PC Gamer - The Good Old Days of PC Gaming

PC Gamer's Andy Chalk talks about the boxes, packaging, and sentimentality of old PC classics in his piece "Boxes, Feelies, and the Good Old Days of PC Gaming".

Consider the box. A humble holder of stuff. Usually (but not always) cardboard and cuboid, and alas, often held in a certain kind of dismissive contempt in this era of digital delights. They're still on shelves, for the benefit of those who can't or won't download their games, but they're pissy little things: a cheap DVD case, with a lazy swipe at cover art—"angry man with gun," again and again and again—and a half-page insert explaining how to shove the disc into the machine, at which time it will get most of what it needs from Steam anyway.

But there was a time when the box was more than just dumpster stuffing. When it contained not just the entirety of the game, launch-day bugs and all, but the things that brought them to life in ways that digital just can't replicate.

The loot, the swag, the tchotchkes, the feelies, the stuff that made it all real, and demonstrated to the outside world—should any member of the outside world happen to stumble into your room—the depth of your dedication to these wonderful worlds and adventures that came inside a humble cardboard box.

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I used to have drawers full of game boxes collecting dust. In the end I just ended up buying books of CD jackets to store the game disks so they'd take up less space. These days I much prefer digital downloads, and I've lost any desire for physical disks. I still love a good physical manual though. PDF files just don't have the same appeal.

I still have all the old cloth maps, documents, and items from the Ultima games, but I regret throwing out the boxes during one of my frequent moves when I was younger - I did construction work at the time so had to go from job to job.

I was even more impressed with something that didn't come out of the game box. At the end of either Ultima III or IV, or maybe both, you were told to report thy feat to Lord British. I sent a letter off to Origin Systems and received back a certificate of completion signed by Lord British. Sadly, I thought I had filed this away with the Ultima documentation but I have not been able to find it.

but the things that brought them to life in ways that digital just can't replicate

This is the far most important point.

In an underlying level, it shows how few - or nmothing at all - publishing people understand regarding this.
Numbers - sales numbers - don't transport emotions. To the big publishers, games have become "fire & forget" things. You can judge this bny how little support they give to games nopwadays - and often load the weight of supporting on the shoulders of the developers, meanwhile they grab all of the riches ( read : profits ) …

The modern gaming industry is driven by accountancy clerks. And you see it.

Nowdays, you get stuff like this only in Collector's Edition. Expensive ones, nowadays !

In "the good old days of gaming", for some games, this lot was standard in their packaging !

Originally Posted by Xian
I sent a letter off to Origin Systems and received back a certificate of completion signed by Lord British. Sadly, I thought I had filed this away with the Ultima documentation but I have not been able to find it.

Bummer that such a valued document has gone missing! Hopefully it turns up somewhere. Gently move some equipment around U7 style maybe? I always wondered after finishing some of the early Ultima's what Lord British' acknowledgement of the feat would look like, but figured I'd have lived too far away and that it was probably many years too late for me anyway to try sending anything.

On a similar note, I always liked that the later period Might and Magics (6-9) gave you a certificate of completion that you could save to your hard-drives for posterity.

Not a surprise that the good old days of PC gaming are summed to the objects wraping the game and not the game itself.