I remember when we got Jurassic Park on the Genesis back in the summer of 1993, it was the first time I ever saw the red spine and more modernized lettering scheme. Before long, it became apparent that all new games were going to look the same way. I also had Cyborg Justice, which was a 1993 game. But it had the 1992 box design and logos. So somewhere between the two games, everything began switching over. Obviously the original Sega CD logo was the progenitor to the logo changes going forward. But aside from that, it took a while for everything to change. I searched the internet to see if anyone knows when this actually took place, or even what the first release was with the new design. I can't find an answer. I'm asking out of pure curiosity. Does anyone have an answer to this, or any clues to help narrow it down?
I'd take a stabbing guess and say October 1993. Because that would fall in line with the release of the Model 2 Genesis/Mega Drive, so a redesign would be in order. https://wiki.retrotechcollection.com/Sega_Mega_Drive_/_Genesis_(Model_2)
In the US, around the launch of the "NEW COMPACT GENESIS" in 1993. Jurassic Park genuinely might have been the first game to use that new style. List of Mega Drive games in the United States (filter by release date)
According to the page that you linked, the earliest game with that red spine is Splatterhouse 3, released in August 1993. The earliest listed game to get the SEGA CD blue spine is The Terminator, released in June 1993.
How does this correlate with the blue spine redesign in PAL territories? I think Sonic 3 was the first one I remember with a blue spine.
So that explains when they started using the red spines, but how about when they stopped using the black grid? There was a period there where Sega games were coming out with different packaging per game, like Sonic 2 having a checkerboard or Streets of Rage 2 being an image. Also, much less discussed, but there are multiple stages of Sega Master System boxes. The earliest ones in the US are the ones that people love to post online, the Alex Kidd in Miracle World or Wonder Boy . Very minimal artwork, which is usually poorly drawn. These have a medium-sized "A Mega Cartridge" label on their spine. These have the "Now there are no limits" early SMS slogan on the back. Sega's phone number is displayed as numerals. It displays two big screenshots on the back of the box, centered, at the top. Sometime around 1987, the text became slightly larger and more centered. This change coincided with boxes beginning to have more normal artwork. The artwork was large, and usually airbrushed, but were smoothly blended into the grid pattern. These are when Tonka started distibuting the games, and thus feature a "SEGA TONKA" logo on the back. The "Now there are no limits" slogan is dropped. It now displays two phone numbers, one for inside california, and one for outside. It now gives the phone number as "800 USA SEGA". A little corner graphic descriptor has been added to the top right corner on the front of the box. These can be graphics, like the "Arcade hit" shown on Alien Syndrome, or a yellow stripe with text like "TWICE THE MEGA POWER" in the case of space harrier: Sometime around 1988, the "Mega Cartridge" text became much, much smaller, and was more centered. This coincided with boxes having essentially normal box art with skies and such cut out to lend with the grid. The SEGA logo on the front of the box was moved to the top center, and the game names became Bold on the front cover. the "Mega Cartridge" text on the front cover was dropped. A little box indicating game stats was added to the back. The distinction between in-california and out-california for phone numbers is dropped. The corner descriptor is moved to the to the top left corner to tell you what kind of a game it is, like "Role-Playing" or "Action". These can come in many different shapes, normally an exploding star or a simple triangle. Boxes now feature 4 screenshots arranged vertically on the left side of the back of the box. Then, in 1989, the boxes were redesigned so they had very large text for the game name on the spine. The "Mega cartridge" label was dropped completely. Some games, like Wonder Boy III and Phantasy Star, still use the large, Times new roman-like font on the front cover, but many others begin using custom logos, a rarity prior (Ghostbusters being the only one I can think of before this time).: In 1990, they got a rather big change. These started featuring completely normal boxart, in a box from the bottom of the cover to near the top, with the Grid pattern almost not being shown. The "SEGA" logo was changed to an upside down Trapezoid to be a new "Sega Master System" logo. Label art now could be custom fonts or colors. A little tag in the bottom right corner indicating it could be played on the SMS1, SMS2, and Sega Genesis with a PBC was displayed on each box front. Sega had taken back distribution of the SMS in the US, so the "TONKA" label on the back was dropped. The game stats are also no longer in a small box, just floating freely on the back. The phone number is dropped entirely, as are references to CSK. Text on the back is in italics now. The little corner descriptor is now a stripe and reads "NEW!" to indicate it was the new SMS2 line of games. 3 screenshots now bounce left and right on the back, like they do on Sega Genesis games of the timeFrankly, this is my favorite SMS box type. These are basically the same boxes as the Sega Genesis used, only in white. The very last release in the US, Sonic the Hedgehog, coincided with one last major revision. The box art now covers almost all of the front, the grid is only at the top. A new "Sega Master System" logo is made, with the old SEGA logo coming back and "master system" written in a serif red font below. A new little square image is placed on the spine, usually a repeat of the front box art. These are cool, and they line up with each other when placed on a shelf. The little box for the game stats has returned, this time red. The font is back to non-italics. Every game in this style displays the back text in multiple languages, something common in Europe (and present in the european versions of the previous boxes), but even in the USA Sonic has multiple languages. The little corner descriptor is a simple triangle now. Screenshots are back to 4 arranged vertically on the left side of the back of the box. These are pretty much the standard SMS box that Europe would know. These are much more uniform than the SMS2 design, but not as interesting IMO. Also, the Activision-published games had their own style, usually black or red grid box. And of course the Brazilian Blue boxes, which came after their own take on the white grid pattern. Finding the first games in each of these categories to use those box art styles would be really neat.
