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Post by jessie on Feb 14, 2016 2:15:14 GMT
Do not get me wrong, I love the case that the Sega Master system games came in, but i was wondering why they went that route? In Japan they were using cardboard boxes and I would think it would make more sense to continue that in the US. Nintendo was doing it her also, so I wonder if it was to increase the prestige of the brand. I guess it is the same with the box art. Any thoughts?
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Post by Rastanfarian on Feb 14, 2016 4:48:34 GMT
No idea, but great question. All I can say is I am sure glad Sega decided to do this, or we would be like those Ni****do guys and be collecting loose carts because CIB would be absurdly priced. It definitely was a smart choice to help preserve the manuals and keep the carts clean and usable. Maybe some of the real gurus around here have the answer... Bock , Maxim ...any ideas?
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Post by barney on Feb 14, 2016 10:56:29 GMT
I don't know the answer, but it makes sense that they could mass-produce the boxes in their millions for Europe and the US, and just print a cheap paper insert for each game. It would also have given them the flexibility to re-use boxes from unsold stock, update cover art (e.g. the "Classics" re-releases), etc.
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Post by Stan on Feb 14, 2016 14:01:22 GMT
Well I know, according to John Sauer, that Sega was trying to distance itself from Nintendo in as many ways as possible. For example, that's why Alex Kidd in Miracle World features buttons reverse of what you'd expect (jumping switched from the more intuitive location). Thus, I would assume this has something to do with it, along with being more sturdy. Cardboard boxes, in addition, were actually more expensive to produce.
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Post by rupert on Feb 14, 2016 14:09:53 GMT
I wonder if any of the thought process was around the rental market which Sega seemed to be pushing in the early days. Perhaps they were thinking that rental would be a bigger piece of the pie so sturdy boxes would have been a big factor to consider.
Like others have said though, being able to mass produce the same boxes and just create paper inserts for each game must have been a cheap way of doing things.
I'm so happy Sega made this choice. Even 10 years back it was uncommon to find really nice NES boxes. To this day if you find an SMS game out in the wild it's usually in pretty good condition for it's age.
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Post by Centrale on Feb 14, 2016 21:55:26 GMT
It was a brilliant decision... it's really possible to find games that look almost brand new, some 25-30 years after their release, and they don't cost a fortune because they're the rule rather than the exception. I would speculate that a lot of the decisions that went into the design of the Master System were related to reassuring wary U.S. retailers that the next wave of video games would be different from the glut of poor quality that the Atari 2600 third party market devolved into in that system's later years.
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Post by Retrobob on Feb 15, 2016 9:00:20 GMT
I presume it was intentional as they presumed kids outside of Japan would bash their games around more, which seems a correct assumption. Glad they went with it, as Centrale said.
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Post by Stan on Feb 16, 2016 1:54:58 GMT
I presume it was intentional as they presumed kids outside of Japan would bash their games around more, which seems a correct assumption. Glad they went with it, as Centrale said. Too bad they didn't figure that out in Brazil at first! Their earlier releases are cardboard, and very difficult to find.
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Post by Stan on Feb 16, 2016 1:57:57 GMT
I wonder if any of the thought process was around the rental market which Sega seemed to be pushing in the early days. Perhaps they were thinking that rental would be a bigger piece of the pie so sturdy boxes would have been a big factor to consider. I'd be doubtful of this. I don't think anyone has done any significant research on the video game rental market, which was largely an extension of home movie rentals in the early days. Really, the home rental industry didn't fully pick up until 1986 or better to say the late 1980s, after the SMS was introduced outside of Japan. I don't think they were considering the rental industry at all for games, because it simply didn't exist. Renting movies was still a new idea in the early 1980s. The first proper rental business started in the late 1970s, but it was only movies.
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Post by ShadowAngel on Feb 16, 2016 13:55:57 GMT
I wonder if any of the thought process was around the rental market which Sega seemed to be pushing in the early days. Perhaps they were thinking that rental would be a bigger piece of the pie so sturdy boxes would have been a big factor to consider. Was rental that big in europe? Here in Germany rental was semi-big for VHS in the 80's because VHS Home Videos were expensive but honestly i never rented any video game and i don't know anybody else renting video games. I think it was simply done to stand out and look "high quality" because outside of the first few PC years, nobody in the gaming industry used plastic boxes until the Saturn/Playstation era (and funnily that was when Sega started to usw cardboard boxes on the Mega Drive in North America and their crude cardboard/plastic cases on the Saturn) As others said, i'm glad they went that way, it certainly is better than the flimsy cardboard boxes used by everybody else (if at least it were sturdy cardboard boxes like used on the Computer market). But i still wonder why lose cartridges exist. Did people throw away those plastic boxes? How did they manage to lose the manuals even?
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Post by nearbythiscafe on Feb 16, 2016 14:24:42 GMT
Some kids just didn't keep things nice I guess. As a child I was brought up to appreciate everything I had and I always treated my games with care, kept them clean, looked after the manuals and didn't mistreat them. At £29.99 per game new ones were a rare treat and I was lucky to get 3-4 a year.
My cousins on the other hand were spoilt, by the time I had a collection of around 15 games they had over an 100 and the condition they kept them in was terrible. The manuals were scribbled on and the box art was torn and drawn on. I never used to lend them my games in fear they would come back scratched.
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Post by flatapex on Feb 24, 2016 23:20:58 GMT
I have a much simpler theory.......
The game boxes were basically vhs boxes with very small variations, therefore easy to mass produce without each box being printed onto and committed to being that game. take the printed label out, different cart and manual in the box......different game.
the key was not thought about end result, the key was cost.
I was the same as nearbythiscafe but with my md games as I never had an sms, everything was immaculate and still was in 98 when i sold it all. these days i have had to compromise a LOT about condition from what mine were because nearly 20 years have passed and things deteriorate.
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Post by jessie on Feb 25, 2016 14:33:39 GMT
I have a much simpler theory....... The game boxes were basically vhs boxes with very small variations, therefore easy to mass produce without each box being printed onto and committed to being that game. take the printed label out, different cart and manual in the box......different game. the key was not thought about end result, the key was cost. I was the same as nearbythiscafe but with my md games as I never had an sms, everything was immaculate and still was in 98 when i sold it all. these days i have had to compromise a LOT about condition from what mine were because nearly 20 years have passed and things deteriorate. Ah....that makes sense. Like the Mego action figures. Change the head and outfit of the standard body and you get a new toy to sell!
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