Hello there. As I'm sure people reading this are painfully aware, collecting Japanese big box computer games is a tough endeavor, not least because of the premiums put on CIB copies of popular titles. Luckily, there are numerous ways to make game-hunting easier, and Old Krug is here to help. As part of my efforts to make the hobby more accessible, I like to sprinkle around various homegrown tricks and strategies for beating the ever-toughening market. To that end, this time around, we'll be talking about boxes: You know how on Japanese auction and flea market sites, you very often come across games that have all the contents, including the cover insert (a.k.a. jacket), yet are (mysteriously) missing the box? I've reasoned that space in Japan is way more scarce than in the West, so many Japanese collectors have opted to throw away the bulky boxes, storing only the "important stuff". The interesting thing about this is, people are paying way less for these listings than they should, considering the boxes are generic and can be replaced from other, cheaper and more common titles. In other words, if you're willing to buy games in parts, you can save a very significant amount of money with almost zero effort. This realization prompted me to start cataloguing the myriad box types used on PC-98, PC-88, FM-7, X1, X68000, FM Towns, and other Japanese computers of the pre-Wintel era. I hope you'll find my work useful when mixing and matching incomplete copies of games, or just as an all-purpose reference for whenever you might need one.

I've arranged the box types in order of (perceived) prevalence, and named each one based on its defining characteristic, and/or the publisher using it the most. Measurements are given in millimeters, always rounded up. Cardboard boxes are excluded, and plastic ones that are unique (or close) are relegated to their own section at the end. The list will be perpetually WIP, with new additions made as time and stamina allow.

Now then, with all that out of the way, let's go look at some boxes:


























































































[Pic coming soon]







[Pic coming soon]




















As you can probably glean from the picture and citation, classifying boxes gets a bit harder from here onward. The 1980s were all about this one form-factor -- and yes, what you see there are five different box types (because of course they are). Rest assured, there are even more out there, and most of them look the same. Did I mention these come in multiple colors? Alas, lamenting the facts doesn't help us much, so let's try to see if we can make some sense of this, and construct useful categories based on the minute differences.

We'll start with the ones that are easy to distinguish based on the type of plastic used:





























[Pic coming soon]























Boxes in this section have only one or two confirmed sightings, so I've put them here to avoid clogging up the main lists. If you ever spot more games using them, do let me know on Discord.



[Pic coming soon]




[Pic coming soon]




[Pic coming soon]




Much more to come, in time... 💦

If you want to know what box any particular game uses, feel free to hit me up on Discord. I'm currently compiling box type info as a column in my games.xls, but that file contains TMI to share publicly right now. If you really need to see it, subscribe to my Patreon where I'll eventually have it available for the biggest degens truest gamers :^)



Did you enjoy this guide? Be sure to check out my other ones too, by jumping on the main page. If you'd like to support my work, also check out my cheeky Patreon, which will get rolling after I finish my Dumping Guide. Thx & TTYL!