Octopus Overlords

Take a look at any shovelware collection. Usually you get a couple hits, AND a couple duds, roughly 50/50 ratio.

For example, let's take Racing 5 Pack from Globalstar/Take 2. It comes with

* Muscle Car 76 -- junk
* 4x4 Evo -- good
* Excessive Speed -- meh
* Jet Boat Championship -- junk
* Motorcross Mania -- good

Very rarely do you find a shovelware collection that includes mostly GOOD games or ALL GOOD games.

Kasey Chang wrote:Very rarely do you find a shovelware collection that includes mostly GOOD games or ALL GOOD games.

That's because they can sell those separate. But how else are you going to get rid of a crap game if not bundle it with something good? And even if a game sucks it still adds some value to a bundle, if only subconsciously ("Wow, 5 games for the price of 1!")

Like those game services from Yahoo or something that has 100+ games for one low monthly fee. Sure, there's only a handful of games that are worth paying money for, but being able to play all of the crappy games essentially for free is a somewhat nice bonus.

You get some great compilations here in Europe.

Gold Games 7 PC-CD

SW Jedi Knight 2 Jedi Outcast, Morrowind, Ghost Recon, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Racing Sim 3, Will Rock, The Partners, Largo Winch, Duke Nukem Manhattan Project und IL-2 Sturmovik Forgotten Battles!

30 Euro

Gold games 8

Beyond good and evil, X3, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia 4, Lords of Everquest, Pirates of the Carribean, Lock On, Biathlon 2004, and Mercedes Benz World Racing.

30 Euro

As stated above, why sell 5 good games together for $30 when they could sell well separately at $10 each? Now add your scenario of 2 good and 3 junk games at $10 and $5 accordingly. Sold separately they would total $35 but not may people would buy the bad games, so they sit on the shelves...but together, they can be sold for $30 because of the good games making the deal seem beter than separate purchases. This way the company moves some of the bad product as well.

Don't forget that sticking 5 CDs in sleeves into one box is much cheaper to put together than 5 seperately packaged games. Retailers love it because it takes up less shelf space (as do distributors because they don't have to fight for 5x the shelf space).

I remember back in the day I got a bundle with Ultima 8, Syndicate+expansion, Wing Commander 2, and one other game. Wing Commander 2 was a bit dated at the time, but still a decent bundle.

The reason is, these "Combo" packs are a way for publishers to get their backcatalogue products out there.

Generally its not really because they suck, or that they even know they suck. They just grab a stack of their back catalogue crap, throw it on a compilation, and toss it out.

The value is in the number of titles "Wow, 7 games for $9?" impact with marketing. These packs actually sell really well for publishers, expect to see more of them.

JayG wrote:You get some great compilations here in Europe.

Maybe not.

Gold Games 7 PC-CD
SW Jedi Knight 2 Jedi Outcast, Morrowind, Ghost Recon, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Racing Sim 3, Will Rock, The Partners, Largo Winch, Duke Nukem Manhattan Project und IL-2 Sturmovik Forgotten Battles!30 Euro

Let's see, that's Great, Great, Great, Okay, Huh? Junk, Hunk, Huh?, Junk, Great. So, still, 50/50 ratio.

Gold games 8 -- Beyond good and evil, X3, Splinter Cell, Prince of Persia 4, Lords of Everquest, Pirates of the Carribean, Lock On, Biathlon 2004, and Mercedes Benz World Racing. 30 Euro

Great, okay(?), Great, Okay, Okay, Okay, Good, Ahem, Okay.

So that's, three or four good titles, bunch of okays, and not so good stuff. Still, proves me right.

Kasey Chang wrote:

Gold Games 7 PC-CD
SW Jedi Knight 2 Jedi Outcast, Morrowind, Ghost Recon, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, Racing Sim 3, Will Rock, The Partners, Largo Winch, Duke Nukem Manhattan Project und IL-2 Sturmovik Forgotten Battles!30 Euro

Let's see, that's Great, Great, Great, Okay, Huh? Junk, Hunk, Huh?, Junk, Great. So, still, 50/50 ratio.

I didn't know there was a PC version, but the PS2 version of Tony Hawk 3 is great.

Well, not all compilations suck. I'm lucky enough to own the Ultimate RPG Archive:

Bard's Tale Trilogoy w/ Contruction Set
Ultima Underworld 1 &2
Wasteland
Stonekeep
Might & Magic: Xeen Combo
Dragon Wars
Wizardy 7 Gold

Next to that, The Lost Treasures of Infocom Vol 1 doesn't suck either.

Otherwise, yes, they like to dilute the good with a few bad titles.

Interplay's Ultimate Strategy Archive was also pretty darn god:

Civilization
Railroad Tycoon Deluxe
X-Com
Heroes of Might and Magic
Conquest of the New World Deluxe
Jagged Alliance: Deadly Games
MAX
Dark Colony

There's a couple of huh?s, but there are also a few of the best games ever.

I thought the Paradox Strategy Pack looked fun...

Hearts of Iron
Victoria
Europa Universalis II
Europa Universalis II - Asia chapter
Two Thrones
Crown of the North

Jeez, I didn't realize there were so many great packs. I haven't seen many of them in stores by me. Where do you usually find these items? Even at my Best Buy ad Circuit City multi-packs seem limited.

lokiju wrote:Jeez, I didn't realize there were so many great packs. I haven't seen many of them in stores by me. Where do you usually find these items? Even at my Best Buy ad Circuit City multi-packs seem limited.

My CompUSA has one of the better (maybe the best) PC game sections around town, and I think they usually have a lot of those packs. Otherwise, online via ebgames.com, Amazon.com, etc. is a good place to find them. They can be hard to search for unless you know the "name" of the pack, though.

About 2 years or so I got a racing pack that I loved. Aside from one, Nascar 2000, I thought all the rest were great!


Need For Speed III Hot Pursuit
Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed
NASCAR 2000
Superbike 2001.

Not 100 percent but for me the other 75 percent was more then acceptable for the one dud. (esp Porsche Unleashed)

http://www.gogamer.com/cgi-bin/GoGamer. ... w/001RACM2

while perhaps old as the hills this pack is a good one for anyone who doesn't already hae them.
Super Strategy 4 Pack
Risk II, Civilization II, Majesty Gold, Age of Empires Gold for $10