Decades of Games Later, Stickers Still Suck
Many of us share similar memories. The long car ride home that was sometimes satiated by ripping the box open and staring at the manual that games still bothered to pack in with the disc or cartridge. Running inside and jumping right into a brand-new experience without a care in the world. Nostalgia at its finest.
The hours go by. The entertainment settles. The time comes to put the game back, maybe to play something else, maybe because you dislike leaving games in their system. And you find yourself face to face with one of two scenarios.
The wonderfully clean and vibrant box that you were given in its pristine and unblemished glory.
Or this.
These.
Monstrosities.
Monstrosities.
These unwavering insults to a collector’s eyes have existed practically since games have existed. The retail sticker and the security seal have ruined painstakingly crafted title cards for generations now.
I’ll never forget the day I opened my copy of Pokémon Stadium. The giant box with the game transfer Pak inside and the gorgeous artwork on every face of this lovely little cube. At least, it had been gorgeous. Until it was ruined when my fingers attempted to open it and get to the game inside.
The rips, the tears, the glue riddled residue left behind is enough to make your mind crumble in on itself. Clumsy removal leads to your property, the thing you just spent your precious money on, being scarred for the rest of its existence.
I could maybe even understand the early days of games. The lack of regard for this new hobby of gaming and collection was surely just ignorance on the retailers’ part. Yet here we stand, nearly three decades later and I still have to look at this collector’s edition with a damn sticker slapped over the only way to open it.
We are still dealing with stickers all over our gorgeous new systems and toys.
We have YouTube videos dedicated to painstaking sticker removal. We have highly detailed wiki-how’s describing every possible method to remove them. It’s the equivalent of game collecting surgery. All these precise methods of scraping, heating, and praying that the thing comes off and leaves no trace of its damned existence.
How many classic Nintendo boxes have had to suffer rips and tears thanks to these stickers? How many collectors have cried themselves to sleep at night over the giant blemish they know will never truly leave the pretty box they have on their shelf? How much more can I dramatize this issue?
Not enough I say.
This industry has transformed and evolved in so many ways since it began. Generations later, and yet this primitive little sticker continues to torment us. It’s 2017 and the best solution for security and advertisement somehow still remains this disgusting, glue-y piece of laminated paper and plastic.
Will things change? Probably not, considering how cheap and easy it is to slap the grubby little thing on.
Do you have sticker stories to share? Pictures to display and lament over? You can share them.
We are all victims here.
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