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Classic Games (Games) Entertainment Games

On Early Game Packaging Treasures 70

Posted by simoniker from the how-many-zorkmids-for-the-lot? dept.
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.
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On Early Game Packaging Treasures More

On Early Game Packaging Treasures

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  • HHGuide (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lord Bitman ( 95493 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @12:31AM (#8011933)
    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!)

    • Re:HHGuide (Score:4, Funny)

      by MalachiConstant ( 553800 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @01:06AM (#8012063)
      Don't forget they also included No Tea! I've still got mine to this day, right here in my pocket.

    • Re:HHGuide (Score:4, Interesting)

      by August_zero ( 654282 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @02:05AM (#8012246)
      I remember the packaging of another Infocom Classic "The Lurking Horror"

      The game came with a fake student ID, and the best part was a rubber centipede sandwiched between two clear pieces of plastic, when I pulled the game out of the box I remember jumping when I saw it and thinking for a moment that there was a giant insect in the box with my game. (hey I was like 8 years old cut me some slack)

    • Re:HHGuide (Score:5, Informative)

      by pezpunk ( 205653 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @02:16AM (#8012276) Homepage
      Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy best packaging ever:

      - a little baggie, labeled "Microscopic Space Fleet."

      - some pocket fluff

      - peril-sensitive sunglasses. in the book, they would cloud over at the first hint of danger ... my pair must have been expecially neurotic, they were always pitch black. in fact if i didn't know better i'd suspect they were simply cut out of a sheet of construction paper.

      - a friendly red pin, emblazoned with the motto "don't panic!" in yellow letters. (currently affixed to my leather biker jacket)

      - Demolition orders for my home

      - Demolition orders for my planet

      - No tea!
      • Ah crap, I forgot that one. The most important one of all!
        I still have the No Tea.. actually, I think I mis-handled it or something, 'cause now it's all over everything :/
    • My fav. Box for a computer game would be
      my StarShip Titanic box..

      I got it signed by the man him self when he fianly made it out hear to Australia..

      Had the large poster too..
      i think i gave it to a freind who was intrested in it and he threw it out :(

  • How could they miss... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by duffbeer703 ( 177751 ) * on Sunday January 18, 2004 @12:33AM (#8011941)
    The classic Electronic Arts "album cover" packaging and their attempts to make game developers into rockstar-like characters.

  • Timely... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anm ( 18575 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @12:43AM (#8011987)

    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

    • Re:Timely... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Teddy Beartuzzi ( 727169 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:13AM (#8012693) Journal
      Man, I couldn't by any more opposite if I tried.

      The 200 page manuals in things like Stunt Island, Red Baron, Buzz Aldrin's Race into Space, Their Finest Hour, or even Master of Magic were one of the *primary* reasons why I'd spend $80 on a game. It always made me feel like I was getting something for my cash. These weren't just game manuals, they were often history lessons, and I learned a ton by reading them.

      If I couldn't decide which game to buy, I'd always buy the heavier one. And the side benefit for the company was these things acted as copy protection, even if they weren't specifically meant to be.

      Now, the boxes are shrunk, the manuals are tiny (if there at all), and I rarely buy games any more. It's been years now, actually. I didn't change, the games did.

      • Let me just make sure that I understand you correctly. When you were forking over $80.00 the primary reason you were spending the cash was for the MANUAL?

        Why not spend $50.00 for a game and then $30.00 for a history book?.
        • One, because there weren't any $50 games. This is Canadian dollars I'm talking about, and $80 was common. I'm looking at my receipt for Jagged Alliance right now - Apr 6, 1995, $74.95 + tax = 85.45. Ultima 7 - May 10, 1992, $69.98 + tax = $79.08.

          There were a ton of games out there to choose from, most of which which were identical in quality. So, when faced with two games that were the same price do you buy A) game with barebones manual or B) game with 200 page manual inc. colour photos, or cloth map, etc

  • 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.

  • Zelda "Golden" Editions (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.
    • My copy of Zelda 2 for NES was may as well have been real gold to me when I got it.. I think it was a nice homage too, but IMHO games have gone the way of boxes... I don't mean to troll, or to stray offtopic, what I'm saying is that this seems to be part of a larger trend or change of style in gaming. simply that, "the times they are a changin..." for better or for worse.. now that's another thread.

  • feelies (Score:5, Funny)

    by Pilferer ( 311795 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @01:14AM (#8012097)
    Hardcore gamers appreciate hardcore packaging, with unusual boxes and a handful of feelies...

    Wait, we're talking about video games, not porn, right?

  • Treasures usually included copy protection (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SchnauzerGuy ( 647948 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @01:15AM (#8012099)
    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.

    • Ahah yes (Score:4, Interesting)

      by rhetoric ( 735114 ) <rhetoricNO@SPAMcolumbus.rr.com> on Sunday January 18, 2004 @01:38AM (#8012167)
      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...

      If you haven't played Pirates! Gold [frigate.free.fr] 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. :P
    • This reminds me of day of the tentacle (I know it came about later than any of these games).

      When solving one problem where you had to "complete the plans" for Dr.Freds super battery. You had to look up the number displayed on the screen in tha manual, then set the right number of sugar cubes(?) and the levels of liquid in the beakers to continue.

