We've all had them. Wont fit on the fucking shelf. Overly fat/tall so which are your nightmares? Mine are The 3do boxes. The fucking things are bigger than Sega CD US boxes and wont fit onto any fucking shelf where there is another shelf above it.
I'll have to go with the longboxes used by Sega and Sony. That has to be the most brittle plastic ever made. Damn near impossible to find one without a crack somewhere on it.
I don't like the new "eco-cases" that they are throwing us. My copy of God of War 3 has the most thin and fragile plastic case i have even seen. Also, i hate those slim dvd cases. Pratically all Fox movies here in Brazil are on those - that's why i haven't bought a single new dvd movie from Fox. I actually like the PS1 longboxes, but just because of the whole nostalgia. Yes they are fragile and impossible to find in new condition. Anyway, any cardboard case is terrible as they end up disintegrating no matter how good you keep / treat them.
Sega CD/Saturn cases in the US. I'm more able to forgive 3do and PSX ones since they just feel different somehow.
Cardboard Saturn PAL cases. No contest. The US cases may be stupid, but in the PAL cases the glue always seems to have dried on the cardboard, which makes the entire cases fall apart.
Another vote for PAL Saturn cases. Not only is the form factor absolutely stupid (why can't we have the nice CD-style cases Japan got?), but they fall apart ever so easily.
They arent as bad. You can fix that with double sided sello tape. The fucking cases themselves are horrible. They never shut and over time refuse to hold the fucking disk.
As much as I like PAL Dreamcast cases, they do tend to break at the hinges, and the teeth that hold the disc in place break off easily too. I'd say at least a good 85% of second-hand PAL DC games have one problem or the other. Other than that, just about anything made out of cardboard is a nightmare to keep mint. Nintendo collectors deserve a medal!
100% agree Crappy shit. And the plastic cases SEGA used towards the end of the Saturn era were a pain in the ass to open. I really like the US Saturn cases though. Of course they are hard to find without cracks, but they look nice on a shelf and can be combined with Japanese games since they have the same depth as CD cases. I have to say that I really dislike Super Famicom boxes though. If you place them vertically, they look stupid (sometimes to title on the spine, always that giant "SFC" logo...) and if you staple them with the small side right out front, it becomes a hassle to get a certain game from the bottom. Mega Drive & CD cases FTW.
On the subject of Saturn cases? They run nine inches tall, which is a problem because that makes their manuals 8 3/4 inches tall. Standard DVD cases are seven inches tall, so if you're the kind of gamer that likes to print out custom cases labels you still can't include your Saturn manuals in with those games. Over the last year or so I've been half-heartedly shopping around the custom plastic places, the guys who do the specialized DVD cases that hold multiple disks or have funny shapes. Ideally, I'd like to put Saturn games in these modern cases and still have the documentation in there with them. Every time I look up what the unit cost on a nine-inch tall DVD case would be, I remember that I'm not doing custom cases for all Saturn owners and I stop shopping. :/
I think the PS1 is the console that had most variations of game cases. In US, there was the longboxes in 3 materials (plastic, cardboard and transparent plastic) and cd cases (both the regular, very commom, and double). In europe they got at least two different style of "fatty" cd cases, that are also very difficult to find replacements. In Japan, again two or three different style of "fatty" cd cases (different from the europeans), and also the regular commom cd case.
Toss up between the US Sega Saturn cases or the European Dreamcast cases. I have to give the edge to the Euro DC cases...they're pretty ugly and way too fragile.
I don't see why they don't put all disc-based media in standard CD jewel cases. They're large enough to fit the disc, the artwork, and a manual, but no bigger. For it to be larger than that is just a waste of space. I guess there's probably a marketing reason for it; a different shape and size gives the consumer the impression that the new format is somehow different or more advanced than the older format. It obscures the fact that almost all optical discs are exactly the same size and shape (except for tiny variances in thickness, and with a few exceptions like Gamecube games, Minidiscs, LDs, etc.). I guess you could argue that with a bigger case you get larger artwork.
Altough SEGA's PAL cases like Saturn and Dreamcast are kind of fragile I like them. However I hate Nintendo's PAL shit, horrible fragile cardboard boxes, non-uniform artwork/layout, specially on the spine, and the cover layout artwork in general as just awfull. However crappiest cases ever must be the 1st gen 20th century fox plastic/cardboard DVD cases, somewhat similar to 1st gen PAL Saturn but worse! Actually I think there's a valid point for the larger/thicker cases we get mostly in PAL territory, the manuals. No way in hell a standard jewel case could hold thos huge multilanguage manuals.
