Was there a reason certain systems didn't have end labels on their games?
It saved Nintendo two cents
James rant about end labels has lived rent free in my head for like 15 yearsAlso i think is a cultural thing, Japanese people always kept the boxes of the games when storing them, so there wasnt any need for extra labeling. Americans are the one who dumped them and put only the game on the shelf
>>12210317I assume cost was a factor but note that all the cartridges without end labels have these weird tabs or whatever in the shell, even going back to the 5200To print an end label on that it would require two seperate stickersNES, SNES US, Genesis, everything but the 2600, it can just be one sticker that extends over the topBut then that raises the question of why they were designed like that in the first place
>>12210316You're supposed to keep your N64 game in the box when you're not playing it.>your mom threw away the boxbaka gaijin mom
>>12210352>"you're supposed to keep the boxes">make them out of cardboard like trash instead of hard plastic cases like the genesisWHAT WERE THEY THINKING
>>12210335Japanese Mega Drive games have a single label going across both halves of the shell.
They never had end labels to begin with. I guess this is just an american thing because Atari and Super Nintendo had them, but the Super Famicom does not.
>>12210367only western ape hands think nice colorful cardboard storage boxes are "trash".
Good patient people will sift through their collection, like looking through a trove of memories.
>>12210316back in the day most people owned like 5 games, nobody had big collections that would confuse you
>>12210428cardboard will forever be trash for recycle, nothing else
>>12210367Well they only expected you to play the games once before putting them away and asking your parents for a playstation
>>12210428It's brownoid turd worldie hands that throw literal cardboard into the street, as trash, instead of just calling it that on an online forum.
>steps in your path
>>12210892>lend out your disc>it comes back scratched as fuck>lend out your cartridge>it comes back business as usual
>>12210316Video games were viewed more as toys and not as an art form in the same way film and music were. Sure you might want to put your records on a shelf and your VHS collection of classic films, but there weren't many adults trying to show off their video game collection, it was mostly kids and they're probably just as likely to toss them loose in box together than store them nicely on a shelf.
>>12210906They still are corporate toys. Nobody with a mental capacity of a middle schooler thinks video games are anywhere near art
>>12210961I too can shove my head up my bumhole!
>>12210316In Japan people typically kept the boxes to video games no different than how you keep the boxes of board games. It just makes sense. I don't know why Americans didn't do the same, but anyway there's no need for an end label on the cartridge when the box already has one.Nintendo of America redesigned the Famicom to look more like a VCR so it made more sense to have an end label on the cartridge because if you lifted the lid you could see what game was inserted, and I'm guessing that people probably put the cartridges on the shelf next to their VHS collection using those end labels, so they probably thought to do the same with SNES games (which would also explain why they redesigned the cartridges to be less rounded).Mega Drive games had end labels even in Japan and I don't understand this at all because they literally came with a hard plastic box like the high-budget VHS releases (the cheap ones had cardboard sleeves).
>>12210367>make them out of cardboard like trash instead of hard plastic cases Did you throw away the boxes to games like Catan or Monopoly since they're made out of cardboard? Are you some kind of heathen who threw all of the pieces into a gallon sizes ziplock bag or did you put everything back into the box when you weren't playing the game? Did you throw away the cardboard and paper game pieces too?You have nobody to blame but yourself.
Nobody on the planet would care about this if AVGN never made the joke in that one episode.
>>12211020>no one would care, if one particular guy didn't care,,,Wow.... So poigant, brave, and unretarded
It's for where your mom writes your name so nobody can say it's theirs.
The hilarious part is they came in shitty loose cardboard boxes, too. Just to save more money. Even back then they knew tendies were shit eaters.
>>12211039pc boxes had been coming in cardboard for more than a decade, retard
>>12211043CDs had compatibility with jewel cases and you could write on floppies and store them neatly in $2 clear floppy boxes. Not to mention PC devs actually did have a reason to try and save on costs - they weren't charging $100 per game whilst sitting on billions from milking braindead tendies
>>12210905>lend a friend a PS1 game>case comes back cracked with part of the hinge broken>disc unreadablethat was when i learned to never let anyone borrow a video game
>>12211039based tendieposter
>>12210316End labels were for horizontal loading games for the NES so you could read the title of whatever game was in the console. then it just became convention.
