Black Box Checklist

[Jason]

So it's no secret that I like Nintendo games, and it's also no secret that I have a few carts from pretty much every system up to the Wii. Virtual Boy included. There are a couple things that I've always wanted to just have... ya know? One set of that is all the NES games published by Broaderbund.

Why? Cause most of them are pretty good and they're kind of obscure.

But the other goal right now is the Black Box games. To quote from Time Warp Gamer

I used to look at Nintendo's early box art with great disdain. After all, the game shots look worse than the in-game graphics. Then I read an excellent 1up feature written by Frank Cifaldi on the launch of the NES. Two points in particular stuck with me, forcing me to look at these black boxes in a new light.
Following the video game crash of 1983, American retailers were very skeptical of stocking any new video games. Therefore, Nintendo took great pains to avoid putting any references to "video games" on these boxes. Pretty hilarious to think that one of Nintendo's core marketing strategies was to not call their product by its real name.

What really surprised me, though, was the philosophy behind this chunky and pixelated box art. Nintendo wanted to be very up front about what sort of graphics consumers were getting. By showing such honest pictures on the box, it made it hard for people to be unpleasantly surprised or disappointed when they fired up the actual game. This approach was in stark contrast to what Atari's had been, where games often had excellent hand drawn box art, yet the games graphics hardly looked anything like what they were supposed to represent.

The black boxes may have taken a strange path to achieve their iconic look, but you can't deny that they really catch your eye, and you can imagine how they'd grab your attention on cluttered store shelves.

According to my calculations, Nintendo released 30 black box games, and you'll find all of the U.S. versions below. Enjoy!

Now it should be noted that other games had a similar box art style like Metroid and Kid Icarus, but the boxes were grey and not black... that matters. See examples below.

   

There are just some really good games in this series and I'd like to have em... so here's my check list.


PS If you look close you'll see someone took some time to alter these pictures a little bit. Things that never happen in the game are featured and sometimes the sprites have smiles.

Anyway... onto the list

[Jason]

   
   
   
   

[Jason]

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[Jason]

So clearly I've got some work to do. Sadly some of the games I'm not gonna be able to play without getting ROB, like Gyromite, or without a CRT TV like Gumshoe.

But that's not gonna stop me, no sir.

[MephistoZX]

While i own several of those games, I do not have the boxes anymore. I think that's a cool list to go after. Good luck!