This is because Sonic was one of a few late US Master System releases that were European copies of the game with a US-specific UPC sticker on the back. The others are Golden Axe Warrior, Spiderman, and Strider. I guess by that point, Master System demand was so lopsided towards Europe that Sega decided that it wasn't worth doing a run of those games just for the US market.
Golden Axe Warrior is a reverse situation. Golden Axe Warrior has the US box art releasing in Europe, not the other way around: Unlike other SMS games, every region of Golden Axe Warrior is in english in Europe. This is in contrast to other SMS boxes of the same era: This is from the era without the SMS custom logos with the large text on the side.
Golden Axe Warrior is an RPG - it won't have been released in huge numbers in non-English territories.
The amount of text is not the determining factor. Wonder Boy III is a similar action RPG like Golden Axe Warrior is, released during the same era of box art, with a similar amount of text, and yet: We see lots of magazine coverage for GAW in non-english countries. 3 different German magazines, 2 italian magazines, and one french magazine all covered GAW in multiple issues, it had a wide European release. Consider the budget for GAW's release was also likely higher -- GAW has an actual battery to save to, unlike Wonder Boy III.
See Miracle Warriors, Phantasy Star, Spellcaster, and Ys. Like Golden Axe Warrior they're classed as "Adventure Role-Playing", and were only manufactured with English packaging. Some local distributor branches (at least France and Germany) did produce their own localised manuals though.
Thread bumpin' time. As mentioned before, Splatterhouse 3 released in August 1993 with a red spine. However, in June 1993, Barney's Hide-and-Seek Game released. It released with a blue spine. Barney is the only Genesis game to release with a blue spine. Strangely, this ad for the game shows the game with a normal, red spine. Was it planned for all Genesis games to have blue spines instead of red ones? I don't know. I need to dig deeper.
Unfortunately there aren't any references for that June 1993 date, which is almost certainly wrong. The ROM header gives a build date of 1993 SEP. First mentions of it that I could find from newspaper articles was late October 1993, although it doesn't seem to be advertised until December. On the sega usenet newsgroup it doesn't get mentioned until December 1993 as a Christmas present for their 3 year olds, but it's not exactly the sort of game people would be excitedly proclaiming to have spotted in the shops. Should've released Q4 at least, but hard to get any more accurate than that.
With PD's new info about Barney's release date. I've been brought back to my earlier theory of the game's blue spine. That it was chosen as a way to signify that it was a game for younger audiences. However, I have doubts in this theory of mine. Why just change the border color? Why not add something else on the box to further indicate that this was a game for small children? Could the blue color just be an error? Then why was the spine red in the ad?
I always assumed that they had intended to use the blue spine for games targeted at younger kids, before they came up with the Sega Club branding instead (meaning, this was my assumption when I first saw this game as a kid thirty years ago, and I never considered otherwise until seeing this thread just now). It's far too soft of a blue (slightly purplish) to ever consider using for their main console during their edgyist edgy edgelord period of advertising, and it makes sense that Sega would want to distinguish these releases since the Genesis had a reputation for being the console with the edgy advertising and the more violent games at the time. It's also possible it was always intended as a one-off to make the game stand out, like the checkerboard pattern on the Sonic 2 box (it matches the blue in the word "GAME" on the cover, after all). I also assume that Sega intended to roll out the new box designs with the first-party games Jurassic Park for the Genesis and Game Gear and Ecco the Dolphin for the Sega CD and only got beaten to the punch by third-parties because release dates weren't tightly coordinated back then.
Maybe there was a period of time where SoE and SoA were going to use the same box design, but with their own specific branding on it? This IS how it was done before the stripes came in.
I think it was a vague push to get the software library to look "consistent", but that's tricky on the Mega Drive, as some third-party publishers (Accolade! Codemasters! EA!) had their own production plants. With the Mega-CD, 32X and Saturn (and Game Gear), Sega were able to regulate the style properly. I don't know why Barney is blue. A surface level guess is that with content regulation being a big thing in the US senate, Sega were keen to put out games targetted at a younger audience so as to make their brand look more palettable. But then they got bored, or the things didn't sell, or whatever. Honestly you'd have to ask the marketing people, because very little of Sega's decisions made a huge amount of sense during that period. I can absolutely see them wanting to keep their library distinct from the competition, but the stripes don't really convey anything beyond basic colour coding.
