why did most people throw away their game boxes and manuals in

>>3970347
because they're just kids toys

Pretty much. Kids aren't very disciplined about putting their toys back in their boxes and NES boxes in particular are pretty crappy really. They got beat up, separated from the carts and thrown away by mom when she was cleaning.

They were made of cheap cardboard and felt disposable.

Unless you had a Genesis as a kid, it was uncommon to keep the boxes and instructions. The genesis cases were great. NES and SNES boxes were flimsy cardboard shit and most kids just stored the carts in drawers in their dust sleeves.

Because keeping those things is more of a collector thing, and collecting wasn't on our minds back then. It was no different than the box that anything else came in. Playing our new games was what was important.

With that said, I still cringe when I remember buying Super Metroid and opening it and throwing the box and manual and everything away at the bus stop.

Manuals need a little bit of librarian-type effort to organize them, which isn't fun. Kids want to have fun. They're separate from the cartridges so they have to be kept with their games (not right next to them obviously, but like in the same room or something at least). Eventually somebody is gonna fail at this and at that point the less fun piece of the game-cartridge pair is probably gonna be the one to get lost.

Boxes were thrown away because they are trash. Collectors and museum operators venerate trash; healthy people who are not historical specialists make the sensible choice to discard it.

Getting a brand new store-bought game was a once in a lifetime kinda deal in my society, so I got used to taking real good care of the boxes and every single piece of paper that came inside of them.

>>3970383
Latin American here, same. The box, the manuals and whatever goodies the game came with were extremely valuable, and they differentiated original games from bootlegs.

>>3970347
Nintendo boxes were made of thin cardboard.
wasnt worth babying it

>>3970347
To me it was just useless clutter. A cart is fine on it's own and much smaller than the box it came in. CD cases were a different thing when that came along, but everything else went in the recycling. I still do that when I buy 3DS carts or the like.

>>3970347
people store cds face down on the carpet, what do you expect.

>>3970347
Only idiots threw them away.

Because nobody expected them to be valuable in 20-30 years.

>>3970347
took up too much room

i ended up keeping most of my manuals, but all the boxes got busted and shitty after a couple of years.

Because stuff like SNES and N64 boxes weren't used for game storage because of the carts.

Genesis game boxes are common because you could keep a cart in them.

Because Nintendo was cheap. I have all my Genesis cases but not my N64 ones because Nintendo cheaped out on the boxes.

The real question is why did Nintendo cheap out on casing for their NES, SNES, Gameboy, and N64 games?

When PC's went CD you had your jewel cases. SEGA CD, PlayStation, Saturn, and what have you with all the other CD consoles had a standard or custom hard plastic CD casing.

File: they were nonperishable hard plastic but she'd just scream or do it herself when I was at school.jpg (47KB, 500x730px) Image search: [Google]

47KB, 500x730px

>>3970347
it just felt like packaging, like on a toy

>tfw your mother is a weirdo schizophrenic and insisted on throwing away the plastic cases of sega games and VHS cassettes

>>3970760
> Because nobody expected them to be valuable in 20-30 years.

They're still not valuable from that perspective. Holding a Nintendo game for 35 years that cost you $50-$60 all the way back in the mid 80's, even with a complete box and manual, was a shit investment outside of literally just a handful of super rare games. After inflation you'd be lucky to average $50 per game in real return on investment after waiting 35 years.

>>3970347
Because they were kids and didn't realize people would be paying lots of money for them twenty to thirty years later. Same reason they wrote their name on the carts as well if you really wanna know.

Why did Nintendo use cardboard boxes?

I always bought used games, the only boxes I have are from my consoles
Well I do have boxes for games, but they were used games too, and the boxes were in bad shape

>>3970370
I see just as many loose Genesis games as NES and SNES games.

>>3970867
Sega eventually cheaped out with Genesis games. The later releases came in cardboard boxes too.

>>3970347
They were treated like action figures or whatever, just open it up and throw away the other shit. There's really no need to keep them aside from being an autistic collector. Just takes up space.

>>3970347
because even know when i get a boxed game its more annoying to open that box get out the game and act like i care about a box when all i want to do is play the game not spend an extra 10 sec opening the box just to get the game out

Because it was cheap cardboard and i ended up storing most of my games in either a shoebox or an official games case

>>3970347
Because back then autism meant you could memorize a phone book or multiply two 99 digit numbers in your head. Today it means you can memorize the pokedex and rub your dick on old cardboard.
Fucking millennials. Even their autism is useless.

