WHAT'S ON THE BOCKS? VINTAGE HARDWARE PACKAGING REVIEWED - INTRODUCED BY HADWIN THE FOCKS

"Hello, everyones. I'm Hadwin, the dirty urban focks. Like most fockses, I loves nothing more than a good bocks to goes in. If you puts a bocks in your gardens, and come back to it in the mornings, there'll always be a focks in it. Don't get startleds and stamp on it though. Just gives it some breads. Put the breads in its mouths. Strokes it. It won't have fleases, I promises.

"One things I'm really interesteds in is how bockses has changed over times. Like, where did bockses come from? Who invented bockses? Here are just a few of my favourite historical bockses, what used to contains the video games consoleses.

"Again, please don't stamps on Hadwin. Just the breads, please."

ATARI VCS

Right at the dawn of console gaming, and Atari pretty much nails it out out of the gate.

​Imagine if evolution had worked like that - if the first fish to evolve legs hadn't dragged itself out of the sea, but had run straight onto the beach, and started doing cartwheels, and clicking its fingers, and going "Yeah yeah! Whooo! Nice one. Love it. Let's have some more of it, yeah?".

That's what this Atari VCS box does. "More games, More Fun". That's how you sell a games console: along with pictures of both the games and the people having fun. Keep the guff to a minimum.

​Also: fifth picture from the left. Is that... Paul Gambaccini? 

Here's the back of the box. Admittedly, to our jaded modern sensibilities, the graphics look terrible... but in the context of those graphics-starved times, the bright colours of Combat were a revelation. Note: any guff about the number of "bits" it has, or how fast it is... cannot be found.

​There's not a single numerical value to be found anywhere on there, apart from the two that I am choosing to ignore for the purposes of the point I'm trying to make.

SEGA MEGA DRIVE

This pack is from slightly further on in the Mega Drive's life; the original pack-in game was Altered Beast. However, it's still the same basic design that the MD launched with: the famous Sega grid pattern, which makes me think of an arts and crafts cutting board. 

Barring Sonic and his sassy attitude, there are no games on the front of the box. Also: numbers have appeared. Nobody actually knows what a bit is, but... well... if the Mega Drive has 16 of them then it must good. Right? Is that how they thought our minds worked?

Unfortunately, whenever I heard the words "bits" I always thought of my old primary school teacher Mrs Brookes, who was interrupted during a woodwork lesson by a pupil from the neighbouring class, who said "Mr Kirkwood wants to know if you've got the bits."

"Bits?" snapped Mrs Brookes. "What bits?!"

You had to be there.

Obviously, this is the back of a US "Mega Drive" box, but it's from the same era. They're pushing the games here at least - as well as the peripherals. The blurb goes on about "16-bit gameplay", expecting us to accept that it's better, without taking the time to explain what a bit is.

"Bits? What bits?!".

She could've been speaking for us all.

SUPER NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM

There's just something so welcoming and soft about the PAL version of the SNES. Those rainbow colours, the rounded edges... it's like a cuddly marshmallow robot. Also, again, no scary numbers on here - it keeps things simple with talk of being "The system of choice for the serious gamer", "3-D effects" and "hot titles". Though no pictures of games.

​Let's flip it over, and see if it can win "Rear of the Year". Do you see?

Oh. Unfortunately, this is the NTSC box back. Look how ugly the hardware is: like the face of a robot hippo suffering from hypothermia. However, yes - games. Lots of nice games, and no numbers.

GAME BOY

This does the trick. Basic, though. And horrifically dated, obviously. The Game Boy looks like it has been fired out of one of those automatic tennis ball machines, in Digital Hell.

Hm. Nintendo slightly dropped the ball here, with its talk of a powerful CP and micro-processors. Still, they allow for "hundreds of images". Although... hundreds of images? At once? Isn't that a bit much? When you go to an art gallery you don't want to see all the paintings simultaneously. Or at all, if you've got any sense. Have you ever been to an art gallery? They don't even let you stand in a corner gobbling like a turkey.

"What are you doing? Why are you making that weird bubbling sound?"

"Er, actually... I think you'll find it's called gobbling."

"Security!"

What's with those two kids in the photo, though? They look like they're in Logan's Run, or some other sterile early-1970s sci-fi movie. 

