SydLexia.com - The Forums :: View topic - I am getting older, which means I complain more.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 08:52 pm

I am in the process of moving, which means going through my closets full of video game crap. I found one of my boxes full of older (DOS era) PC games. I started looking through them and realizing how much time and care went into the packaging of these titles, that you don't see anymore, as now you just get a CD/DVD stuffed into a plastic DVD case.

What happened? (And, I know that price to package comes into the argument)

Going through such titles has the Ultima series, and Might & Magic, and the D&D gold box games, I found:

Well made cloth maps of the game world.

Numerous books. (One for game instructions, one for game history, one just for spells, etc.)

Extra neat stuff. (Ultima IV came with a large cloth map & a pewter Ankh) (Zork III came with a small metal coin supposedly from the great underground civilization.)

A novel. (One of the SSI Gold Box Dragonlance games came with the paperpack copy of "Wanderlust")

These were all standard fare. Nowadays, if you want cool extras like these you have to pay anywhere from $10 - $100 more for the "Collectors Edition".

I miss the good old days.

Anybody else?

Posted: Jan 02 2008 09:28 pm

Working Designs (may they rest in peace) was always good for this kind of stuff. Like the pendant from Lunar.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 09:38 pm

They keep talking about how they want gaming to be taken seriously like movies, but whenever I'd pick up old C64 games, specifically EA's early stuff and Accolade's titles as well, that the packaging made it a non-toy product. Nowadays though, it's a tossup.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 09:42 pm

I miss the old days because games were never considered outdated in 2 days.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 10:04 pm

The funny thing is games have decreased in price. Snes games used to cost in the 60's when brand new.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 10:26 pm

-bjork- wrote:

They keep talking about how they want gaming to be taken seriously like movies, but whenever I'd pick up old C64 games, specifically EA's early stuff and Accolade's titles as well, that the packaging made it a non-toy product. Nowadays though, it's a tossup.

I know that EA used to put thier games in the "Album Cover" type packages because they were one of the 1st companies to promote who made the games. (Something Atari refused to do, and chased away many game programmers, who some banded together to form Activision.) They wanted thier games to be seen as like rock albums, with the names of the artists on the cover.

Or has Wiki has it:
The square "album cover" boxes (such as the covers for 1983's M.U.L.E. and Pinball Construction Set) were a popular packaging concept by Electronic Arts, which wanted to represent their developers as "rock stars".

erock462 wrote:

The funny thing is games have decreased in price. Snes games used to cost in the 60's when brand new.

No they haven't. Have you seen the prices for new PS3 and Xbox 360 games? $59.99.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 10:32 pm

My brand new chrono trigger was 69.99 . even so consider inflation. 60s in the 90s>60s in 2007

Street Fighter 2 was also pretty expensive as was super mario rpg when it first came out. with tax it was easily into the mid 70's.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 10:42 pm

Yep. I remember seeing the old album boxes and really liking them. Hardball's was a grass cover with a small screenshot, and I think Law of the West was leather-looking. Pretty cool and simple covers, they really worked well.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 11:15 pm

None of the games I bought game with cool stuff... unless you could fucking copy protection pamphlets. I had a lot of Sierra stuff, then some Maxis, Microprose, id software, and I forget what else.

Actually Civilization came with a 200 page strategy guide/history lesson written by Sid Meier that was pretty cool.

Joined: Apr 14 2006 Location: Lake Michigan Posts: 3332

Syd Lexia wrote:

I had a lot of Sierra stuff

They were the kings of protection pamphlets. They pretty much wrote novels you had to keep ready at all times if some random item in a game asked for a code for no logical reason.

Posted: Jan 02 2008 11:38 pm

I remember the original Pirates! having a box that looked like a book, and it had a map along with a fat manual that had all this extra info about each type of boat, and they also listed when the Silver Train/Treasure Fleet would come into towns... if you were asked when these would arrive during the game and got it wrong, you'd lose morale or something, but it wouldn't lock you out of the game totally.

I also remember Gunship coming with a foldout overlay for your C64 keyboard, since there were like 80 zillion functions driven by the keyboard. I never could win at that game.

Posted: Jan 03 2008 12:29 am

Ah the good old Code Wheels.

I liked how some games, acually made the copy protection part of the game. Like in Rocket Ranger you had to use the code wheel to know how much fuel you needed to use.

Posted: Jan 03 2008 03:50 pm

I remember Zak McCraken and the Alien Mindbenders had copy protection codes that you needed whenever you tried to buy a plane ticket. That was bothersome.

2010 SLF Tag Champ Joined: Jun 07 2006 Posts: 12294

I don't think it's a matter of cost to produce, so much the fact that companies have learned that they don't need to do shit like that anymore to sell games now.