>>12210329No, that's not true. Most games for SFC and Famicom era games don't have boxes when they sell them in Japan. You go to normal stores like Book Off and Surugaya and they have bins filled with games with no cases.
Did people also threw away their VHS cardboard boxes? They're tapes like Nintendos so I assume they did.
>>12211303That's an interesting comparison. Most people did keep the VHS sleeve but threw out the Nintendo boxes. The Nintendo boxes weren't only cheap, they were also a pain because you needed to undo the flap, pull out the tray insert, etc, whereas with a VHS sleeve you just slide it out. Nintendo could have at least made them more convenient to use like VHS.
>>12210994>>12211001This board game analogy is bizarre. Board games have lots of pieces and their boxes are relatively sturdy and made to be easily opened and closed many times without becoming worn out. Game cartridges ARE boxes and so naturally the cardboard they came wrapped in was flimsy and relatively inconvenient. Sure it could have been designed better like VHS sleeves were, as >>12211380 observes. But the cartridges didn't need any protection if you were nice to them, except possibly a cap over the bit with the metal contacts... which at least some games did in fact come with. So keeping the cardboard is, yes, STUPID. It is trashy and it gets in the way. Or at least, that's how it was in my experience. Maybe some platforms had really nice cardboard boxes for game cartridges.Cartridges should be labeled on their faces and on their ends. Obviously. When companies didn't do that, they were making a mistake.
>>12211303>>12211380VHS tapes are relatively fragile, that's another reason to keep their boxes. I mean they don't fall apart easily or anything but they have internal moving parts including cheaply made wheels that you don't want to mess up, and the delicate tape itself. And everybody was accustomed to maintaining them in a basic way, by rewinding after use. It would also feel intuitive for any even slightly responsible person to keep a tape in some kind of protective case. I mean they even rattle a little when handled, don't they? Meanwhile an N64 cartridge just feels like a solid brick that you could toss into a pile a hundred times without hurting its internal parts. Because that's what it is. Even a moderately responsible person wouldn't necessarily think of armoring something like that after every single use.
>>12210317fpbp
>>12211441Maybe you think magentised tape is fragile but I'm amazed at how well old 8 bit cassette tapes last. I have yet to find one that does not work due to data loss and most of them are nearing 50 years old.. Believe it or not a chunk of games for the N64 rely either ona battery in teh cartrdige or an accessory with a battery in the cartidge, which is dying (about now). If can be replaced erasing any saves but you have to phycially crack the cartridge or pac open to replace it. Similarly the remainder usee EEPROMs that support about 10,000 operations ad then die. Evene though mechanically fragile VHS tapes will be around and working far far longer than N64 cartridges. The majority of archived broadcast TV is stored on them.
