The main reason that computer games came in a big carton box in the 80s and 90s was that they had to contain a lot of stuff like floppy disks, manuals, installation guides and sometimes maps of the game world and other goodies. Manuals and maps were necessary because there wasn’t enough space on the disks and computers weren’t powerful enough to provide all that information. With the introduction of the cd-rom and more powerful computers, manuals started to get thinner and the need for big boxes less necessary. At the same time, however, boxes became bigger and bigger. Mostly from a sales perspective as bigger boxes probably sold better than smaller boxes. I’ve never read somewhere though, that that was actually true. Eventually, boxes became smaller again. Probably because console games were sold in dvd keep cases and pc games followed that trend.

My latest pickup, Demon’s Tomb: The Awakening is a game from 1989, a time when game boxes were still mostly quite small, but bigger than the standard small box games of the 00s. When I opened the box, two 5.25 inch floppies emerged. And eventually a small brochure fell out. That turned out to be the manual. What I found funny is that the manual is much smaller than the disks. And there’s no reason for that, because there’s plenty of room in the box.

The reason for the ridiculously small manual is probably due to it being a budget release from Mastertronic. There’s even a cutout in the box to hang it from a peg.

One notable passage in the manual is the last part about a panic button. It explains that the game has a boss key. By pressing it, a dummy prompt is shown to not let others know that you’re playing a game instead of doing serious business. A lot of games in the 80s had that feature and I had totally forgotten about that. I’ve never paid much attention to it, because I was a teenager at that time.