Inside The Big Cardboard Box is where we delve into the history of the largely defunct world of boxed PC games, with a particular emphasis on all the ones I used to own, but later gave away or sold.

So far, one of the stated aims of this series – to try and remember what on earth happened to my old games – has been fairly unsuccessful. But finally (and somewhat unexpectedly), some of what was previously thought lost has now been found, with the process of assisting my dad with a clear out of stuff from his flat unearthing around 20 or so CDs.

Helpfully for the format of these articles, most of them happen to fall into one or other of the categories covered already. Although, equally unhelpfully, in some cases neither the jewel case, nor the physical media itself, provide any clues as to whether the game was part of a compilation, a budget release, or a bone-fide full-price effort. Still, I guess half of the fun is trying to piece all of this together, right? [For you, maybe – FFG reader]

To start with, there are quite a few EA titles, and I’m pretty sure that the origins (Origin(s)!) of the copy of Pagan: Ultima VIII that was found among the discs here were as an EA Classics re-release (mid-90s, light blue packaging era). Like many of these games, this was actually my dad’s, rather than mine, although I can’t remember it being a regular fixture on the family PC at any point.

I’m less certain about Magic Carpet or Magic Carpet 2: if pressed, I’d say that the first one was the original release, and acquired as part of a buy one, get one free deal briefly offered by Electronic Arts in 1995, also including FIFA, Theme Park and System Shock (and U.S. Navy Fighters, which was the free game that we went for in the end – I think we looked at the nice graphics a few times without every really making any progress).

Theme Park was in our collection, too, but that was one of the first games that was ever bought for our PC and came a bit earlier than this offer, I think. Magic Carpet 2, though, I’m drawing a complete blank on… it was definitely released as an EA Classic, but something is telling me that it was part of a compilation of some kind. Ah, I don’t know.

But speaking of compilations, also included were two of Empire Interactive’s Award Winners collections: the Gold (Elite Plus, Jimmy White’s ‘Whirlwind’ Snooker, Sensible Soccer and Zool) and Platinum (Lemmings, Frontier: Elite II and Sid Meier’s Civilization) editions.

They were the only Award Winners compilations that I remember, but according to MobyGames there were a couple of others, including the original, non-specific-metal, Award Winners, released in 1992 (Kick Off 2, Pipe Mania, Populous and Space Ace) and 1997’s Award Winners No. 1 (Pro Pinball: The Web, Screamer, Star Trek: The Next Generation – A Final Unity).

(Also thank you to MobyGames for providing evidence that my memory of some bizarre cover art involving a man with long dreads jumping into the air with delight was an actual thing that existed).

Another compilation which certainly meets the definition of ‘random’ is Top 10 from Xplosiv, which bundled 7 Sega Saturn ports of variable quality (Panzer Dragoon, Sega Touring Car Championship, Sega Worldwide Soccer, Sonic 3D, Sonic R, Virtua Cop 2 and Virtua Fighter 2) with Combat Chess, International Cricket Captain 2000 and Pro Pinball: Timeshock! For some reason I’ve had Virtua Cop 2 and Timeshock! in my collection all these years, while the rest were left (untouched, no doubt) in a drawer at my parents’ place.

Also equally likely to have remained undisturbed was a copy of Mortal Kombat 3 bearing some markings that suggested it came from The Big 6ix. Which reminded me that the game didn’t actually run when I got it home and we had to send off for a replacement CD: it turns out this is the dodgy original, which still doesn’t work… I think I would have retained the other one for some time before ultimately committing it to either the real or metaphorical Big Cardboard Box. (I also had the original Mortal Kombat on floppy disk at some stage).

Games that my dad definitely did play: UFO: Enemy Unknown and Syndicate, which came bundled together in a twin pack as part of Telstar’s Fun and Games range. We had another of these packs, too, which put Cannon Fodder together with Beneath a Steel Sky. Curiously, three of the four discs have clear Telstar branding, while BASS looks like the original CD. There were a few others in this range, including yet another opportunity to own The 7th Guest, which was paired with Cryo’s Dune, and Alone in the Dark and Shadow of the Comet. (The wooden spoon award surely goes to the dubious combination of Bloodnet and the dreaded MegaRace). If memory serves, these weren’t mega-cheap, possibly around £30 or so, but worth it if both games were good, I guess.

Also found: Quake! I’m fairly certain that this was on the Replay label as previously discussed, although it was from the disposable yellow sleeve era, and only the jewel case remains, so I could always say that I ran out and bought it upon release because I was such a big fan (although inexplicably then lost or threw away the box and accompanying documentation).

Rescuing a copy of King’s Quest VI (which wasn’t technically necessary, since I also have it on a compilation somewhere) I was reminded of the Sierra budget series, Sierra Originals (stylised as SierraOriginals), the tag-line of which (‘Original Excitement, New Value’) was at odds with some otherwise fairly staid presentation. There’s a printed manual here, too, albeit only as part of the jewel case inlay.

I have very little memory of this or any other Sierra budget range, until the BestSeller Series of the DVD box era, which brought me copies of No-One Lives Forever and its sequel (which are still in my collection) and Stoo’s favourite complicated-looking space-based 3D RTS of the late 90s, Homeworld (which isn’t).

I have a stronger memory of various Sierra collections, including a Police Quest box-set of the late 90s, which bundled together the relatively lightweight adventures of Sonny Bonds with the slightly more grisly and serious later instalments. The one I had was called Police Quest: Collection Series and featured the first, FMV-heavy, SWAT game as well as the more traditional point and clickers.

(The original incarnation of the Cupboard of Shame involved giving away unwanted titles to anyone willing to pay postage: I sent my PQ Collection to the States, awaited payment, and cursed myself for my naivety when it did not immediately arrive – although, to be fair, after a few reminders (and passing months), the recipient did eventually get in touch and pay up).

Among the sundry other bits and bobs which I thought I should take were a couple of MicroProse titles, Grand Prix 3 and X-Com: Apocalypse. (I’m not sure why, as my thoughts on F1 games have been recorded fairly recently, and I think Apocalypse was deemed baffling and over-complicated even by those who had played the previous UFO/X-Com games).

Anyway, even though neither bore its markings, I was reminded of MicroProse’s 90s budget range, Powerplus, which had a fairly distinctive presentation of a plain white box with the game artwork only visible through the text of its title. (I’m sure there’s a proper name for that. Is there? Well, you can see what I mean below).

And there we have it – a few more gaps filled in, and hopefully a prompt for some more memories to return: I’m pretty sure that decisions like who got the copy of Quake and the carving up of the Xplosiv compilation will have happened around the time I moved out of the family home once and for all, so perhaps further specifics of what was in the Big Box of 2002 will come to mind.

If not, we’ll probably just rake over the history of another budget range or something. Excited? You will be.

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NB: All box scans sourced from MobyGames.

The EA advert was taken from Issue 26 (May 1995) of PC Zone, scans of each and every issue of which can be found at Pix’s Origin Adventures.