      Still have the manual, but sadly lost one of the games floppys so I can no longer play it. Unless I can find somewhere to get it again that is.
    • A lot of that came about after companies had stopped included the cool trinkets.

      There were definitely some fun ones before then, though. Several people have already mentioned the Hitchhiker's Guide game, but one of my favourites was the Star Saga series (it was supposed to be a trilogy, but only the first two were produced). They were text-based multiplayer games that also included table-sized foldout maps with little coloured glass markers for your ship, and something like 1000+ pages of text in a set of
    • I was unable to make any significant progress in Ultima IV because I had a pirated copy and no documentation. I had no idea what ingredients I needed to cast spells, which really limited my party.

      If I had had $49 when I was 12 to spend on it I would have, just to get the map and the spell book.

  • 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

    • Re:More recent (Score:3, Interesting)

      by shadowcabbit ( 466253 ) *
      I have both games sitting proudly on my media rack. Of course, none of the goodies are on display-- stuff tends to get lost around me-- but the full inventory is as follows:

      Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
      Demo Disc
      Hardbound manual
      Cloth map
      "Making Of" movie disc
      Soundtrack Audio CD

      Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete
      Ghaleon Punching Puppet
      Hardbound manual
      "Making Of" movie disc
      Soundtrack Audio CD
      Goldtone replica of Lucia's pendant
      Cardboard character standees
      Paper map
      Spiffy "Omake Box" to hold most of this stuf

  • past deficiencies (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gtshafted ( 580114 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @01:33AM (#8012145)
    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.
    • 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 footbal

  • Dr. Who and the mines of terror. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Mish ( 50810 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @01:41AM (#8012173)
    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." [classicgaming.com]

    This game was great, the packaging featured a picture of the TARDIS [blueyonder.co.uk] 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. :)

  • Infocom games (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Radius9 ( 588130 )
    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.
    • A couple of years ago all of the Infocom games were re-released as "The Lost Treasures of Infocom", parts 1 and 2. It gives you just about every text adventure Infocom ever made, except Leather Goddesses of Phobos, on just two CD's. I have since then played a couple of the games and hope one day to be able to play all of them ;-)

  • Awww, shame! (Score:3, Informative)

    by dagbrown ( 126362 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @02:01AM (#8012241) Homepage

    They didn't mention that cool tin can that the Linux version of Quake 3 came in! That was the best.

  • Sleeves and Smell (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Apreche ( 239272 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @02:07AM (#8012256) Homepage Journal
    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?
    • My favorite artwork has got to be the SMS packaging. Nothing says quality like a white background with blue grid lines on it.
    • Oh yeah... That NES packaging was great... The smell... Hm... I can't say I recall that very much, but since I was born in 87 and am a little brother, my older brother was the one buying most of the games. By the time I was buying games, I could mostly find them in used games shops, so the smell wasn't that great.

      I'd still have a NES, if it weren't for the fact that, uh, it never was mine to begin with, so my brother frickin' gave it away. I've still got a copy of Ice Climber (PAL), in a very worn case but

    • What I used to love about the game packaging for NES (and n64 for that matter) was that the box wasn't needed. I'd get home with my new package, carefully open the box, then break down the box so it was flat and pack them all away between a couple of books. I mean, who puts the cartridge back in the boxes between games anyway? It made a HUGE difference when you came to sell or trade the games, and you got a lot of raised eyebrows at the local game shop when you rolled up to trade a game that has been out
  • Probably the nicest packaging of a game I'd ever had in my hand was the instructions for Omnitrend's Universe, a large padded binder which housed the disks and the games' extensive instructions, beautifully printed. Nothing today even comes close. Hell, the International Olympics Committee probably doesn't get documentation that fine when being pitched.

    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

  • Maybe not old enough to be considered a "classic", Marathon came in a cool triangular (sorta) package.

    You can kind of see it in these pictures of Marathon [bungie.com], Marathon 2 [bungie.com] and Marathon Infinity [bungie.com].

    (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.)

    • Even cooler than those were the Trilogy Box Set and the Mac Action Sack. The latter was an odd landscape-style box that broke in half and pulled apart to reveal a ton of awesome goodies (Hamish Sinclair's scrapbook, stickers, and the Map Collection CD).

      The latter, of course, was a tan canvas bag with games in it.

      How can you beat a brown sack?!

  • Jaded memories (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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.

  • I For One (Score:1, Redundant)

    by vandel405 ( 609163 )
    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).
  • 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 ano

  • I'm going to be the negative voice here... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by 0x0d0a ( 568518 ) on Sunday January 18, 2004 @06:50AM (#8012727) Journal
    ...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.
  • 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,
  • 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.
  • I had just mentioned this exact same thing in this post. [slashdot.org]
  • 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!

  • 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...."
  • 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 us
    • I think it's mostly just a nostalgia thing. People can play pacman via MAME too, but some still love having the original stand-up to play at. Drop in a quarter, crank up the Talking Heads (or whatever your fave 80s band is) and just let the worries of today melt away...

      ...back to a simpler time, when everyone knew good from bad, computers were things mostly just the propellorheads buried deep in the bowels of universities and banks used, and hair was BIG!

      That's what the focus of the article is on, anyway

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