Betagam7 wrote:Great post. I love hearing people's personal stories of nostalgia. The bit about the boxes made be furious! What was with parents back then thinking that a videogame box was the same as a box that a household appliance came in? I bet they didn't throw away the sleeves of their vinyl records or the boxes their VHS movies came in!
My dear old Mum had a thing about throwing away the white carboard inserts. Oh yes, she knew I treasured the boxes but those inserts are just taking up space! What? How?!
Infuriating!
Thanks, I love reading these kinds of stories as well.
I was pretty young when my family got the SNES, so it's not as if I was even aware that boxes and manuals were being tossed. I chalked it up to things going missing, as every kid is missing a few dozen items at any given time. The day I realized they were being tossed was the day my brother and I were looking for a manual. I guess we were stuck in a game and had to resort to the manual for help since there was no internet. We finally asked my mom if she happened to see the manual around anywhere. She replied, "Oh, I thought you didn't need it anymore so I threw it out."
After that realization, I made sure to keep track of all my boxes and manuals. All of the boxes or manuals that somehow didn't get thrown out were strewn around the house. I reached into my memory to try and recall all of the random locations that I had seen them in, so I could save them before they got tossed. Of course, this was at the tail end of the SNES era so most of my SNES boxes and manuals are long gone. I only have a few random SNES boxes and manuals, and a few more that I got off eBay in more recent years. Luckily, I have all of my N64 boxes and manuals (at least for the games I got new). I cherish the SNES a lot more though, so it makes me sad that I don't have boxes and manuals to games like Castlevania IV.
Something like 5-10 years ago I was poking around in my parents' basement and happened across the box for Donkey Kong Country 2 (you might like my post about DKC2). What an amazing feeling it was to find this box, which I assumed was long gone with all the other SNES boxes. It was just the box, no white insert or manual, and a little crushed, but the box that I opened on Christmas morning nonetheless. I wouldn't trade it for one in mint condition.
My first SNES was the two controller Super Mario World bundle. We had the box for it in my parents' basement for years. I use to love looking at the games on the back of the box. But at some point, being a dumb kid, I decided that the box needed a paint job. I took some grey model paint and started to paint the front of the box. Even being a dumb kid, I realized it looked like shit and this might have been a bad idea, so I took a newspaper page and tried to wipe the wet paint off. Yeah, that just smeared the paint all over the front of the box. I left the box in the basement, but I guess my mother or father saw it at some point and threw it out. I wish I still had that box, even with the paint smeared on the front of it.
