TITLE
Prince of Packaging: A tale of 1990s box art
AUTHOR
Jordan Mechner
PUBLICATION
Game Developer
YEAR
2023
ARTICLE TYPE
Postmortem
FROM THE ARTICLE
So many video games, films, and music albums I “own” now live in the cloud, and I’m nostalgic for the days when they existed as physical objects on a bookshelf. The tactile quality, size and shape, and cover art of every game box was linked to memories of how I’d acquired it—new, second-hand, or as a gift?—and of hours spent playing.For a game developer, a shrink-wrapped box that holds the thing we’ve been working on for years brings home the reality that our game is truly done. In the pre-internet 1980s and early 90s, before downloadable updates and patches, shipped meant shipped.
This month, the sale at auction of American painter Robert Florczak’s original artwork for my game Prince of Persia (the Broderbund “red box” edition) triggered memories of the in-house drama surrounding its creation.
COMPANIES MENTIONED
Broderbund
GAMES MENTIONED
Prince of Persia (1989)
TOPICS MENTIONED
Advertising