Well, as mentioned in the article, Infocom had some really interesting goodies with their games. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy included a "Don't Panic" button, pocket fluff, a "microscopic battle fleet", cardboard sunglasses, and a couple of other things... here's more info

Lunar: Eternal Blue for playstation came with paper dolls, a medallion, and a map. Made me feel like the 70 bucks I paid was worth it. I think the king of useful schwag right now is nintendo, their recent give aways include the zelda bonus disk, and the link cable with crystal chronicles. Maybe that doesn't count since you had to pre-order the games to get the stuff...

If you preordered Donkey Kong 64 at a certain store in my area you got a little yellow plastic barrel (with DK64 on the side) full of little red plastic monkeys.

I was really into the early Ultima series, which came with little trinkets that were important to the game like a moonstone, an anhk and the codex of ultimate wisdom. Didn't turn me into an avatar tho... maybe I should have sent it back as defective!

Please tell me that "seminal Rez Trans vibrator" was an intentional pun. Don't let Lieberman here it, or he'll be telling everyone that video games are causing teen pregnancies.

Nintendo wins the swag award, hand down, no contest. Maybe their stuff never reaches the average consumers hands, but let me tell you, as former game store employee, their reps hook you up with the coolest promotional stuff. Stuff like shiny clipboards with attached nintendo pen, stainless steel and black foam drink cozies, watches, you name it. Watches were actually pretty common across the board , the Chaos Legion watch from Capcom was really cool, it clipped onto a belt loop and the face slide aside for use as a magnifying lens, not bad for free. Sony's reps never seemed to run out of travel coffee mugs that had the ps2 logo on them. The Infogrames/Atari lady was also awesome, she brought us free games, Ikaruga clingforms, and Atari t-shirts. Tons of free stuff came in that was supposed to go out on the shelves with the games, but somehow always managed to go home with us. Examples of these include the free golf balls that came in with the XBOX Hot Shots golf game, the PN03 sunglasses that made you look just like Vanessa K. Schneider, the Viewtiful Joe bobbleheads (both regular Joe and Viewtiful Joe), JSRF soundtracks, Maximo boxer shorts, I could go on and on. We used to throw tee shirts out by the dozen, they were always XL, which none but one of us wore, and wicked boring so no one wanted them.

One of the smartest things you can do as a gamer is to make friends with the hapless souls behind the counter so you can get cool free stuff.

When I preordered Ninja Gaiden, the store let me pick from a grab bag of gaming schwag. I talked the clerk into letting me get away with 4 FF:CC buttons, each one displaying the crest of one of the clans. My yellow Clavat pin proudly resides on the strap of my NES Controller messenger bag. I'm such a dork sometimes.

There was a game called Shadow of the Beast for the Amiga. There was a "T-shirt edition" of the game, and the remarkable thing was the shirt was included with the game (no post-purchase, mail order monkey business). As such, the actual game box proportions and size were larger, in order to accommodate the prize.

You can see pics of the box and T-shirt toward the bottom on this dedicated fan's page.

As Dawud noted above, working designs is the king of swag. Punching puppets, pocket watches, enormous maps, and more.

not schwag, but for gaming accesories, this beats all. onimusha3 sword controller

Perhaps not quite schwag, but Falcon 4 (PC) had a 'limited edition' (100,000 copies I think) version in which the manual, game disks and everything that would otherwise be in the box were packaged in a Large ring binder which resembled a pilots training guide ie. no box at all. Really was quite funky and looked pretty authentic too. I have a friend who is a plane buff and he absolutely went booey over it.

Minitature (8" long) toilet plunger. Fits in an RV, works great. Have to go to the RV to find out what game it was for.

Minitature (8" long) toilet plunger. Fits in an RV, works great. Have to go to the RV to find out what game it was for.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

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Posted by: outsider on April 11, 2006 08:57 AM