The largest game boxes you own

[Harrison]

What are some of the largest game boxes you own?

I was going through my PC gaming collection today and because games tend to now come in DVD style cases I had forgotten just how big some of the boxes were that games used to come in. And when you open most up they contain a CD case and an A6 booklet held in the centre by an acre of cardboard. Ridiculous!

A couple of the biggest boxes I have are for the games, The Depths of Doom Trilogy, and The Quake Resurrection pack. Granted, both of these are compilations of everything released for each game, but they definitely don't need to be quite so large. These two are about the same dimensions as each other, measuring 25cm x 31cm x 7cm each. Huge!

On opening up the Doom Trilogy box you find a big cardboard insert and the actual contents are 3 CDs in a single cardboard wallet and an A5 manual! These would have fitted in a DVD case!!!

And opening up the Quake Resurrection box, it is nearly as bad. There are three CD's, each in there own jewel case, with two of them held in by the cardboard insert and a third loose in the rest of the packaging. There is an A5 manual for Quake and a smaller CD case sized manual for the QZone and Malice instructions. So again most of the box contains nothing and all of this would have fitted in a DVD style case.

I also have a similar sized box for the Civilization II/Command and Conquer compilation, but at least that does contain quite a big thick manual. And another similar sized box for the Sim City 2000/Theme Hospital compilation, but again this one is better used with 3 large manuals for Sim City 2000 taking up nearly half the box alone.

So what are some of the biggest game boxes you have owned/own?

[Ghost]

Lets think, Quake Resurrection and the Star TrekThe Next Generation "A Final Unity" special edition.

[Teho]

Has to be the Diablo battle chest. The box is the size of that of a board-game, but doesn't really contain all that much. It's the Diablo games and expansions in there, their manuals and a strategy guide for Diablo II. But in physical size it's definitely the largest I have.

[Harrison]

I member that box. I was going to buy one from ebay when I wanted the game, but ended up getting the best of re-release versions of both the main game and expansion as those actually contained more content and were cheaper. Also took up a lot less space.

[StuKeith]

Havent got it, but i think gutair hero must win the crown here?
Or how about the Snes superscope?

[Harrison]

That's a little bit different though if the boxes include some hardware. There are going to be bigger to fit it all inside. I've got some quite large boxes for the light gun games I've bought in the past that came bundled with the guns: Time Crisis 2 on the PS2 and House of the Dead 2 on the Dreamcast.

But one of the biggest, although I don't own one myself, has to be the Xbox game Steel Battalion, bundled with it's dedicated controller. I think Oz owns this one. Here it is:


http://www.golem.de/0212/23214-steel%20battalion%20controller.jpg


And I just thought. We are all quickly moving over to LCD and Plasma screens, but that has buggered up our retro light gun gaming, hasn't it! :( That is also one issue with me now using an LCD monitor for MAME. I can't use my PC light gun with the light gun arcade games supported by MAME. Bugger!

[Demon Cleaner]

And I just thought. We are all quickly moving over to LCD and Plasma screens, but that has buggered up our retro light gun gaming, hasn't it! That is also one issue with me now using an LCD monitor for MAME. I can't use my PC light gun with the light gun arcade games supported by MAME. Bugger!That is the downside of LCD and Plasma. But I have no lightgun anyway, and surely wouldn't buy one now just to play MAME games. But I admit, it would be cool, being able to use it on a very big screen.

And yes, Oz owns the Steel Battalion package, looks quite crazy :o

[StuKeith]

Why dont light gun games work on these tvs then?

[Harrison]

Completely different technology. Light Gun games work with CRT screens because of how a CRT screen draws the image. The beam scans from the top to the bottom at a set speed, and when you use a light gun, the moment you fire at the screen the software does some clever stuff to measure where on screen you fired based on where the CRT scanning was at the moment you pressed the trigger.

In contrast an LCD or Plasma do not make the image by an electron gun drawing it from top to bottom, instead each pixel or cell is charged to generate light to make up the picture, and so there is no timing mechanism similar to CRT to use to work out where the gun was pointing at on the screen.

There was a light gun designed to work with LCD screens which used two tracking cameras mounted above the TV, so they actually tracked the direction the gun you were holding was pointing, rather than having anything to do with the display itself. So similar to the Wii controls in a way. Not sure if it's still in development though.

[AlexJ]

Namco were in the process of developing the GunCon 3 at one point which was to be LCD/Plasma compatible. Not sure if they canned the idea though.

[J T]

Completely different technology. Light Gun games work with CRT screens because of how a CRT screen draws the image. The beam scans from the top to the bottom at a set speed, and when you use a light gun, the moment you fire at the screen the software does some clever stuff to measure where on screen you fired based on where the CRT scanning was at the moment you pressed the trigger.

There was a light gun designed to work with LCD screens which used two tracking cameras mounted above the TV, so they actually tracked the direction the gun you were holding was pointing, rather than having anything to do with the display itself. So similar to the Wii controls in a way. Not sure if it's still in development though.

I remember having a big discussion with a friend at work and we were trying to work out how lightguns worked before we looked on the internet and found out. It's so deceptively simple - basically just a light sensor and a clever bit of programming. Very neat.

The Wiimote actually works kind of the other way round, the camera is in the wiimote and the 'sensor bar' (bit of a misnomer) is essentially just some IR bulbs - the pointer on screen moves relatively to where the wii mote is 'seeing' the IR bulbs. You can also use candles or regular light fittings spaced out to control the pointer.

Didn't the Steel Battalion controller require assembly too?

[slicer1000]

Tell me about it my nes,saturn,playstation1,2 are all useless on 100hz LCD tv's samba de amiga has a longer box than SB there are also two versions of the sb controller v1 has green button's v2 has blue button and slightly tighter controls.

[Harrison]

I always wanted to get hold of the Samba de amigo controls but they were so rare, and on ebay they were selling for over £100.