Bard's Tale II

[andreas]

Now this is interesting:

http://hol.abime.net/39/boxscan

and also with the first part:

http://hol.abime.net/38/boxscan

How come there are two completely different box designs for the English EA release of the game?
US version / EU version?

Unfortunately there is hardly any indication of the publishing range on the boxes - can you guys help out?

[Tweeky]

Originally Posted by andreas

US version / EU version?

that or they made a new design after they sold x00,000 boxes
example according to a ebay action:
the first kings quest boxes been grey (dunno if its allowed to post a ebay link here?), the next brown http://hol.abime.net/2586/boxscan

[jmmijo]

Living here in the states I can recall only ever seeing the Silver Retail boxed versions on the store shelves.

I didn't really start noticing box changes until one of my favorite C64/Amiga retailers started to import a lot of titles from overseas

[andreas]

Living here in the states I can recall only ever seeing the Silver Retail boxed versions on the store shelves.

Of what? Bard's Tale II or KQ? Sorry, it's ambiguous to me atm...

[jmmijo]

Originally Posted by andreas

Of what? Bard's Tale II or KQ? Sorry, it's ambiguous to me atm...

All three releases in the Bards Tale Series, as published by EA and developed by Interplay.

This goes for all the systems at the time they were released for, I seem to recall both the C64 and Amiga versions having exactly the same box, the only difference was the system sticker denoting which machine it was for.

Also, the other 8-bit machines had exactly the same box too, this goes for both the Apple ][ series and the Atari 8-bit series.

I did however notice some of the Yellow boxed art versions coming over to the states with many of the EA titles later on, around 1990 or so when importing of titles became more popular here in the states.

[DrBong]

Originally Posted by andreas

Now this is interesting:

http://hol.abime.net/39/boxscan

First pair of boxscans is the UK release (jewel case). The 2nd one is the German release (jewel case- same as UK release except for localisation). The 3rd pair is the US release (record album style by EA). Few early EA games for the Amiga were released in Europe with the record album packaging because EA didn't publish/distribute their own games there initially. The ones that did were published/distributed under license by Ariolasoft and this was usually indicated on the back cover (e.g. see Marble Madness). When EA decided to publish/distribute their own games in Europe (late 80s/early 90s), they must have thought that the record album packaging didn't appeal to the European market and opted for jewel cases instead.

[andreas]

So the third *IS* the US version?

Thanks DrBong, will adapt captions accordingly.

Late thanks must go to Tweeky for submitting the German box. (hence the scan update )

[musashi5150]

In the 'miscshot' section of Bards Tale II the image at the bottom left is for Bards Tale III (German). See here.

[TCD]

Thanks Musashi Moved from II to III now.