[jazz piano music] [typing]
Greetings, LGR here from my perspective.
I am wearing my camera glasses that I normally do for LGR Thrifts and...
Yeah, today I am here in my main collection room which
I will admit at the moment is in a bit of disarray. [chuckles]
So my apologies for that, and also sorry if you're sensitive to
shaky cam kind of footage like this.
This is more convenient for me
and I'd rather not mess with image stabilization
that makes it look even more sickly.
But, as I was organizing some things in here today,
I thought, why not put together
a video on a topic I wanted to talk about for a while.
And that is
big box PC games.
And this is not one of them,
at least in the term that I hear used most among collectors
of PC games today, myself included.
Although, it's really not a term that
existed until
the early 2000s, around 2004 or so.
The thing is, a lot people online
that are just like sellers on eBay are gonna sell these
as big box games. They're not, though.
These are approximately the same size as a DVD case,
but they're, you know, about twice the thickness and they come in a cardboard box.
For a while, they came in these cardboard ones.
At one point, they came in these, like,
sort of,
you know, bigger, thicker clamshell ones.
None of these are big boxes, but I see them listed as "big box"
PC games all the time.
This...
is a big box version of Far Cry.
And it's a bit of an anomaly, too, because this game came out in 2004.
You would see this version everywhere.
I mean, I got this one at a thrift store for like 50 cents back in 2010 or so.
This one though– [chuckles]
It's weird because in 2004 these really weren't a thing.
So around that time, every company–at least in the US–
started releasing them in smaller boxes, PC games.
Because they didn't really need
all that space anymore.
In fact, they didn't need that space for a long time.
Everything was just
put right in here, so they made it around the same, you know, width,
just to fit like a jewel case.
But there was no need for this extra space
In fact, this box is mostly empty.
So...
you've got like,
the same
uh, like, multi-CD jewel case thing in there and that's it.
Thing is, companies like Sam's Club and Walmart,
at least here in the USA,
they released them in larger boxes for a while.
And I don't know why. I don't what the reason was for that,
but I think it's awesome as a collector.
This is a 2004 release in a big box, which is pretty unusual.
This is another one.
This is actually kind of what prompted it recently because
I saw Metal Jesus Rocks talking about this
and this one actually does have
uh, a gatefold opening on the front.
This is another Sam's Club release, though, from 2003.
And this is a game that came in the same smaller style box that Far Cry did.
But for whatever reason, it also got this version in the big box.
I've also heard that Canada just got this one normally.
They got a large box version, which, I mean, that makes sense.
2003 was right on the verge of those things going extinct,
this style of box. And that's what that is.
It's interesting, though, because it went further
and here's my latest–
or my later, er, *last* example, I guess,
of a big box release. This is Call of Duty 2.
This game came out in 2005!
Look at that, 2005.
And I have no idea
how or why
this got a big box release
because not even Call of Duty 1 got a big box release, that I know of.
I do know that Call of Duty 1 got the Deluxe Edition box set.
This is not what I would call a big box, though, I would call it a wide box because
it's really the same width
as a small box, but it's just taller and a little bit,
you know, wider.
Uh, it's a cool release.
In fact, Morrowind Game of the Year Edition got a release like this,
so did The Sims Deluxe,
so did Dark Messiah of Might and Magic.
A bunch of games got releases like this.
SimCity 4 Deluxe.
I really like to find anything that came in a larger box
that normally came in a smaller box.
Half-Life 2 is another one of those.
This actually did get a few big box releases.
And again, this is a game from 2004, so it's one of the latest–
last–
big box releases out there.
One that I don't have
big box yet–
Wow, that term is becoming useless the longer this video goes on.
Big box, big box, big box.
Doom 3. That's one that I don't have in the big box, but I know
that is was sold at Sam's Club and Walmart in one.
Because I've seen it. [laughs]
I remember seeing it, and
I thought it was odd at the time, too, because, yeah.
Around that time, that just wasn't a thing.
Lemme see here...
[clicking]
Okay, for instance,
I was looking at these just earlier.
These Sims packs...
um, after I think it was
Hot Date?
There were no more big box releases of Sims expansions
and then no big box releases of, like, Sims 2, Sims 3, etc.
Because these started coming out right around that time. You can see this one is 2003.
And that's when the small boxes started to come into vogue.
Still looks nice.
But I mean, these are just smaller boxes. Makin' Magic...
Of course, when The Sims 2 came around, it was just in a regular
double thickness DVD case.
Same with the Sims 2 expansions.
They all pretty much got these and then by the end of the Sims 2 life cycle,
they were released in standard DVD cases.
And by that point, pretty much every game on PC
has been in a DVD case ever since.
If it gets a physical release at all.
Unless they're something like Indiebox, which is *another* video topic.
The thing is, though– [laughs]
I'm a little bit obsessed with these at the moment, okay.
So like for every–
oh, almost every–
version of a Sims expansion,
there is
a big box variant that you would get, again,
Sam's Club and Walmart.
