GOG brings again “big box” PC video games, one printable template at a time

Those who bear in mind PC gaming within the days earlier than Steam might have fond recollections of the “big box” packaging that made these video games stand out as shelf eye sweet and sought-after in-home collectibles. Today, PC gaming platform GOG is hoping to reignite a few of the nostalgia for these days by including downloadable 3D fashions and printable, foldable high-res packaging scans for a handful of PC video games on the platform.

Thus far, the “Printable Big Box” assortment on GOG is proscribed to only 5 video games: Armikrog, Descent, Hitman: Codename 47, Myst, and Star Trek: twenty fifth Anniversary. Players looking these video games on the GOG retailer will now see “3D Boxes” listed among the many included “Goodies” earlier than buy. Owners of these video games on GOG can obtain a ZIP file containing a model of the field artwork as an animated 3D object file (in an easy-to-open GLB format) and a “flat printable template” in PDF, SVG, and Adobe Illustrator codecs. Those downloads enable for what GOG calls “a proper papercraft project for anyone who misses shelves full of PC game boxes.”

“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.”