Video Game Packaging

Jintor

Jintor

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I'm 15, and I can still remember the day when PC Games came in decent boxes with all sorts of awesome stuff inside. Like a MANUAL. A MANUAL that was a DECENT READ.

Nowdays, I'm lucky if I get a freaking jewel case with my box. Jesus, EA, lay off the ****ing paper things, ok? They're shit!

You guys are mostly older than me, tell us what you remember.
 
Aaah yes. I still have my original release Halo for PC box. The good old A4 sized face, while being ultra thick and made of tough stuff.

*caresses box*

Sigh...

:(
 
I remember when games came on 5-1/4" floppies, or were downloaded from bbs's at 300 baud. Or on cartridges. But anything retail would have a manual.

Nowadays, a decent electronic manual is ok with me, but it would be nice to have a 1 page printout with controls or whatever would be useful during the game.
 
I remember when they made smaller boxes and took out jewel cases, they said that it would make games cheaper.

Ha.
 
I started out with Elite on cassette which came with a novel and a flight manual that the designers obviously put a lot of thought into.

In those C64 days the printed stuff in the box was part of the game, and to a lesser degree in the Amiga/ST days, but now most manuals are just clinical disclaimers and guides on how to contact the publishers in the event of problems running it. And stacks of advertising flyers.

The last PC game I recall having anything worth keeping in the box (besides the CD) was the first Gabrial Knight, that came with an excellently drawn graphic novel.
 
Ah the nostalgia of big cardboard boxes at least we had instruction booklets.
 
The big boxes were effing sweet. It made you feel like you were taking home something epic.

*Reminisces over old Starcraft box*

Those thick-ass manuals were also cool. Particularly with RTS games, where you had pages and pages of backstory and unit/building descriptions. I would actually read them for entertainment.
 
The best kind of boxes are the ones WoW/TBC was in. Compact paper boxes that fold open and look cool and shit but which also has a plastic DVD case inside. Pretty and effective.
 
Large game boxes went obsolete in the UK around 2001 IIRC. I struggle to remember, but I think Tribes 2 was probably the last game I got in a large-format box, and Black & White was the first I got in the new-style DVD box (I believe both games were in fact released in March 2001, so Sierra must have been slower than EA at changing).

The switchover had its pros and cons. I now have double the games I had in 2001, and storing all those boxes was certainly a bit of a bitch (though argueably, you could just fold the cardboard nets down and you have the smaller jewel case on your shelf), and I imagine shops must have thought so too. I remember an amusing Charlie Brooker article (now a popular comedy writer / Guardian Journalist, then an angry, angry PCZone writer) bitching about the size of games boxes a few years before their demise. But on the flip-side, apart from storage space, I don't believe we've gained anything, and we've lost a fair bit. I think a lot of boxes look cluttered these days, and system requirements must get missed a hell of a lot more often (the 'Internet Connection Required' spec on the Half-Life 2 box was microscopic. But then, the HL2 box was absolute shit anyway).

I too miss the manuals, and I suspect that stateside manual reductions are entirely the fault of the European market as well. The best manual a game ever came with IMO, is that which came with Homeworld. 80 pages of backstory to the game, plenty of reproduced concept art, it was like a science-fiction short-story about how the tribes of the planet of Kharak found about their origins and set off (true, it was 95% completely irrelevant to the game, but it was well written and certainly enriched the experience). Then you had unit stats and the usual manual trappings. The Homeworld: Catacylsm manual was pretty reasonable to, and added a lot of background information for unit types that he HW manual lacked. Sadly, 2003 came and Homeworld 2 sucked. The first signs of suckage were, funny enough, the packaging. Gone were the epic space-vistas, in was some poor illustration of some bald chick supposed to represent the enigmatic protagonist. How non-Homeworld fans were ever supposed to know what the game was about is beyond me. The manual was a wafer thin rudimentary piece, just like the game's plot. I doubt we'll ever see the likes of the Homeworld days again.
 
the biggest manual I ever got was the Mechwarrior 3 came with a good sized manual, then another book on all the stats of the mechs and then a laminated foldout reference sheet thing.

I miss the old days.

PS: the original Empire Earth manual was pretty sweet too but I don't have it anymore and it's a bit foggy.
 
its all going to be online soon....well, not to soon
 
Absinthe said:
The big boxes were effing sweet. It made you feel like you were taking home something epic.

*Reminisces over old Starcraft box*

Those thick-ass manuals were also cool. Particularly with RTS games, where you had pages and pages of backstory and unit/building descriptions. I would actually read them for entertainment.
Click to expand...

I got the Blizzard game of the year edition box...starcraft/diablo/warcraft 2. Think how epic THAT was.
 
