Old Computer Game Covers - Collectible, Or Just Nostalgia?

zentechno writes "While cleaning out some very old boxes in a long-untouched closet, I discovered my first supply of PC games, some of which came out when 386s were new. While there's almost zero use for these, I still think the cover art is quite cool. I found the original Zork, its sequels, Enchanter, and Sorcerer from InfoCom, Star Trek: 'The Kobayashi Alternative' from Simon & Schuster, Pool of Radiance and Eye of the Beholder from SSI, Loom by Lucas Games, Nuclear War from New World, Annals of Rome and FireZone from PSS, Sidewinder from EA, and Defender of the Crown from Mindscape, to name many. I loved these games, and wonder if there's any sort of serious collector's market out there as exists for vinyl album art — or is it just a personal thing?" I know I'll always hang on to my copies of Star Control II and Think Quick! from when I was a wee PC gamer. What's still rattling around in your closet?

sim game boxes

[stoolpigeon (454276)]

I still use the boxes that originally held sim farm, sim ant, sim life and sim city for storage - though I don't have all the contents any more. I used to really enjoy all that came with a game- the nice box, the manuals, etc.

Ogre!

[Weaselmancer (533834)]

I've still got my original C64 Ogre box. Complete with rulebook, backstory, and even the radiation badge. Although the radiation dots have long since maxed out.

They just don't go out of their way to add cool stuff to games like this today, AFAIK. Like an actual working radiation detector.

Re:Ogre!

[hitmark (640295)]

not gonna happen. it cost to much.

also, the future of gaming is probably steam and similar. just look at games via xbox live or the ps3 equivalent.

still, this reminds me of when i bought a b-17 fight sim for amiga 500. it came with a microprose sweater, a history book about the b-17, and i think two manuals. one that covered everything for the game in detail, and one that simply held the hotkeys and interface guides.

all this for a game that came on 5 (iirc) 3,5" diskettes...

last fight sim i bought didnt even come with a hotkey list printed. i had to print the pdf myself.

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[kkwst2 (992504)]

Yeah, Steam certainly does it's job of getting me to pay closer to full price for games. Usually I would wait a few months and order the games significantly cheaper online, usually waiting for the $20-$30. However, the "now" factor of Steam has suckered me into paying close to full price for several games. I generally could care less about the packaging. The really nice thing about Steam is that i don't have to worry about losing the disk/package to reinstall it. I'm willing to pay a couple extra bucks

Re:Ogre!

[Z34107 (925136)]

You may not trust the steam servers to be running in 25+ years, but the steam program lets you back up any and all of your games. You tell it which ones you want to back up, whether you're backing them up to CD, DVD, or a network share, and it will compress and burn them for you. When the steam servers die, boot up your steam client and restore the games. Run them in "offline mode."

If that doesn't work for whatever reason, you can always apply one of the many no-steam/no-CD cracks they have out there. Before steam, I would never have purchased a "digital download" copy of a game; I want my box and CD. But, steam saves me gas (or shipping), isn't run by some fly-by-night company, gives me the all-important instant gratification, and makes it ridiculously simple to back games up.

Other than your steam username and password, there's no DRM, either. Install the games on as many computers as you want, as many times as you want. (Of course, multiple users can't log into the same steam account at the same time.) No CD checking, no Starforce - I wouldn't buy Bioshock, for example, anywhere except on steam.

The only problem is that there's no secondary market - there's effectively no way for you to sell steam games you've purchased; somebody in another discussion on slashdot brought up the "right of first sale" problem. So, if you like selling used games back to Gamestop, then avoid steam.

But, all the games that I've had 25+ years ago (well, OK, 10-15) like Might and Magic III, IV, and V have all since decayed. Some of the floppies just plain wore out being boxed up on a shelf for so long; I had to pkzip the installed game onto a couple dozen floppies and move it off my 486 to get a "backup." Good thing I still had the manuals, too - finding manual passwords is an even more invasive form of DRM in my opinion, though MicroProse handled them better than most.

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[CottonThePirate (769463)]

I hate gamestop as much as the next guy (I always refer to them as GameStop-o in a M$ style rant) But they are the only folks locally that take in games. I know I can sell them on eBay/Amazon whatever, but that's a lot of hassle. I can just hand them to GameStop and get my 50 cents. I know a lot of people keep games forever, I play a game til I beat it or am sick of it, then trade it in. Very few games survive in my house more than 2 months. When I can sell my steam game back to gamestop I'll consider them

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[morari (1080535)]

If the future of gaming is online distribution then it can count me out. Not having a physical copy while relying entirely on some company's server (both to download and install, as well as connect to authenticate and play) just screams lost games to me. I own plenty of games where the developers have since gone extinct. I sure would hate to have to try to play one of those without the actual disc, or worse, try to connect to a long since defunct authentication server.