>>12210906This is a really good analogyUnless it's like a puzzle or board game where there were a shit ton of little pieces to lose, kids didn't usually keep the card of their action figures or the boxes of their toys, they were trash and what was inside was more importantCartridges themselves already had a hard shell to protect against most wear and tear, so unlike CDs or more fragile formats you didn't really need to keep the case, like with toys>>12211303If you had like a Disney movie they would come in a nice clamshell — much like Genesis games actually — less likely to throw those away. I feel like I have seen some tapes resold without the box but they were probably blanks and didn't have specific boxes, maybe a bad example>>12211380 is a really good point too, VHS tapes specifically fit the shape of their boxes, while cartridges have to have another cardboard insert inside them and shit. It probably would be a bad idea from a retail perspective to have to stock weirdly shaped boxes though
>>12211061I've 70+ PS1 games that have bene abused since the 90s and left in freezing and boiling atticks and cellars with no regard to their welfare and they all work flawlessly. I also own a few N64s though I'm not a fan of it and of the three I picked up too were dead and of the cartridges about 40% were dead. I don;t know why, corrosion perhaps but they certainly don;t last like opticval media and that's not suprising, they are far more complex and have far more parts exposed to oxygen for corrosion. I have never been impressed by Nintendo when it comes to quality, from DS lite hinges, to the N64 to the Gamecube and the NES and Wii Nintendo has always been defined by selling obsolete last generation technology at current technology priced to children, a bit sick when you stop and consider what their business model is. The exception is the gamecube and that thing is probably the worst fo all retro consoles to keep alive during to its' PCB design. Nintendo never bothered with quality why? Well because they were selling to children. Their controllers wear out quickly relative to others, their chips corrode, their PSUs overhead and go on fire deopending on the model and the batteries in their cartridges expire, their cartrdiges corrode and become worthless. Optical discks correctly manufactured are a thin data lays literally sealed in protective plastic designed for long life. I have never doubted that distro resllers dumping thrash like gamecubes both created and screwed over their buyers bia marketing and don't doubt when I see the same behavior with N64 that the same thing is going on. Nintendo is the brand that screws you over. Every fucking time.
>>12210335>these weird tabs or whatever in the shellIt's so the labels go on perfectly straight every time.
>>12210427The NES also had them, so N64 is the odd one out.
>>12211380>you needed to undo the flap, pull out the tray insert, etcThis is why it never even remotely crossed my mind to store cartridges in their original boxes. I kept all the boxes, but they were just stored separately for display only or in a closet.
All the Jap comparisons but nobody's addressed how the Atari 5200, a firmly American console, also didn't have end labels
>>12211541>but nobody's addressed how the Atari 5200isn't that just because the console sucked?
>>12211303>the godfather on vhs>still shrinkwrapped
>>12211303Most VHS boxes didn't take up any extra room, they were the exact size of the tape. No real reason to throw them out.
>>12211303VHS tapes don't have boxes, they have sleeves. There's a difference, and understanding the that difference is the key to understanding why they would never be thrown out. Hint: It's the same reason people kept the plastic sleeves for NES cartridges but not their boxes.
>>12211541It's very simple: NES and Atari 2600 games have labels on the top edge because that's what's prominently displayed when the cartridge is in the console, so you can tell what game is in there without taking it out or turning on the console. Consoles where the cartridge stands upright and the front is fully visible don't need top labels for that because you can see the front label just fine. Seeing the name of the game in storage is a secondary concern at best.
>>12210905>lend out cartridge>comes back with "JIMMY" written on it in sharpie and the kid tells his mom it's his
>>12211303in civilized countries VHS tapes came in plastic boxes, but the cardboard slips were the same size as the tape, unlike the boxes for nintendo cartridges
>>12212426>in civilized countries VHS tapes came in plastic boxesIt depended entirely on the movie and the release.
>>12211380Its because the shape of the cartridges stop being square shaped like the NES carts, even those, not many people took care of their boxes, they came up a foam fill because the box was larger then the cart (Early PAL NES releases had boxes resized to fit NES carts but obviously that didn't lasted), i guess kids and to certain extent parents saw these things as toys, and no kid ever kid the package of a toy.Fun fact, Nintendo used the same box size for NES games for SNES, SFC and certain accessories.
>>12210428Those boxes are still far more susceptible to damage and weathering.
>>12211427Boy i now what you mean, In the US all the disney movies and certain copycats were sold on these big clumsy clamshells, they do their work on being welcoming and popping for the costumer, mainly on kids and family films, but the issue is, unles they are taken care off, they deteriorate with time, because many of em were made with hollow plastic, not to mention, they were space shell hoags.In Latam and other regions they sold VHS in hard clam shells which were smaller, only cover the VHS area, easy to close, perfect, i really never saw any VHS tape sold in the US with this case.
>>12212426>plastic boxesWeren't these mostly for children's movies?
>>12212932Yes but there were aftermarket ones that were more solid
>>12210352Even dumber they made these considering the lack of end labels
