Most of my posts in this thread have been and will be positive, but allow me a moment to share with you my least favourite thing about collecting for the Sega Saturn (besides needing to remortgage your house to pay for the games!)- the game cases. Obviously, the Japanese cases are fairly standard CD cases and the US cases are those horrible ones made of the type of plastic that made as well be sugar paper. But allow me a moment to share with you the PAL Saturn game boxes - quite possibly a masterpiece of impractical design, where every element is somehow incredibly unfit for purpose in a way that suggests it was deliberate.
First off, here's the box itself. It's dimensions are quite odd - it's about 25% taller than a DVD case, or the prior Mega Drive cases. Not really very practical for shops as it makes the games hog quite a lot of space, but not the worst offender in that respect. No, the thing to take note of here that may not be clear at a glance is that this cover is made of cardboard - this isn't the usual semi-glossy insert covered with a layer of protective plastic. This is thick printed cardboard glued onto the front of the plastic case. The glue is starting to dry out over the years so quite often the cardboard is peeling away. Even better, thanks to the lack of protective plastic, there's another common issue - where do you think retailers would have stuck the price sticker back in the day? That's right - directly onto the cardboard. Good luck peeling those off without damaging the box!
Opening the case, and more amazingly poor design! The disc sits on a spindle in the right half, and the manual fills a space in the left half. However, both sides are impressive in their poor design. The disc spindle it only about 2mm deep, meaning that it's barely deep enough to pass through the hole in the middle of the disc. This means the slightest knock will knock the disc off the spindle - at which point it will drop quite far to the bottom of the case as the spindle is suspended towards the top of the box.
Fortunately, whilst it's in the box, nothing should be able to knock into it right? Of course not, that is just too sensible! You'll notice the manual just sits in the case - there's no manual clips at all. That means it's rather mobile when opening and closing the case, and easily knocks into the disc. Opening a PAL saturn case and throwing your expensive game disc straight across the floor is unfortunately not an unknown occurence!
But if the game cases are quite secure at least then at least you'll only have to be careful when opening them. Unfortunately, that again is not the case, as the clip that closes the case together is very weedy, a tiny piece of plastic that slips into a hole on the other half. Most of these have worn down over the years, and some don't clip close properly at all.
So you have a case that falls open, doesn't properly support the disc, is designed in a way where the manual knocks the disc out, with awkward dimensions and a cover design that's incredibly prone to damage and aging due to being made of unprotected cardboard. Surely it can't get worse? Oh, but it can, because here we have the piece de resistance - the 'hinge' of the case. Or rather, the lack of one. See, despite both halves of the case being made of plastic, they aren't joined together. The only thing keeping them linked in the same piece of cardboard that forms the front cover, glued to either half. So if that glue dries out, look foward to half the plastic case falling off! Also look forward to dealing with the wear and tear inevitable from bending cardboard over and over for several decades. How Sega went from their excellent clamshells on Mega Drive and Master System to this is bewildering - it's truly awful