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[hawk (1151)]

As usual for gaming questions, nethack is the answer!

Not only TANPIN, TANIE!

nethack--the only game that matters

hawk

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[JoshJ (1009085)]

There's still a few collectible things. Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue Complete (PSX remakes of an older game) had all kinds of collectibles- especially Eternal Blue.

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[Cruciform (42896)]

and even the radiation badge. Although the radiation dots have long since maxed out.

Cool. If you adopt you can pass it on to your kids!

(I hate preview. I always click it and then go on to something else thinking I've submitted.)

Go to the source

[ubrgeek (679399)]

Just a quick search on ebay [ebay.com] shows that there's not a lot of interest. Don't know if you'd have luck at a comic con or something similar. While I agree that they're cool, I think that's mostly from a fond-memory kind of thing and not something that could be turned into something financially tangible. That and my wife would kill me if I offered to buy them ... ;)

If it's always around, it will never be a relic...

[justfornow (558786)]

I guess having all of the artwork available somehow (corporate digital archives, google image search, etc..) gives the feeling that these items will continue to be 'old' but never reach the rarity of 'relics'...

Re:

[Kjella (173770)]

That hardly stops any other form of collectable art, a scan of a box cover is no more the box than a scan of an old magazine or dollar bill is the original magazine or dollar bill. The biggest downers are:

1. It's too new (a 70s chair would hardly ever net anything at an antique auction), and it's from the era when people had figured out collecting old scrap may become valuable.
2. I doubt many will care. A good 70s recording still sounds damn good. A 70s game looks like complete shit, sure if you got good me

It's not the album art.

[thereofone (1287878)]

It is how many copies exist. For example, while the Rolling Stones' Thee Satanic Majesties Request has a great hologram cover, few mint UK mono copies exist.

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[ResidntGeek (772730)]

No, it's also the album art. There are plenty of places you can buy frames and racks to display album art on your wall. Covers like Master of Puppets and Who's Next are why.

BloodNet

[bk_veggie (807894)]

I recently found a copy of this MicroProse classic at a thrift, and it is now prominently displayed in my office. This game was very far ahead of its time (although almost impossible without a guide), and stands in my mind as one of the best PC games ever made, along with Willy Beamish, Loom, and Alone in the Dark.

hmm

[nomadic (141991)]

The funny thing about the old computer game box art was that it seemed that the worse the game's graphics the more vivid, detailed, and colorful the box art. Look at Akalabeth [wikipedia.org] or Seven Cities of Gold [wikipedia.org].

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[Spatial (1235392)]

I think Project X for the Amiga had the most honest box-art ever: it's basically a screenshot [wikimedia.org] from the third level of the game. Yes, it's awesome.

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[hitmark (640295)]

the pre-3d graphics of the amiga was indeed impressive.

only now that the pc have a equal number of specialist chips inside it, can it be outperformed.

btw, i recall reading that the number of artists that work on a game have grown 10 times or more since those days, yet the number of programmers have stayed largely static.

Re:hmm

[by Anonymous Coward]

number of programmers have stayed largely static

You obviously haven't read the credits for a recent game :-)

Compare Grand Theft Auto 4 core+engine team (Rockstar North+Rage) with GTA 1 core team (2008 vs 1997) approximately:
Coders: 40 vs 16
Artists: 88 vs 18
Design: 28 vs 6

Not including publisher credits since they never bear any resemblance to reality anyway.

And that is nothing like the size of credits on an EA game, which would outpopulate a small country...

Artists and content producers have scaled faster than coders, but there are still big coding teams out there.

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[mikael (484)]

Very true - look at the artwork for the Atari 2600 console - they had these amazing hand-painted composite artworks with human characters everywhere., yet you would be just be a 64-bix pixel block in the game.

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[Chris Pimlott (16212)]

The funny thing about the old computer game box art was that it seemed that the worse the game's graphics the more vivid, detailed, and colorful the box art.

And misleading. My brother and I wasted so much time trying to put on an unobtainable suit of armor in the original King's Quest simply because the cover art showed a character wearing it [mobygames.com]!

Compilations

[owlman17 (871857)]

You didn't say in what condition they're in. Mint/Near-mint? Good, Fair? Anyway, to give you an idea, a brand-new (presumably M/NM) copy of Masterpieces of Infocom [amazon.com] can cost up to almost $300. I'm not sure how much the boxes alone would cost though. Would be nice if the original manuals, collectibles, floppies were included. (Floppies might still work.) Compilations like Ultimate Might and Magic, Ultima Collection (I have them) fetch $30-60. I don't plan on selling the boxes. Ah, the good old days.