They're the same company, by the way.
I guess they're owned by, like, the Walton family, so that's why they both
got them. Mostly Sam's Club is what I find, as far as the stickers on these, but yeah.
I mean, it's the same box.
Just... bigger!
In fact, much bigger than a lot of other ones–uh, taller.
Maybe not thicker, but definitely taller. Like, check it out.
It's, on average the Sam's Club ones are about an inch and a half
you know, 2 or 3 centimeters taller
[chuckles]
than other big box releases from, like, the '90s and early-2000s.
Uh...
Yeah.
But, yeah, check it out: The Sims 2 Nightlife.
Just The Sims 2
in the big box. This one comes with a friggin' Prima hint guide inside.
That's awesome.
Got, uh,
Makin' Magic right here.
And we got Superstar,
which this one doesn't have the shiny, embossed cover.
Um,
and it actually has a different sticker.
This says "Limited Collector's Edition Box"
with the Bonus Celebrities.
This one just says "Bonus Celebrities," but to me,
this is the more limited edition collector's box.
This one was everywhere.
This one wasn't.
And then of course, uh,
this is the latest one that I picked up, The Sims 2 University, which
I... again,
I had no idea this got a large
release like this.
Until I found it
on eBay. And these
are American releases. It's wild!
That's just, to me, is wild.
This is something I had no idea existed
until just a couple years ago when I started collecting these.
Now if you're in Australia... [laughs]
there's a good chance you're being like,
What's the big deal? We had big box releases up until 2005.
That is true. I have some Australian releases
somewhere in here.
Canada, again, I think I've heard that some of them were up there as well.
But, um...
Oh, and also, some of the Asian territories–
uh, forgive me, I don't know exactly where this one came from.
It was sent to me by a viewer.
But, yeah, this was normally in a smaller box release,
and, uh, just here it is in a big box, which is sweet.
Warcraft III's a neat game...
You might also be thinking, well what about collector's editions?
Yes!
I mean, those are pretty big boxes.
But these are special. I mean, these...
these are ridiculous.
The collector's editions are still a thing you get today.
So you still get large boxes
for even the newest games.
I don't really get modern collector's ones,
because I just think they're big and bulky and not...
Like, I mean, look, I just have them
you know, sunken in here
just sort of taking up space.
I mean, they look friggin' amazing.
But they're so big and awkward
that, uh, I don't really
I don't really like them.
So, say that you do want to collect
these versions of games that got later releases, but the seller on eBay
doesn't signify how big it is and
just for reference, I think this one is about
ten inches tall?
Yeah.
But there is a very easy way to tell,
even if they don't show the measurements or say that it's a big box version.
And like I said, sometimes they'll call this one big box, and it's confusing.
And if it didn't have this sticker, these would look almost identical,
but really they're not. So,
here's a good, easy way to tell.
Check out the graphics along the bottom, even though they're identical.
The ones here are relatively...
closer together,
compared to the rest of the artwork
and these are more spread out.
Like you could see the
the logo there for PC CD-ROM
doesn't quite cover the bottom
of the magazine there, whereas this one it does.
And it's also more spread out between all the different logos.
So if you see logos on the box,
that a good way to tell.
Also, another thing is that typically the artwork is a little bit wider.
And this one is kind of hard to tell here, but if you look here...
See those two little flowers?
There's only pretty much one on the edge of this one, so
this is not a very good example.
But yeah, some of the big box releases from the time,
um, there was wider artwork, so it's spread out.
The aspect ratio is just different on the front of the box.
So, yeah, there's signs.
And of course, if you ever see, um...
like, the inside of it,
sometimes the seller will have it and just display it out like here
Like, if you see this, and the box is wider than the CD case,
then you know it's a big box.
If it's about the same as the CD case,
then you know it's a small box.
But...
even then, photos can be deceiving,
so check with the seller– you know, send a message.
You know, I'm a collector, so that's the kind of stuff that I'm really interested in,
is COLLECTING things!
And of course, showing these off in videos and playing the games.
But for me,
sometimes the gameplay is secondary
I mean, I've played this game so much, that it's just like, I have it digitally.
So, when it comes to that
and, you know, I already have the game another way,
I want the box to go along with it, and so I want a nice, big shiny one.
You know, come to think of it,
I think Iron Storm [chuckles]
might actually be one of those releases
where it was in a smaller box normally.
But this is a bigger one.
Yeah, this came out in 2002, so that would be right on that edge.
Yeah, this one's from Costco,
so I'm wondering if Costco got their own...
larger-form releases like this as well.
Anyway,
uh, let me know your experiences with
big box PC games and whatnot.
and your collecting thing–
or you know, let me know if there's games that
came out in that form factor that, um...
I'm always curious to collect them, and I like them and
obviously don't have enough of them.
Well I have rambled on long enough at this point.
So, I'm going to call it right here.
Thanks very much for watching and
we'll get back to Christmas videos soon enough!