How’s this for a blast from the past: while cleaning house the other day, I came across a little piece of gaming history:
It’s a zorkmid, which as everybody knows is the currency of the Zork text adventure games. If you’ve never seen one yourself, it’s an actual metal coin, quite hefty and very atmospheric. This particular zorkmid was packaged with the Zork Trilogy box. This was Back In The Day when they actually packaged cool stuff along with your game—and Infocom was the king of cool game packaging.
This zorkmid is one of my prized possessions, and I can’t tell you how happy I was to find it again. I’d lost track of it, and assumed it got lost during a move several years ago. (Poking around the web, I see that I’m not the only one nostalgic for zorkmids: here’s an apparently abandoned project to mint zorkmids.)
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I’ve got two collector’s edition coins — one from Oblivion and the other from Everquest II — but, alas, no zorkmid! Know of any other games that came with coins?
Tangentially related to your post: the best-loaded collector’s edition I’ve seen is the one for the original Neverwinter Nights. Not only is the box itself sturdy and stylish, but it comes with a mousepad, a thick book of artwork, a t-shirt that I still wear regularly, a soundtrack CD, a better case for the game discs, and a huge poster (on fabric rather than paper) of the game’s traitorous heroine. (I’d hang it up, except the non-half of her half-plate armor looks like it was bought in Victoria’s Secret.)
The collector’s edition for the sequel, incidentally, is one of the WORST that I’ve ever bought. The sequel itself is better in game terms, don’t get me wrong, but the only thing that collector’s edition is fit for collecting is dust.
Raymond, I definitely agree about the NWN collector’s edition. I picked that up too, and it was top-notch. And yeah, the fabric poster is gathering dust in my closet too, as I don’t think my wife’d appreciate me hanging a hot paladin pin-up poster in the office. And hey, I still wear that t-shirt too! Quality stuff.
But my favorite sorts of game-packaging goodies are fake artifacts from the game world itself–so I really dig things like coins, journals, maps, and any kind of documents that purport to be from the game world. That EQ2 and Oblivion include coins in their boxes makes me happy. Any other good ones out there?
Check out this link:
http://www.originmuseum.net/
Look at the box for Ultima I. Five coins!
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I came across what I am assuming is a original zorkmid coin, it was still in a sealed plastic unmarked bag in a box of random things from my early childhood. My father confirmed that yes he played this game and he remembers the coin. I can’t find anywhere online to tell me it’s value. I’d like to sell it depending on the price but no clue where
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