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[Megane (129182)]

Wow. I have all four versions of the Treasures boxes complete (I and II, floppy and CD), and it looks like Masterpieces has the few missing games like LGoP that weren't on either of those.

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[fyrie (604735)]

Right now there is a sealed Starcross in original UFO box on Ebay that is currently at $611 with a day left to go. However, opened infocom games often go for quite a bit if all of the feelies are still included. Zork Trilogy (with the Zorkmid coin) often goes for over $250 in used condition. The games the OP have are not so rare, but I'd think he could expect $30 - $75 each if not a little more depending on random factors.

Vintage gaming is a thriving collectors scene.

Star Control 2

[unity100 (970058)]

i regularly play super melee via running sc2 through dosbox. a lot of other abandonware games i have, but at night i either fire up age of conan, or super melee in star control 2 these days.

It's personal

[EightBits (61345)]

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it's personal. At least for now. You'll have to wait until your grandchildren are in college to even be anywhere near that kind of value.

As a previous post says, it's how rare it is that counts. Basically, if you can still easily buy these games right now (and you can on Ebay for instance, with boxes intact even) then there will be little to no intrinsic value to these items.

Maybe

[ChromeAeonium (1026952)]

For console games, I know there's a market for the old/rare, not too sure about PC, but I'd assume there's at least some demand, at least for certain titles. I know old cardboard boxes get rarer as time passes because most people have thrown there's away, so there is a chance that they're worth something, but worth likely differs from title to title; I don't think any generalizations can be made for them as a whole. For stuff like the Star Trek and D&D games, you might find a market outside the gener

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[Megane (129182)]

Indeed, there is a decent demand for boxes to cartridge games. Maybe it's because people were younger when they played those, as compared to computer games (PC, C64, etc.), maybe it's because it was just so much easier to make a PC game, so there are more of them and it's harder to conceive getting a "complete" collection, or maybe it's just because they were much more likely to get thrown away.

Also, Nintendo's production controls made a big difference. By preventing any serious overstocks, most NES games

Synonyms

[xafan (836020)]

Collectible, Or Just Nostalgia?

There's a difference?

what I miss from old games

[v1 (525388)]

is the extra little props they sometimes tossed in the box. The Ultima series was good for this. What's some of the more interesting props people have seen way back when?

Re:

[Surye (580125)]

Limited editions of games still have this occasionally. World In Conflict came with a piece of the Berlin wall. Pre-orders do this too, like the Bioshock Big Daddy figurine.

I collect them.

[snarfies (115214)]

I have a computer game box collection from my Commodore 64 days. Go back in time 10 or so years - a website called lemon64.com was just starting up and they were putting box covers online. Turned out I owned some rarities and alternate versions of boxes they already had scans of, so I scanned what I had and my scans are still in use there (see http://www.lemon64.com/?mainurl=http%3A//www.lemon64.com/games/details.php%3FID%3D2309%26coverID%3D1370 [lemon64.com] - that box is sitting on my bookshelf right now).

I consider my boxes to be interesting and nostalgic. Even if they aren't worth any money, I consider them to be important cultural artifacts - after all, was not my entire generation the first to be raised with video games? Most of the games has been preserved through emulation, but the boxes aren't so easily replicated.

Wish there was a market... old boxes fantastic

[dtolman (688781)]

You don't get packaging like Ancient Art of War (or Ancient Art of War at Sea) anymore. I've held onto all my old 80;s game boxes - my Gold Box collection. Simcity. Starflight (1 and 2), Gunship, Space Quest 1 & 2, Kings Quest 1-5, Zork 1 - 3 (now those are some good boxes!), plus tons I don't even remember anymore. Thank goodness I've got a ton of storage space...

Probably...

[Zerbey (15536)]

I have a box of about 400 speccy games from the 80s and 90s that I kept in their original cases, I'm sure they're worth something but I'd never part with them. Whilst I imagine they'd sell on Ebay now, I'm sure they'll be worth much more money in a few decades.

I suspect they'll be part of my kid's inheritance.

I keep them all

[mikkl666 (1264656)]

I'm in the middle of moving right now, and although my games collection might not be valuable in a monetary way, there are so many sweet memories attached that I decided to keep it, although some label it "waste of space". Those games were part of my childhood and I couldn't give (or throw) them away. Hell, I even play some of those now and then, like the classic LucasArts adventures and my all time favorite, System Shock 2.

There seems to be a market

[JustNiz (692889)]

There seems to be a collectors market for old infocom stuff at least: On ebay an Infocom Starcross game (Apple II version) still in shrinkwrap is currently at $611!!! I used to have one of these back in the day and I made a motorized flying toy out of it. Doh. http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230253373809 [ebay.com]

The Effects of Emulation?

