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.

I don’t know why, but Empire’s Xplosiv range is the one that I most associate with 00s gaming landfill. Possibly it’s the slightly naff name or the flame-based !!awesome!! packaging. Or maybe it’s the fact that they did re-release quite a few stinkers, and also tried to bundle them together in a ‘we had a warehouse full of these already’ type move.

We mentioned their Top Ten compilation last time, a collection of Sega Saturn ports mixed with pinball, cricket and chess. Apparently, there was also a second Top Ten release in 2003, which again bundled PC versions of games from a defunct Sega console (this time the Dreamcast) – Crazy Taxi, Virtua Tennis, The House of the Dead 2 – with seemingly incongruous PC titles like Warrior Kings, Call to Power II and Comanche vs Hokum. Strangest of all, and entirely reinforcing my accusations of them endlessly repackaging the same stuff, there’s Sega Touring Car Championship again, which was already included in the first one. (And was pretty rubbish, if I remember).

As with the first Top Ten collection, all of the component games had an individual release on the label, and I still have my copy of Crazy Taxi, the purchase of which, as I mentioned already, meant that I unwittingly also ended up with a copy of the terrible Ford Racing 2001, surreptitiously hurled into the box with a hastily-applied sticker on the front informing you of this delightful free gift.

I think it probably is the prominence of the likes of Ford Racing and Empire’s other slightly uncool titles, like International Cricket Captain, that sullied its brand slightly. Although they also weren’t above re-issuing some absolute toss like London Racer/M25 Racer from Davilex (‘Real city, country and motorway tracks through London, Oxford and the M25!’)

Otherwise, it was largely similar to Sold Out: cheapo presentation and manuals in PDF on the CD, although I’m not sure the same 5 quid price tag was adhered to consistently: I think Xplosiv probably ended up there but I think they started out more at the £10-15 range. In terms of flooding the market with cheaper copies of a wide range of games, though, they had a similar impact.

And, as with Sold Out, I can’t quite figure out whether I imagined them releasing way more games than they did, or it’s just that the list on MobyGames is incomplete. I think it’s probably a combination of the two, as Internet sources elsewhere confirm their release of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, which was also available in a double-pack with Matt Hoffman’s Pro BMX. And I had a copy of the former, which definitely went into the Big Cardboard Box of 2002: I think I’d just picked up the third game on PS2 and figured I’d be spending more time with that (I didn’t).

But, Sega ports and Ford Racing aside, Xplosiv also re-released some fairly respectable and high profile games, including Microsoft titles like Flight Simulator, Age of Empires and Midtown Madness 2. Plus the two post-Wing Commander efforts from Erin and Chris Roberts, published by Microsoft: Starlancer and Freelancer. Both of which remain in my collection, although sadly largely unexplored: despite my fondness for Wing Commander, I got stuck quite early on in Starlancer (I think due to my failure to intercept missiles heading towards a carrier I was meant to protect? Or is that just my excuse for giving up on all space combat sims?)

Their deal with Activision meant they could re-release various 00s Star Trek games of variable quality, including Hidden Evil, Armada and the once-discussed-on-FFG Away Team. Plus Voyager: Elite Force, which I still have in my collection. Although Elite Force II and Bridge Commander never made it, I don’t think, for some reason.

As with Sold Out, I think I tended to hold onto my Xplosiv discs as they were easy to store and didn’t have massive resale value. I even still have a copy of the notoriously tricky strategy title Hidden and Dangerous, my chances of ever playing which are slim to none. Having said that, I do seem to have relieved myself of the physical copy of Grand Theft Auto 2 that I once owned, which is odd, because I tend to keep copies of everything I review on the site, regardless of how little I care for the game itself. Possibly I interpreted the early GTA games’ availability for download via Rockstar’s website as being an indefinite arrangement, rather than something that can be taken away as freely as it was given (as it has now been).

After the early 00s boom of cheap budget titles, Xplosiv releases, like many others, petered out towards the end of the decade. There was a belated attempt to tone down the packaging to a slightly more muted red and black affair, but with the explosion-themed name remaining unchanged it made for a slightly incoherent combination.

Despite seemingly wanging on about old budget labels for several thousand words over the course of this series, a flip through the old CD wallet reveals it to have been a less than exhaustive round-up: Focus Multimedia were also fairly prolific in the 00s, re-releasing most of the CSI games, later under the Revival brand, while my copy of Trickstyle bears the markings of a short-lived Acclaim budget range which I think also included the late-90s Descent-a-like Forsaken.

The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind was from Ubisoft’s budget range, eXclusive, which also brought affordable copies of various Splinter Cell games (definitely since discarded via the metaphorical box). My copy of Deus Ex bears the markings of the Premier Collection, a late 90s/early 00s budget range from Eidos, which I think began life as a big box/manual/jewel case deal (games like Thief: The Dark Project and Tomb Raider were re-released in this format) before switching to DVD cases for the likes of DX, Hitman: Agent 47, Anachronox and later instalments of Tomb Raider. Oh! And Project: IGI, which I definitely owned – and played – at one stage, until I lost patience and got annoyed at the lack of a mid-mission save.

All this Eidos talk leads down a rabbit hole towards an earlier short-lived range of theirs which also bore the Kixx branding of publishers U.S. Gold. My copies of Olympic Soccer, Under a Killing Moon and a largely-forgotten F1 game called Power F1 came from this range. They also re-released Big Red Racing, too, although I think I bought the big box version of that one, for some reason (and came to regret it). I’m not sure what I did with my copy, although maybe it was donated to Stoo at one point, since he reviewed it here.

As an exercise in jogging the memory, this series has sort of worked, but has also left me feeling as old and forgetful as ever. I guess the main takeaway is: there were loads of budget labels in the UK in the 90s and 00s, and I must have owned at least one game from each of them at some point. Plus, despite bits and pieces of detail coming back, there’s absolutely no chance of me remembering what old games used to be in my collection with any degree of certainty.

So, unless I suddenly call to mind another load of compilations or budget labels [please, no! – a reader] it’s probably time to start winding this series down. Coming next time: a piece that tries to sum all of this up, somehow.

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NB: All scans sourced from MobyGames.