Those who remember PC gaming in the days before Steam may have fond memories of the « big box » packaging that made those games stand out as shelf eye candy and sought-after in-home collectibles. Today, PC gaming platform GOG is hoping to reignite some of the nostalgia for those days by adding downloadable 3D models and printable, foldable high-res packaging scans for a handful of PC games on the platform.
Thus far, the « Printable Big Box » collection on GOG is limited to just five games: Armikrog, Descent, Hitman: Codename 47, Myst, and Star Trek: 25th Anniversary. Players browsing those games on the GOG store will now see « 3D Boxes » listed among the included « Goodies » before purchase. Owners of those games on GOG can download a ZIP file containing a version of the box art as an animated 3D object file (in an easy-to-open GLB format) and a « flat printable template » in PDF, SVG, and Adobe Illustrator formats. Those downloads allow for what GOG calls « a proper papercraft project for anyone who misses shelves full of PC game boxes. »
The 3D model animates to show the front flap opening.
Credit:
GOG
« Physical media doesn’t survive the way software can—boxes get lost, crushed, thrown out, » GOG writes in today’s announcement. « Scanning them, and letting you print your own, is preservation in a different shape: the same mission that keeps these games running on modern PCs, applied to the objects they used to come in. »
