Do you miss your game boxes?

[LadyMint]

I keep my game boxes.

As often as I get a chance to, I buy games from a store, and my reason for it is pretty simple: There will come a day when Steam or whatever other online channel you want to get that game from no longer exists. If you're lucky, you won't be playing any of those games anymore and won't care if you don't have access to them. But if you're like me, every once in a while you like to go back to dust of something from yester-year and see if it still runs on your more advanced PC. I kept my copy of Discworld for the PC up until a few years ago when I finally had to accept that it was too buggy to eventually reach the end. I just hope to live long enough to one day look back at Arkham City with a fond laugh about how awesome the game looked to me "way back when."

Also, unlike the shelf of books that I have barely read, a shelf of video games is a much more active testament of what I do in my spare time.

 

[mikecoulter]

I suppose you could create a virtual bookshelf of the games you have on steam and then set it as your background. Sort of like the Kindle Fire homepage...

 

[Skoldpadda]

Hell yes.
I miss their smell.

 

[Fleetfiend]

Yesyesyes.

I have only been getting downloadable games that I can't get any other way, like Minecraft, Amnesia, etc. because I LOVE seeing all of the boxes on my shelf. It just makes me happy. That's kind of a weird way to put it, but I'm resisting the movement into complete digitalization of media as long as I possible can.

 

[Zack Alklazaris]

I only buy physical copies by choice when I'm going for collectors editions.

I just couldn't say no... so pretty.

 

[Rowan93]

I have a preposterous amount of boxed games, about twice as many as I have shelving for and that is no exaggeration. But, one day, when the shelf space situation is reversed, I will find the game box covers online, print them out, find a pack of empty cases somewhere (there's bound to be some ebayer with about 50 DVD cases, for instance) and put up imitation boxes for all my PC games. It will be awesome.

 

[BLAHwhatever]

Not the boxes, no, but the detailed Manuals.
Does anyone of you still have their Heroes of Might and Magic 3 Manual?
All Units listed with explanations and a little backstory, all their attributes listed, Every spell with Icon and explanation. Every Talent, everything. So awesome.
Loved that thing so much, reading through it in the evening before bed was soooo entertaining.

 

[TheYellowCellPhone]

Semi-thread necro. Still acceptable.

No, I don't miss them. I didn't have a place to put them and I feared tossing them out in case the CD key was needed inside the case.

Steam's cheaper too. I like money, and I like saving money.

 

[Daget Sparrow]

I still buy hard copy games. I don't always have a reliable internet connection, see. Nor do I have a credit card. Thus...

 

[uzo]

I still have Amiga games in their boxes in my cupboard.

The vinyl-record style flat packs were my favourite. Lots of space for awesomeness.

I remember also a game compilation for the Applie ][c - it was a puffy plastic book-like thing with space for cassettess insides (cassettes? ppffft ... this is 1985! We use DISKETTES man!). And it rocked. It had Jumpman, Summer Games, Robots of Dawn, and my first dungeon adventure Temple of Apshai.

 

[AdamRBi]

I do miss it, at times. It's kind of like the loss of Vinyls for the music buffs out there. If anything though, I miss the cartridge the most. It's something I'd love to see a rebirth of much like Vinyls. Because let's face it it was never the box, it was the boxart and the manuels we miss and those are arts lost with the digital age. We see launch icons now, there is no container really. Those used to be the best parts.

Also, storage. I can't have all my games installed at once, I need that data space. I'd have them all uninstalled if it wasn't for the fact that the larger games take an hour to install. Cartridges were plug and play, they were the best... for home consoles I mean.

I agree though, cracking open a new game box, sniffing the plastic, holding the disk/cartridge as you put it in... ahh, nostalgia.

 

[The Artificially Prolonged]

A little but I've not got alot of shelf space anymore all my shelves are stuffed with books, games and cds. I've even got two full drawers that are full of old ps1, ps2 and pc games, so having all digital only copies does cut allow me to utilise more space. I do miss reading manuals though, that was my tradition buying a new game; reading the manual before while the game loaded. But that may not much of lost as your lucky now if a game manual it just three pages with some health warnings and the controls.

 

[Fieldy409_v1legacy]

Actually im rather thankful for the age of downloads. I was running out of space to put the damn things!