(File) Size Matters?

Paul Palmer
console wars games gaming NES nintendo retro games Sega SNES video games

What features do you think make good selling points for games? An immersive world and interesting character development? Challenging obstacles and boss fights? Or what about how big the file size is to download? Because for some reason, video game marketers in the 90s suddenly started doing a lot of bragging about how big the game was. And when I mean big, I don't mean "the world is so expansive". No, I mean "32 megs". It felt perfectly normal at the time, but it's so totally ridiculous now to imagine.

There's plenty of good things to say about Super Mario RPG. I don't know if '32 megs' was worthy of a bullet on the box!

I'm guessing, looking back, this was a direct result of the console wars between Sega and Nintendo. You needed quick stats to compare one system or game to another. It's not as easy to be like, "Well, you see Aladdin on the SNES has a more acrobatic, Prince of Persia feel to it which goes with how Aladdin acted in the movie, while the Genesis version was more focused on action and combat." No, you needed "Genesis is 16 bit and the NES is only 8 so it loses."

"Experience the richness of a 12-megabit, interactive Star Wars universe."

This is by no means a comprehensive list here, I just randomly flipped through some old magazines and looked up some box covers for some examples. There's got to be so many of these out there. But I just find it so weird that I wanted to share some of these pictures. Can you imagine if someone these days was like "You should buy this game because it's a whopping 60 gigs", like that tells you nothing!

Secret of Mana was really trying to tell everyone about that massive 16-meg cart. Not only was it on the FRONT of the box...

It's in their full-page advertisement as well!

All of the examples I was able to find were for Super Nintendo games, which surprised me a little. Maybe this was something that Nintendo was touting more than Sega during those console wars? It might also be that I'm just more familiar with SNES and knew which titles might have had something like this on them. I was genuinely surprised the Vectorman games didn't mention game size at all.

I'll insert a slideshow of the rest of the examples I've come across so far, and I'll be on the lookout for others as well and perhaps post a follow-up. Does anyone remember using these cart sizes as ammunition when talking about why one system was better than another in school? Share your memories and as always thanks for reading.

Happy gaming!