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Wanted: Swiss Atari Games

by Beat Suter

The CH-Ludens research project has compiled a corpus of video games from the period 1980–2000 that were either developed in Switzerland or have a close connection to Switzerland. In addition to many other games, this corpus contains a good two dozen Atari games. The Atari games listed are spread across various platforms that emerged during these years and were used for the development and release of console and computer games.

search for atari games
Figure 1: Searching for Atari games from Switzerland on old floppy disks – GameLab ZHdK. Source: Suter

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A Box is not just a Box: Game packaging in the course of time

by Beat Suter

Packaging for video games has become obsolete. Today, 90% of all games are streamed as data or downloaded via the internet. Only a small proportion of video games are still packaged and placed on shelves in electronics stores. It used to be very different.

A video game had to attract attention through its packaging, as it was lined up in stores on shelves in large rooms full of boxes. And potential players had to enjoy and somewhat laboriously rummage through stacks or well-sorted long rows of tables. The early packaging did not show the gameplay of a game but conveyed a stimulating idea of the game world. Professional graphic designers created covers with expressive, realistic heroes and scenes that went far beyond the pixel world of the game.

In the 1980s and 1990s, the standardization of such boxes was not such a resounding success. There were different types of packaging. Retailers tried to introduce standardization and, for example, did not include oversized packaging such as the large Kaiser box (1989) from Swiss publisher LINEL in their range because it did not fit on their shelves. But as soon as such a game sold well elsewhere, it was included anyway. It was not until the year 2000 that the Polybox really established itself as a standard for packaging.

This text outlines the development of game packaging over the decades with a special focus on Swiss video games that were available on the open market.

Continue reading A Box is not just a Box: Game packaging in the course of time