Huge Atari Boxes

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VideoGameCritic
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Huge Atari Boxes

Postby VideoGameCritic » February 21st, 2018, 8:15 pm

Just got Asteroids (new) for the Atari 400/800 from Best Electronics.
Can't get over how huge the old games boxes are. Where am I going to store this??
The box measures 11inches x 8.5 inches x 1.5 inches. The manual is nearly as big!
The cartridge? A little 2" x 3" brick!

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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby VideoGameCritic » February 21st, 2018, 8:40 pm

Here's a pic, with a ruler for scale.

Image

Voor
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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby Voor » February 21st, 2018, 10:31 pm

LOl I’m guessing that that is bigger than the Neo Geo cases.

I think it’s great.

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AtariToday
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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby AtariToday » February 22nd, 2018, 6:06 am

that's awesome! I received an Atari 400/800 binder with a lot i purchased and was wondering what the heck it was for. Looking at your picture it's for the large manuals with the three hole punch. Very very cool :geek:

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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby VideoGameCritic » February 22nd, 2018, 5:38 pm

As you can imagine the manual is gorgeous. 20 big pages with big text large font and plenty of screenshots. Love it!

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Retro STrife
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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby Retro STrife » February 22nd, 2018, 8:59 pm

Yeah, these boxes look good, but kill my storage. I have a couple boxed ones for my XEGS, including Blue Max, which I bought based on your review. I just wanted to have a couple representative samples. But if I had anymore than that, it would be too much- just too big! Fortunately, at least they're pretty thin.

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Retro STrife
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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby Retro STrife » February 23rd, 2018, 10:21 am

Correction to my prior post... it turns out that the XE boxes that I have are smaller than those 400/800 boxes. I didn't realize until I checked at home last night and realized that my Blue Max and Food Fight boxes for Atari XE are smaller than the one you show there. (I didn't measure them, but they look closer to 8" tall. Still big, but not as big.)

It's interesting to see, but at the same time, there's a point where these box sizes become too obnoxious! Especially with the storage issues that most collectors have. I don't know where I'd put those if I had any. As another example, I have a small collection of old PC games, which usually have big boxes, and I don't like collecting complete versions because the boxes use so much room.

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pacman000
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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby pacman000 » February 23rd, 2018, 10:31 am

Retro STrife wrote:Correction to my prior post... it turns out that the XE boxes that I have are smaller than those 400/800 boxes. I didn't realize until I checked at home last night and realized that my Blue Max and Food Fight boxes for Atari XE are smaller than the one you show there. (I didn't measure them, but they look closer to 8" tall. Still big, but not as big.)

It's interesting to see, but at the same time, there's a point where these box sizes become too obnoxious! Especially with the storage issues that most collectors have. I don't know where I'd put those if I had any. As another example, I have a small collection of old PC games, which usually have big boxes, and I don't like collecting complete versions because the boxes use so much room.
Fold 'em down and put 'em in a filing cabinet. Put a Post-It on the game with it's info. (Complete, No Box, No Manual, etc.)

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zetax
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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby zetax » February 23rd, 2018, 4:34 pm

I never understood why the older Atari 8-bit boxes were so large. To better differentiate them from the "lesser" 2600 games? Maybe to have enough space (width) inside for 5.25" floppies, and still have some "crush space" on either side? Though I don't remember ever getting any Atari 1st party software on 5.25" floppies, except DOS disks (and those didn't come in their own boxes.) MS BASIC and VisiCalc probably came on floppies...

Sorry, that was a rather rambling paragraph. :)

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Re: Huge Atari Boxes

Postby VideoGameCritic » February 23rd, 2018, 4:38 pm

I believe their size was marketing strategy. If they took up a lot of shelf space they would be easy to see - or hard to miss!


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