I had a lovely System shock 2 cardboard box. I think I've lost it/it got destroyed

:(
 
Any of you like the new really thick PC boxes? I got my first with HL1 anthology. They hold, like 5 cds. HL anthology's box was dissipointing. It only came with a cardboard page with customer support and basic controls *sigh*
 
I remember the day I brought Homeworld home. I stuck in the disk and started the install. Then to kill the time I started reading the manual.

I didn't get to play Homeworld till the following day, but when I did I was so ready for it. That back story really put me in the mood for an awesome game and I wasn't disapointed.
 
Heh, I remember having a good read of the huge manuals that used to come with games.

Now that I come to think of it some of the mega drive games had pretty huge manuals. What the hell did they write for a mega drive game. "insert cart and press power, lol." In like 500 languages?
 
I miss manuals too, fortunately some PSP games (e.g. Metal Gears) have very good manuals.
 
Those huge boxes are awesome. I have five sitting on my shelf now.
 
Jintor said:
I'm 15, and I can still remember the day when PC Games came in decent boxes ..
Click to expand...


blame wal-mart

Remember five years ago, when computer game boxes all got smaller? That was Wal-Mart. "Wal-Mart was a significant force in driving videogame producers (and software producers of all kinds) to dramatically reduce the size of their boxes," says Charles Fishman, senior writer for Fast Company magazine and author of the bestselling book The Wal-Mart Effect. "Wal-Mart's goal is to put as much merchandise on the shelves inside a given store-size as possible. By cutting the box size of games and software, Wal-Mart could easily increase the amount of product it displayed by 20 or 30 or 40 percent. More product in the same shelf-space. That's good for Wal-Mart, and good for customers, and maybe even good, ultimately, for game makers. Smaller boxes cost less.
Click to expand...

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/print/40/12
 
Qonfused said:
Those huge boxes are awesome. I have five sitting on my shelf now.
Click to expand...

I've got probbaly 10+ sitting at my fathers house still....they are just taking up godawful loads of space :p
 
I miss those days too when they had the awesome manuals, those registration cards (Honestly, did anyone EVER send them, let alone fill them out ?) and the other extras. Remember when heaps of boxes had the flip out cover thing ?

I still have my Tiberian Sun sun glasses, GTA shirt, NWN cloth map and a ton of other things.

These days more or less every game sucks unless you get the Collector's Edition.

I still have almost all of my old big game boxes under my bed going back like ~ 10 years including Constructor, C&C (Gold edition), etc.
 
I've got like, old D&D game boxes and all.
I've got every generation of boxes there was, my favourite would have to be the small compact cardboard box like what WoW came in.
MDK has the best manual by far too
 
Keep good care of it Destrukt. Could be pretty collectable and valuable soon :)
 
Smaller boxer are no excuse for no/shitty manuals.
WoW managed to fit a good cool manual in it's box.
GTA VC also had a good manual and a map of VC.
 
I remember game boxes that opened up by lifting the top off, like... I dunno, clothes boxes or something. I remember big computer boxes with awesome manuals, separate manuals for advertisements, and fifty leaflets for rebates and ads. I remember smaller boxes with the impossible-to-get-out inner box. And nowadays they have the cool plastic boxes that are box and case... though they're still small, with nothing to look at in them. Though I suppose it varys for the game.
 
Qonfused said:
...Like age matters.
Click to expand...

pedobearsealqe7.gif
 
Touche.

Imagine the e has a thing over it.
 
Ya most games come with nothing. I remember getting Deus Ex and it coming with a cool looking fake news paper. That gave you some clues and insight on the story.
 
Que-Ever said:
pedobearsealqe7.gif
Click to expand...

:O

Yeah, I'm 15. Until July. I've said it a couple of times.

My favourite manual would be my GTA:SA one. Rockstar Manuals are generally awesome. My favourite Box is probably my HL2 Collectors Edition box, despite the fact that there was SHIT ALL in it - well, besides HL2+CSSource+HLS+HL2DM+...something else, and a one-size-fits-all T-shirt, and a FREAKING A5 SIZE SINGLE SCRAP OF PAPER CALLED A MANUAL, and the sort of not-actually-a-prima-guide.

I don't actually have all that many boxes, being a young gamer and not being able to actually afford all that many games. I tend to borrow my friends/families or beg my parents for ages... it also results in me getting crappy EA Classics boxes and getting a huge cardboard box with 3 cds in a little paper slip thing inside (1 of them being the manual. I HATE DIGITAL MANUALS.)

Did Deus Ex have an awesome manual? My "Classic" version doesn't have one.

/EDIT Doh, Asuka already answered that.
 
Anyone else own the original release of "Day of the Tentacle"? It came in this triangular-prism shaped box, and definitely was unique (and probably a pain to shelve).

edit: found a picture
 
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