I most certainly do as I'm collecting them. For sharing my games with other (retro) gaming heads, I decided to turn my collection of over 748 boxes* into shiny 3D

The tech behind the 3D boxes is simple: first up the game boxes sides are scanned. Then, those textures are attached to a 3D mesh based upon the boxes' actual dimensions. All boxes can be zoomed and rotated and some can even be looked at from top and bottom angles. Also, double click/tap a box with a gatefold cover to pop it up.

The site is a one-man show and done in my spare time. I do try to keep it as up-to-date as possible but sometimes, well, life happens and the time from picking up a new box until it's available in 3D with all bells and whistles does vary quite a bit. I'm trying to keep you all posted via the blog though.

Anyway, I better stop babbeling and let you jump right in. Use the search in the top right corner or start with one of the games listed below.

Enjoy,
Benjamin

* Well, lots of boxes and some not so boxy ones

There's 748 Games available in 3D on this site. Piling them all up would result in a stack 26.61m high and with a volume of 1.17m³. When adding up all sides there's 83.24m² of boxart, not counting the 55 gatefolds available to explore on this site. Further, there's a total of 694 photos showing the games' contents.

I'm not done yet getting all the data in regard of media included, but with 592 boxes indexed, there's a total of 1,156 media. Here's a breakdown

In regard of fidelity, 91 out of the 748 boxes have all six sides scanned. I'm working on adding more but this comes down to finding the time needed for scanning and editing. There's also 55 boxes with a gatefold cover that can be flipped open by double-clicking the box. Also, 38 boxes do have specific textures for their reflectiveness. It's a subtl effect but IMHO worth all the work, just look at Morrowind or Beneath a Steel Sky.

I'm a nerd living in Vienna, Austria and host of this site. You can get in touch with me via wimmer.benjamin@gmail.com and over at Twitter @3DBigBoxGames.

It all started back in 1988 on the humble C64 before moving on to DOS/Win with GameBoy, SNES, and N64 on the side, so to speak. I'm not only a gameer but also a collector, although I didn't set out to be one; I just kept all the games that I've bought over the years. Well, until 2005ish at least. That's when big box games got replaced with first smaller boxes and then later DVD cases until Steam and gog.com came around and we all went digital on PC.

However, back in 2012, I stumbled upon a new release for Commodore 64 called C64anabalt, and guess what?

It's a physical release! In a box! A (very) small one, but a box!

With finding C64anabalt, my love for boxed games was reigneted, and I began to track down all the games I had only owned as budget release, as well as all the classics that I had always wanted to play but never had the chance to. Classifieds and eBay offered almost everything for a few bucks, and soon enough, I had more games than I could keep track of.

To share my growing collection online with other retro gamers, I started taking photos of my games. Although it worked, managing multiple photo albums and a private spreadsheet with all the data became quite cumbersome and far from ideal. I realized that combining both elements was the way to go — building upon my spreadsheet and creating a website that would showcase a virtual copy of my NerdWall™.

In 2016, I launched BigBoxCollection.com. Here, I host 3D models textured with high-resolution scans of my boxes, allowing visitors to click through and explore. The site has changed over the years staring with a more dark and gritty look before restarting with a clean one in 200x. In 2023, I thought I'd add a dark theme but instead of just tweaking the CSS files, I've reimplemented the whole site, reworked mouse & touch controls and added features that I've always wanted to have but never found the time for like panning the 3D boxes as well as visualizing gatefolds.