some manuals (I remember the SuperPaint manual) are quite readable while munching on lunch, and should stay in the form of wood pulp.
In general, though, I'm happy to see fancy boxes and addins go away. They just don't provide much benefit. Heck, I'd be happy to have a CD with nothing more than the name of the product printed on it -- no fancy, colored artwork, even.
May we never see th
The last era of great game packaging really began with the Elite series, notably Frontier - Elite II
http://www.planetmic.com/orbit/feinbox.htm
It contained the standard 2 diskette version - game AND pre-defined start points - surely a waste of a floppy? No! Manual with full page pictures, spaceflight timeline extending well into the 24th century, a wall chart with roughly 125,000 stars, each named and marked with planet classifications *true to the Elite universe*, novella of stories relating to to Elite, quick reference start card based around the core systems and a gazetter with game hints and tips
Here is a taster of the Elite universe chronology that was to be found as part of the package
1950s - First man in space, controlled nuclear fission, transistor, start of the nuclear arms race
1960s - First man on Moon, commercial fission power, integrated circuits, computers
1970s - Probes in Solar ststem
1980s - End of first nuclear arms race
1990s - First serious environmental problems on Earth, controlled nuclear fusion
2000s - First (minor) armed conflict between a nation and a "multi-national" corporation
2010s - First serious population problems on Earth
2020s - First international environmental protection enforcement agency, first commercial space station
2030s - Major energy crisis, fossil fuel restrictions, religious unrest, first baby born off Earth
2040s - World War III. Huge technological advancements, huge loss of life, dreadful environmental damage
2050s - War gradually abandoned due to popular rebellions. Commercial fusion power
2060s - Rebuilding. Dominance of corporations increased
2070s - First man on Mars, first permanent Moon base
2080s - Manned exploration of solar system, orbital cities around Earth, first interstellar probes launched
2090s - First permanent Mars base, heavy industry on Moon
2100s - Discovery of fossils on Mars base, "hyperspace" discovered, humans throughout solar system
2110s - Arrival of message from first interstellar probe to Alpha Centauri system. First pictures taken of an extra-solar planet in the Lagrange point on the two main stars
2120s - Presence of life on Tau Ceti 3 detected, first armed conflict in space over rights in the asteroid belt
2130s - Hyperspace capable probes sent to all nearby systems
2140s - Manned space craft sent to Tau Ceti
2150s - Colony established on Tau Ceti 3. Major corporations sending first private colony ships
2160s - The race for the stars. Enourmous production effort to produce ships, and mass exodus started
2170s - First attempt to terra-form Mars started
2180s - Life on Delta Parvonis discovered and made extinct in same year from bacteriological infection
2190s - Discovery of life on Beta Hydri 4, Altair 5. Human colonials spreading out of control
2200s - Earth environmental recovery program started, terraforming of Mars abandoned
2220s - Extinctions on Tau Ceti 3 increasing. Earth threatens to send a police force if nothing is done about it
2230s - Ultimatum sent to Tau Ceti ignored
2240s - First interstellar battle, formation of the Federation, founder members: Earth, Tau Ceti, Delta Pavonis, Altair, Beta Hydri
2260s - Spread of Federation influence
2270s - Second attempt to terra-form Mars started
2280s - Discovery of first non-human relic in space. Origin still unknown in 3200
2290s - First man "outside" on Mars (ie breathing unaided) on completion of terraforming
2300s - Remaining indigenous life on Tau Ceti 3 preserved in special enclosures
2310s - News of elimination of a reputedly sentient race on Achenar 6d by private colonists causes outrage in the Federation. Achenar refuses to join Federation, many terra-forming projects started
2320s - Federation sends war fleet to Achenar. Resulting enormous space battle won by Achenar
2330s - Spread of Empire from Achenar to surrounding worlds. War between Emp
The maps in them.. and then the other stuff(moonstone, that fellowship thingy from u7 & etc) just fabulous. even ultima underworld had cool inclusions like the map of the first level on 'old' looking paper(not to forget the bag of runes).
even ultima IX if it had nothing good gamewise - it came with a cloth map which makes for an excellent optical mouse pad.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I had just mentioned this exact same thing in this post.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Ultima Online? Richard Garriot is given the nod in the author's article, and granted, UO is obviously much newer than most of the games listed. IMHO, however, UO included some of my own favorite packaging. The box itself was relatively simple - a standard-sized box, but with an extension to the side so that the potential buyer could catch a glimpse of the games other inclusions. the game was packaged with not only a *cloth* map of the game's world, but also a lapel pin! Also included was the not-to-be-scoffed-at manual, which weighed in at 300 pages, and was actually chocked full of relevant material, instead of just a giant catalog of other games. I rarely (actually never) keep gaming boxes anymore - I've been gaming since those early ziplock-baggie days, and there's no room for empty boxes anymore. I have to admit, however, that the original Ultima Online packaging still has a place of pride on the top of my bookshelf today.
Maybe during that era they produced some of the best box art, but also some of the ugliest. Oh god, does anyone remember the Mega Man cartridge?
"There is no teacher but the enemy."-Mazer Rackham
I would have to say Origin's Autoduel had the best extra of any game. Forget HHG2TG with its silly sunglasses and empty bag, try getting a small toolkit in your computer game. Just the perfect thing to take apart your computer and fix problems with. It came with a small (ok, mostly useless) wrench, a few VERY usefull screwdrivers, philips and flathead, and I think a small hammer. I used that toolkit for ages until it got lost in a move.
Why wasn't this one mentioned? Sure.. it was a text based find-your-way adventure... but the box came with a manual (feaured a cool green spherical guy sticking his tongue out at ya), Peril Sensitive Sunglasses (really.. they stopped you from seeing anything perilous... or rather.. anything at all.. yes.. black cardboard glasses.. ok.. they were cool though!), and even some pocket lint!
I nominate that package to number one!
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
An old PC game, I remember on the game CD it had a hidden wav file that was a folk song about the game. Hysterical stuff. Sierra's "Lords of the Realm" had something similar....but Deadlock's was just amusing. "If I ever get back home again that recruiter's gonnna die...."
--Reverend Raven
Desperate days demand dire deeds.
Maybe to compensate for the Genesis' crappy cardboard boxes, and SegaCD's and Saturn's monster-sized cases, Sega Dreamcast games went absolutely no-frills: the same jewel cases on which you'd put audio CDs, with the insert as a manual. This made storing your games much easier than old "hardcore packages".
The article says: "the era of specialty sizes of boxes is long past." But why should we care? I have a bunch of computer game boxes into my closet, they're too nice-looking to throw away, but ultimately useless, as I keep all my games in CD jewel cases.
Unless the game comes with extra hardware (like Seaman, NiGHTS, or Steel Commander), a CD jewel box or even a DVD case is a much better solution than any fancy box.
Circumcision is child abuse.