Quick, can you name the most popular (in terms of units moved) games for the Atari 2600? The Nintendo Entertainment System? The Sega Genesis? The Super Nintendo? If you know your console history, you can name them without having to check any sales figures:
Combat,
Super Mario Bros.,
Sonic the Hedgehog, and
Super Mario World, respectively. This doesn't come from rote chart memorization, but simple logic: these were the initial games included when you bought a new system in North America, so every single household with the first round of one of these consoles also had a copy of these games. (Unless it got stepped on, the dog chewed on it, a younger household member decided the cartridge needed a bath, etc.) Okay,
Sonic is a bit more complicated, since the Genesis originally shipped with comparatively lesser-known arcade port
Altered Beast (although if you
are familiar with the game, you probably immediately said "wiiise fwom your gwaaave" out loud upon reading the title), but changed to
Sonic when Sega saw how hot the title was and took the gamble that people would buy the console just to play it... and they were right. A lot more Genesis consoles were sold with
Sonic than with
Altered Beast. They weren't the first to change the included game during a system's lifetime, but this may the only example of a time it successfully "re-launched" a console and got it into more homes than ever before.
"Pack-in" games like these were a staple of the first few console generations and served a few functions, not all immediately obvious. Their roots lie in the earliest home consoles, the ones with a single game hardwired - usually Pong (or a knock-off), possibly with some variants in playstyle. Even the the Fairchild Channel F, the first "programmable" console, had its own built-in Pong clone in addition to being able to run cartridges. This serves one of the immediately obvious purposes of a pack-in game: getting the customers up and running, secure in the knowledge that their expensive new purchase is functioning without having to to buy a separate game. And I do mean expensive, while I don't think inflation calculation appropriately conveys cost complexities, the Channel F's MSRP of $169.95 in November 1976 would be $934.94 today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Released ten months later at $189.95 ($1,039.10 per the CPI calculator), the Atari VCS (renamed the "Atari 2600" in 1982... for whatever reason, that's the name that stuck) took a different, yet clever, approach with their pack-in game, Combat: it was fully boxed, just like a retail release, inside the VCS packaging, priming consumers for the distinct look and style of Atari packaging when they ventured into shops to buy more games.
The most significant pack-in game of all time, though, is unarguably
Super Mario Bros. - not least because it remained part of the Nintendo Entertainment System's packaging even as other games were added onto the same cartridge. (
Duck Hunt was on most of the carts sold with systems, but remember
World Class Track Meet? I... don't think I do.) This was all part of the rebranding the system got from the original its Famicom form, which didn't come with
any games, and certainly not a light gun or
robot, and served another important role for pack-in games: it set the tone for what audiences would expect from the system. It's appropriate -
World 1-1 would introduce the player to the world of Mario, just as
Super Mario Bros. introduced them to the NES itself. It was also most players' introduction to the scrolling platform genre, something particularly suited to home (versus arcade) play and could show off the system's capability. No small surprise, then, that it's a genre that dominated much of the NES catalogue. Tonally, as well,
Super Mario Bros. presented a cartoony, colorful world of detail set to theatrical and legendarily catchy music - all of which became "must-have" elements for games going forward.
Combat, of course, served a similar purpose for the VCS: it kept the two-player format that players used to
Pong and its imitators would expect, but also a wide variety ("27 Games!"), each with a distinctive set of colors, that could be freely explored in a home setting, where players wouldn't have to worry about lines forming in front of them or running out of quarters. Both games, as with the best pack-ins, were a sort of antidote to sticker shock, making the extreme outlay a little more palatable.
Sonic was a little different, since the relative price of gaming consoles had dropped markedly over the years, the focus was less on having made a worthwhile investment and more on having chosen the
right console. The game was bright, loud, and very, very fast, showcasing the system's strong points against the rival
Super Nintendo. It may not have been particularly representative of the Genesis library at that point, but that didn't matter as much as it did with the NES, since years worth of games were already available. It was about hooking the consumer in the moment, knowing they'd stick around after that.
Sadly, that was largely the end of the pack-in era - while bundled deals with consoles and specific games would continue to this day, there weren't many that came standard with systems after that. The original PlayStation hit the market without any kind of pack-in game. The N64 was the first system Nintendo released in North America without one. And the Saturn... well, Sega wasn't sure what it wanted that console to be (as evidenced by the bizarre dual-CPU architecture to accommodate both 2D and 3D titles), and that came through via a mess of different packages. But this points to one big reason pack-ins weren't as helpful any more - there were too many different kinds of games, and too many different audiences for a single title to win over. People were coming to gaming with expectations beyond just "be a better use of my money than going to the arcade" or "placate my fears about whether I backed the right side in the console war." And gaming itself was less of a hard sell, so picking up a title separate from the system didn't seem like so much of an ask... something I'm sure the corporate backers greatly appreciated.
Still, it's worth thinking back on a time when an entire platform (or even medium)'s future rested on the backs of a couple of cartoon plumbers, hedgehogs, or tiny tanks. Since they were first, it's easy to take their contributions for granted. Being a bonus product, free with purchase, may not seem like much of an honor... but it was a hell of a responsibility.
- B
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