ATARI LYNX

The Lynx remains a great machine that was undone by its limited battery life, and general lack of portability. Still, the box art is a trifle bland. There's so much text on there, it looks like something you'd pick up in a Hong Kong marketplace. Along with acute respiratory syndrome.

Again, that white background does it no favours really. It's interesting that it mentions having pause, restart, and volume controls. So much back then still wasn't really a given. 

"What if this thing doesn't have a pause button? What if I'm playing a game, and I receive a gentleman caller? What would I do?! I can't buy this!"

3DO

Oh dear. The 3DO couldn't have looked more boring. What is it even for? The front of this box gives nothing away. But - hey - it does have "Up to 16 million colors graphics power" and "64 million pixel animation per second". And "two expansion slots". Expansion to where? Where will it expand to? Will it expand from its slots and consume your home, like The Blob? 

It's a brave company that sells its hardware on the promise of being able to display your peacock photography. They're more concerned with pointing out the various buttons and nubbins than telling us what the thing actually does.

ATARI JAGUAR

For all the stick the Jaguar gets, the box is actually pretty nice. It's iconic, simple, and mysterious. Presumably, they were banking on the punter knowing what it does, as nothing on here really gives it away. You might actually be buying some jaguar eggs, for all it tells us. And that's not a bad thing: everyone likes a bit of danger.

Oh. Oh no. It has all gone terribly wrong. Nobody who wants to play games cares that the thing they're buying has "multiple RISC processors". Talk of "emerging digital standards" is death, frankly. Plus... that joypad. It draws the eye away from the pictures of the games, and that draws your brain to this conclusion: "Why has it got all those buttons? They must be wanting me to do their accounts for them."

Atari has forgotten the most important thing that it sold with the Atari VCS: the big fun.

32X

Er. What? What is this? What does it do? What horrible, horrible artwork, with the insipid yellow Ready Brek glow, and the little pictures floating at its corners. Nothing here exactly screams that this is an add-on for the Mega Drive. It could be a console lavatory for all anybody knows. And - ha ha - that's exactly what it was!!!!!!

<HIGH FIVES SELF>

Yeah, thats' the back of the slightly better NTSC version of the 32X box. Well, it's to the point. It says what it does. Specifically: "32,768 colors at once". Yes - at once! I always thought there were only about ten colours: blue, green, red, brown, yellow, black, white, tranvard, barquen and rancey.

Also, I always wondered if the regular punter understands when tech people talk about things being "faster". It's kind of meaningless unless you understand what that means. Is it on wheels? Will it start whizzing around the living room? Stupid.

SEGA SATURN

And here's the machine that entered into a mutual death pact with the 32X - Sega's doomed Saturn. The box is actually not bad, even if you ignore the horrible Photoshopped drop shadows. It's clean, it doesn't assault the customer with numbers. What was that logo, though? It resembles some sort of  biological travesty, like a tapeworm trying to mate with an ovary.

"What's it like on Saturn?" - ha ha! Sega is trying to be funny, bless them! We'll tell you what it's like, Sega: Saturn is made up of mostly hydrogen with some helium. The surface of Saturn is gaseous, but as you go deeper the hydrogen becomes liquid and then becomes metal. Saturn's center is a hard rocky core. Overall, Saturn is the least dense planet in the solar system.

Which is ironic, as by this point, Sega was the MOST dense console manufacturer in the entire games industry. GET IN!

​Anyway. Yeah, not bad. Lots of games get mentioned. It actually looks like something I might want to buy. Unfortunately, we've entered the "square black box" era of games hardware - and the Saturn just looks so boring. Such a shame they never went with the Japanese champagne colour scheme. 

SONY PLAYSTATION

Well played, Sony. There's nothing on here whatsoever about what the PlayStation actually is, and it works in the system's favour. Solid photography of an iconic design, with absolutely no ugly photoshopping. It looks like some sort of DJ device, which is precisely what they wanted us to think. The Playstation screamed "cool". Not literally. That would be distracting.

"COOL! COOL! COOL!"

"Shut-Up! Does anybody know how I make this thing stop screaming cool?"

"You can't. That's just what it does."

Look at that. It's all about those games. Everyone: pay close attention. It. Is. All. About. The. Games.

"COOL! COOL! COOL! COOL! COOL!"

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