Why Are NES Games So Big? #nintendo #nes #retrogaming #hardware #marketing #history

This question came up a lot in the comments for some recent shorts, so I thought I'd take a crack at finding an answer...

Sources:

[NesHacker]

This is definitely not an exhaustive answer as there are a lot of other reasons why Nintendo might have made the cartridges so big... If you have other ideas or sources to share, please do so! I'm very much interested 😀

[cadriver]

I remember the boxes were very eye-catching. Yes, they didn’t need to be big but I appreciated the larger canvas for game art.

[Mimi-fhcs]

Now it is the same for a Switch game. The games are very tiny cards but the boxes are nearly as big as the console.

[funkmanone]

For some reason, I’m reminded of a cheap t shirt from the big box stores which had only images of small Mario, a mushroom, big Mario, and the words “size matters”.

[SkipWinters]

I saved a lot of my boxes from childhood when I got a Nintendo game. I immediately would open them up, unfold them and flatten them out. Archive them in the collection. Still have it to this day, and over a hundred games with accessories, multiple systems, etc.

[Apo]

Also, if you open one of the very early games released, you'll see a Famicom game board attached to a 60 to 72 pin adapter

[MDonuT-ofpx]

Plus, with kids easily losing stuff all the time because they don't pick up their toys, larger carts meant that parents wouldn't have to deal with tantrums of their little bundles of joy screaming about Super Mario being gone. That way you avoid the subconscious association of the brand with parental stress, the way that slime, nerf darts or other easily misplaceable toys have. It's a very small, and very minute upside but still it's a great feature. (Disclaimer: that aspect of the design philosophy is a story told to me by a University professor, and I could not find any other sources, so it may have been a happy accident rather than a deliberate design method)

[Green.Country.Agroforestry]

There is a very real practical reason for making the package larger: When the consumer is browsing the shelves, if they cannot see the cool graphics and read the title from where they are standing, they won't reach up to pull it down.

[CyPhaSaRin]

Oi hard respect for not trying to make this loop lol, straight in, info on the table, love it

[ChonkySlotDonkey]

The nostalgia of just seeing those Iconic NES games makes me so happy😊

[Privateerblack]

Padding the bottom of the box makes sense if you consider that stuff in shipping gets jostled and banged around a lot. Padding the part where the sensitive electronics is just sounds like a reasonable thing to do, especially when most of the cartridge is just empty space.

[dmaikibujin]

The excitement I got from seeing those in brand new boxes...
Nothing today compares...

[AlfredFJones]

James Rolfe said they used to call them “Nintendo Tapes” back in the day.

[whitworths]

I remember the PC game boxes of the 90s and early 2000s. They were massive, and it was almost all empty space with just a single cd inside.

[SqueakyBlum]

They were also that big so that they could use leftover Japanese stock with the American pin layout (which was different for physical region locking). So some cartridges are completely full, and feature a Japanese chip plugged into a converter which goes into an American chip with the American pin layout.

[doomdude]

Family Computer was my first ever console with Mario being my first video game.

[m.r.]

This short put a little tear in my eye for all the great memories of unboxing NES games in my childhood. Thanks, man.

[paulink]

didn’t know about the styrofoam in the boxes, pretty interesting. Gotta imagine they were much bigger than atari boxes at the time.

[jburdsinfuse]

There was nothing like the smell of opening a new NES game, pulling out the plastic, and digging into the instructions.

[saeklin]

Another fun fact, the controller cords were obnoxiously short because you were supposed to pull the whole console out onto the floor or coffee table. This also allowed you to swap games without getting up. Nintendo continued with this as the intended use method through the SNES, N64, and Gamecube. Notice these were all top-loading with those notoriously short controller cords. The Wii was the first front-load console intended to be kept near the tv.