Big box PC games are alive and well in Taiwan

Walk into a game store in the US and you'll be lucky to find PC games at all. If you do find a PC section, be ready for some disappointing DVD cases with nothing inside but a slip of paper with a Steam key printed on it. Digital games sure cut down on clutter, but a recent visit to a few PC game stores in Taiwan reminded me how nice and colorful a cluttered shelf of big box PC games can be. 

Taiwan is like an alternate universe for PC games, one centered around Guang Hua Digital Plaza, a mall in Taipei filled with tiny electronics stores and component shops and game stores. My favorite ones focus exclusively on PC games, and I love how you can find classics (still shrinkwrapped!) right next to the biggest games of the last couple years.

The really fun part of exploring these stores is seeing the cover art used in Asia vs. the West. Sometimes it's the same, but with Chinese lettering instead of English. For some of these games, it's art I've never seen before.

Even in Taiwan, the majority of new PC games now come in standard DVD cases. For physical collectors, that's a lot better than nothing, but it's still a disappointment compared to the luxurious cardboard big boxes of the '90s. But as you'll see in this gallery, the big box dream is still alive: plenty of games still come in nice, chunky cases, and the retro selection is healthy. Browse and enjoy.

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.

When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

Latest in Gaming Industry
Yoda Luke and R2 in Lego form.
Lego is going to make its videogames in-house from now on, says it would 'almost rather overinvest'
A masked man with an axe in the woods
Rebellion CEO seems kind of awed by major studios making massive videogames: 'How do you organize a game that has 2,000 people working on it?'
A computer screen with program code warning of a detected malware script program. 3d illustration
Coder faces 10 years' jailtime for creating a 'kill switch' that screwed-up his employers' systems when he was laid off
Atomfall screenshot
Rebellion CEO puts the studio's recent avoidance of layoffs down to control of scope and cost: 'Sometimes we say, guys, this game's too big'
Judge Dredd promotional image in Warzone
Half-a-dozen 2000AD games were in the works before fizzling out: 'The games you get to see are a tiny representative of the number that get started—sadly'
sniper elite 5 cover
Sniper Elite CEO reckons Swen Vincke is right to snarl at short-sighted publishers: 'You could argue that their business at senior level isn't making games… their business is managing their shareholders' perceptions'
Latest in Features
Honey B Lovely
The state of Final Fantasy 14 in 2025: It's in a weird spot, huh?
Monster Hunter Wilds palico
One of the biggest victories of Monster Hunter Wilds' streamlining is I don't have to deal with those awful gimmick fights anymore
A vampire with a dark castle and swarms of bats in the background.
We need to decide on a genre name for Vampire Survivors-like games before a really terrible one sticks
Olivia, Alma and a palico
I wish Monster Hunter Wilds wasn't so afraid of letting me play Monster Hunter
SteelSeries QcK Performance mouse pads overlapping on a desk
The SteelSeries QcK Performance series has reignited my excitement over the simple pleasure of a quality mouse pad… and trying to click skulls with pinpoint accuracy
OneXPlayer 2 pro on a table
I never thought a handheld PC bloated with Windows could replace my Steam Deck, but after gaming on an old OneXPlayer 2 Pro I can see now I judged it too harshly