[Cyrax9]

What I should also mention is that older games, think of even games like Zelda for the NES, used to come with the nice "Extras", posters, coupons for another cgame, a pin, or some other knick-nack, you get the point, right?

New(er) games have basically "stripped' the box bare, and these "Book Boxes" for lack of a beter name are the worst.

I used to spend $30.00 play a game for a few months and get about 5 "Bonus" items in the box, now I buy a game, I get a CD-ROM with a Jewel Case, and if I'm lucky a Manual, made of this wonderful invention called paper (/sarcasm)!

Most of these "Book Box" games come with just a Jewel Case and a PDF Manual that YOU have to print out on YOUR Printer, how many people like printing their own Mnauals for a quick-referance when the ol' alt-tab idea crashes the game? I know I don't like this.

My point is older games were just as fun, if not more so, than new games, and the "Vboxed Extras" made you feel that you spent $30.00 on something that would last more than two hours. Now you get a CD-ROM with no printed Manual and have to pay $50.0 for the gamne!?! That to me, is a ripoff and if you like to complain about piracy here's a way to curb some of it, offer something the pirates can't!

We have software Pirates on P2P networks who essentially "pirate" what you buy in the box, and half the time the people wjho Dl these pirated Items don't like them, the reaosn? It's not the same as "buying" a game with a ton of "goodies", the little "pins" and posters that used to come iwth Games were liket he "prize" ina Crackerjack box, tehy aren't there anymore so people try something different.

My point is, game companies need to offer more than code stuck on a CD-ROM and easily pirated. Things like POsters, Pins, and Colored Manuals need to be put back in the Box, the Box needs to be a "Normal" size, and games need to last more than a couple hours, even without cheat codes some games are hopeless, if you use cheat-codes the game should still be hard, you should still be able tohave to play awhile longer even if you "Cheat", in DooM I could beat the first Episode in less than an hour, Doom II took forever and some games got so frusteratng you just stopped playing untuil you found cheat-codes. My point is you shouldn't need "Cheat Codes" and if you do the game still needs to present a good challeneg, more than jsut a "clone" of an old game, somehting fun.

That's my $0.02 for now.