>ITT: careless, spoiled children

>>3970347
I always kept all my games, boxes and manuals with care. I still have all the boxes but I used the manuals a lot, and some got lost. I also had the bright idea one day to remove all the cardboard inserts from my game boy game boxes and those probably got thrown away. I realized games were very expensive and I considered them valuable commodities that needed to be preserved.

Because I wanted to play the game and have fun, not jerk my little dick to collectors items on a shelf

>>3970347
I kept all my boxes as a kid until this dipshit jehovas witness kid I has as a friend crushed all of them.

>>3970347
I had the manuals for my SNES games in a drawer when I was younger but I have no idea where they are now. I hope they're still around and I can sell them someday.

I always kept my games in perfect condition, cracking open a manual to read on the bus home was a warm feeling, reading up on the controls before playing the game, reading the lore, seeing some of the enemies, being fully immersed in the hype of the game by the time i got home. good times. Keeping the boxes did become tricky because our house was so small, I had room for one shelving stack, a small TV, and single bed, all pushing up next to each other. When I was in college i just slowly sold off my videogame collection rather than get a job, in hindsight i wish i had just got a job, it was mostly highly collectible weeaboo shit.

>>3971228
Careless children with indifferent parents.

>>3970347
I just played the games nigga

>>3970379
>throwing the box away

Seriously? I get that they go missing over time, etc, and mom throws them out when cleaning out, etc, but just throwing it away first chance you get ? jesus.

>>3970347
Because their parents threw them out.

>>3971476
This. I kept the boxes all the time but my mom would always end up throwing them out.

>>3970347

i kept the nice genesis shell cases but the cardboard shit like n64 i threw out for sure

Because the boxes were a total crapshoot most of the time on whether they actually protected the media inside.

Manuals, now those I kept.

I meticulously cared for my game boxes and manuals.
Unfortunately I sold them after I thought I was too cool for video games in high school, at the very bottom of the market.
I got less than a dollar per complete game and had over 100 complete games, mostly ones that are ridiculously expensive now.

>>3970870
dat filename

>>3971467
Not him, but most of us who got games at that time were completely fine with the fact that cartridges were damn near indestructible, or so it seemed, and we didn't give a shit about boxes. We'd keep our carts on a shelf or in a drawer. If we were fancy, we might put a dust-sleeve of some kind on it. For the longest time, mine were made out of duct tape, because it was cheap and I could make them.
But like I said, most kids didn't care about the box. They just wanted to play the new game. Myself included.

>>3970347
Why do you throw away an empty cereal box? It's just that flimsy cardboard. The real treasure is the game, and kids who had no concept that in 30 years some cardboard would be worth hundreds of dollars in some cases, threw it out because it was just garbage packaging. There was no reason to save it unlike CD jewel cases or the plastic DVD-like cases that came later that actually were sturdy and protected your games.

>>3970882
>something keeping its value over several decades is a bad thing

ok pal :)

>>3970870
sorry buddy all moms are a little batshit coocoo

Because Nintendo made shitty cheap cardboard boxes while Sega created professional product protecting clamshells.

>>3970347
I always kept my manuals filed away in magazine racks, but flismy cardboard boxes I just tossed out. I still have all my CD cases though since those actually felt like a storage container, whereas the hard plastic cartridges that came before them were more durable than the box they came in.

I do wish I had the boxes now though since it would make displaying my collection more interesting instead of just having a collection of carts. I just keep everything in a cardboard box now anyway, at least I'd have fancy boxart to show with it.

>>3973105
>CD cases actually felt like a storage container
Confirmed mp3 baby.

Literal trash

>>3971069
Yeah but how often do you find an NES/SNES box compared to a Sega case? I know that all the game stores in my area have tons of Sega games with their case and very rarely do they have NES games with their box.

It's like how AIDS only came about in the early 20th century, autism only came about in maybe the mid-2000s after the dawn of SJW nonsense.

>>3972928
Exactly. Nobody threw away their Sega packaging. You could throw a sega clamshell anywhere and it would end up looking perfect, Nintendo boxes weren't designed to be kept. I have a couple of my Nintendo boxes of the good games, condition probably not good.

To me, I always felt like cardboard boxes were trash and meant to be thrown away while plastic cases for CDs were essential for protection

I kept the boxes and manuals for my games for pretty long, but eventually they started getting too beat up so I threw them out and just kept the cartridges and plastic sleeves. I did keep my console and cartridges clean with rubbing alcohol about once a month and would clean the shit out of them when I got them back from friends.

I'm ashamed to say I sold my SNES and like 10 games, the wires, the two controllers, and a Game Genie for $150 to buy a PS1. I'll always regret selling my pristine hardware.