[himurabattousai (985656)]

It has been argued that P2P helps increase music sales--both new and used--by introducing downloaders to bands they would not otherwise have the opportunity to listen to. I wonder if there's a similar situation for old video games, that the availability of good emulators for all the platforms of yesteryear will eventually create more demand for the original media and manuals. Obviously, emulator game images do not come with all the extra goodies that are packaged into a retail box. Buying the genuine art

Covers dont smell..

[atamagabakkaomae (1241604)]

but so does the famous famous Leather Godesses of Phobos 'scratch and sniff' card [wikipedia.org].
So, who's got one of these to sell (unscratched of course)?

Thexder

[vertinox (846076)]

I've got some classic early 90's boxes like Powermonger and Syndicate, but my oldest has to be Thexder.

I think the disk has long gone bad, but the box and stuff is still there.

Wonder if its worth anything on ebay?

I've still got game boxes

[Cowclops (630818)]

I took a picture of them on my shelf. http://www.cowclops.net/boxes.jpg [cowclops.net]

I think the oddest one of them all is Sim Earth which was a pretty crappy game that no one really bought, but I still have the manual and disks and everything. You can tell I'm a LucasArts fan, haha.

Got the Zorkmid?

[InvisblePinkUnicorn (1126837)]

If you've got the Zorkmid that came with the Zork Trilogy package, it can fetch $75+ on eBay.

Re:

[fyrie (604735)]

The last two complete Zork Trilogy boxes on ebay went for over $200. I was so happy when I found one on Amazon shops for $12 ;)

Sierra!

[Keruo (771880)]

Old sierra games were worth buying just for their boxes!
The box-art was simply amazing.
Let alone the game content.

Got rid of a lot....

[Brad1138 (590148)]

I had dozens of old Amiga & early PC (Doom, original Wolfenstein etc.) game cases, I kept them for 10-20 years, but during a move I didn't have room for them anymore and threw them all away. Kinda wish I hadn't but what was I going to do with them?

The "official" answer: It Depends

[Trixter (9555)]

As someone who runs a software collector's mailing list [oldskool.org] and a co-author of a collectible software grading scale [mobygames.com], I think I'm qualified to report: It depends. The collectible value of software is pretty much the same as any other collectible:

• Desirability (not the same as rarity)
• Availability
• Condition

The reason rarity != value is because, if nobody knows about it, nobody wants it. I own a fairly nice copy of Wibarm [mobygames.com], and I believe I'm the only one left in the USA to own it. But since nobody has heard about it, and it's not part of some Infocom/Sierra/Lucasarts legacy, nobody would offer me more than $20 for it.

Condition is obviously important. Incomplete items are worth nearly nothing, and even if it's complete it should be in decent condition (ie. the box isn't crushed). If it's in mint condition (still shrinkwrapped), you are holding gold.

One exception to this is diskettes: For reasons I don't quite agree with, most collectors feel that the condition of the diskette media is not nearly as important as the other materials, mainly because most of the software has been cracked and available. I disagree, because without working originals, you can never be sure if the cracked versions are complete (and in my experience easily 15% of them are not).

The ebay market for collectible software started to dry up around 2005, but for a very long time it was a hotbed of collectible software buying and selling. You can still find some reasonable bargains (ie. an average of $20-$30 a title) but most of the time it still costs $200 for a Kilrathi Saga [mobygames.com], or $1600 for an original Infocom Starcross Saucer [mobygames.com].

Gortek and the microchips

[greywire (78262)]

How about a copy of Gortek and the microchips, complete with 44 page book, 2 cassettes and a "badge" (a 3" sticker) proclaiming "I program with gortek".

This was C64 software to teach you to program.

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[ScrewMaster (602015)]

My first real computer game was the original Integer BASIC "Star Wars" game that came on cassette with the Apple ][ Standard that was my first personal computer. Sure, I'd played plenty of arcade games by then, but that was the first computer game. My brother and I just about wore out the paddle controllers.

I still have a couple of hundred 143 Kb Apple floppies in a box somewhere, I had one of the biggest collections of Apple software in the area at the time. Dunno if they're still any good or not.

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[mikael (484)]

I've still got my Atari 800 5.25" 180K floppy disks and floppy disk drives - they still work despite being placed int storage for 15+ years. If you have kept the disks in a dry cool place away from magnetic fields, they should still work.

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[mikael (484)]

Played Space Quest 2 - I always thought the use of 256-color quantization for the 256 VGA color mode gave games a richer appearance - forcing the artists to work with color rather than just detail.