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The “Worst Box”
My dream has come true.I can now place my very own Atari 2600 game on my shelf of Atari 2600 games, and the spine will tell the tale of my own game: “The Worst Game”
Let me explain.
I spent most of 2024 creating a series of “Worse Than E.T.” videos where I tested some of the “supposedly” worst Atari 2600 games to see if they were worse than the actual supposedly worst Atari 2600 game, E.T. The Extraterrestrial.
You can see the full playlist here:
The series culminated earlier this year with my own game named “The Worst Game”, as I threw my hat into the ring to see if I could take the crown for creating “The Worst” Atari 2600 game.
The results were mixed.
Some people thought was truly awful, while others felt I failed simply because the game ran at all.
Touché!
My friend T1LT!, who dabbles in retro game hardware, created a cartridge version of Worst Game and presented it to me at the So. Cal. Retro Expo.
He presented me the custom board,
…and then we snuck it into one of the demo machines and tested it.
Game itself and the are posted for free download on Itch.io : Worst Game (Atari 2600) by Into The Vertical Blank
T!LT! then sold me 10 copies of the game in 3D-printed shells for $30, so about $3 a game. I put the box in my office and forgot about it over the summer.
A few weeks ago, I realized the holidays were coming fast and I wanted to give the Worst Game as Christmas gift to T!LT!, my brother, my daughter-in-law and my old friend Ian.
To do this I wanted to create a label, printed instructions and box if possible. I started with the instructions.
After much trial and error (and probably $50 worth of printer ink which I think currently trades at the price of gold), I was able to get the instructions printed two-sided in Microsoft Word.
The key to get the 4-page instruction manual printed was to makes sure the document was in landscape with zero margins.
The second page needed to be right justified so when the page it turned over automatically by the printer, it prints in the proper location.
The next thing I needed to do was to make sure that when I printed, I selected the “Flip pages on short-edge” setting so the backside did not get printed upside down:
Next, I tried to tackle the labels on the cartridge. T!LT! gave me the proper dimensions for them and I created images in Paint.NET based on these dimensions.
My first concept for the labels was to use clear, printable label. I experimented with both Matte Clear and Glossy Clear.
Both resulted in labels that could not be read with black background. They would work much better if the carts were printed with a white filament, but with black it seemed to require stickers with a glossy white background.
This finally worked. Glossy white stickers would be how I worked going foreword.
All in all, I spent $72.84 total on labels, but the ones I finally used cost $20 for 21 sheets.
The next step was for me to tackle the box. I looked at a few custom box sites on the web, but the costs were enormous. the prices only came down to my level when I looked at purchasing very large quantities. I might e bale to get a box for $7.00 for instance, but only if I bought 150.I needed a different idea.T!LT! gave me an idea for a solution. He used a see-through plastic box for an NES game he created. and used glossy-clear stickers on the box.
I have purchased box protectors for all of my Atari 2600 CIB games, and I realized that the plastic box protect might be able to act as the actual box. The protectors are fairly sturdy, and as bonus, they could pull double duty as protector itself!
I paid about $25 for 20 box protectors, for a cost of $1.25 each.
However, the main problem a plastic box is that there is no structure inside. I had an idea that maybe putting some Styrofoam inside might solve this problem. I tried a piece of white Styrofoam from Michaels first, but not only did not make an awful mess when I but it, the edges were ragged and it looked awful. I needed some material that was easier and cleaner to cut. I found it with some 1/2-inch thick Polyethylene Foam Sheet.
While the Polyethylene was not perfect, it cut much easier than Styrofoam. Each sheet is 12×12, so one sheet can support the entire inside of a single box. I paid $23 for 12 sheets, and I made some mistakes too, so I I’d just round-up and say it $2.00 each for the basic black insert.I cut insert to the proper size using the box a guide, and then cut out a “cartridge shaped” area.
With cartridge in the box, and the instruction slide in the back, I went back to my sticker printing to finish off the box.I made a single side-sticker with name of the game. I only made one per bx, because I only need the name to face-out ion my shelf of Atari 2600 games. I then made a single sheet that could support all the color-on-White stickers I needed for four games at once:
I also wanted some stickers for the front and back on the box, that did not interfere with the cartridge and instructions images showing through the plastic box. I created a Vertical Blank logo with an Atari joystick pinched from the back of an Atari 2600 box.
I also used the text from the box and the same joystick to create a sticker for the back of the box.
Since the white glossy stickers were about $1 sheet, and I could first four sets, that makes the cost about $0.25 each. The clear stickers were also about $1.00 a sheet, so that’s about $0.50 total for the stickers for each game.
Total cost For ProjectFor all of the “crafting” I did for this project I spent:-$30.00 for the carts-$74.84 on labels-$26.98 of the plastic protectors-$23.00 for the foam insertsBut I almost forgot the printer ink i used.Color ink for my HP printer costs the highway robbery amount of $85.00. with all of my various screwups, I probably used 1/2 the ink on this project, so that’s another cost to add in.-$42.00 for printer inkSo that a total of $196.82.I produced 9 total carts (leaving one for a planned “special edition”) for cost of about $22 each. Not too bad, but also not the true cost if I made another 10.
Adding up the cost for each in the future, after all this work, game we get:
-$3.00 for T1LT’s board and 3D printed shell-$1.25 for plastic box protector-$2.00 for the foam insert-$0.50 for the stickers-$1.50 in printer ink (estimate)For total cost of $8.25 per game, $5.25
While the final version of the box is not perfect in any way, I think it’s perfect for The Worst Game! I know some people might says “that box sucks” , “or you didn’t do it right” or whatever, but I kinda don’t give a shit. I did it my way, it worked for me, and I happy with the results. The box fits perfectly among my other Atari 2600 games, because they are also inside plastic box protectors.
I’m sure this process will evolve over time, and the boxes will get better than better, but for now, I have a defined process and pathway to make my dream of creating Atari game cartridges, on my own terms, a reality