First post, by hard1k
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hey guys,
There are several highly praised prototype cards that never got it to the market, but are present in some private collections. The most famous is the 3dfx Voodoo 5 6000 AGP, and its "retail box" was replicated by a vogoneer from Canada (although the artwork used would correspond to the Voodoo 5 5000, but that's not that important).
Another pearl of this kind (however much less frequent) is the Aureal SQ3500 Turbo, and its retail package could only be found on a picture from the Comdex '99:
The only other picture was at some moment posted on the Aureal webpage:
Well, it actually was true until this moment - when I got my SQ3500 2 years ago, I knew that I would end up replicating its allegedly "original" retail packaging and all its contents.
Of course, there were several steps to consider:
0. Recollection - getting all available artwork for the SQ3500 Turbo and reading the available text under magnifier 😁
1. Investigation - a close look at both retail boxes that Aureal did manage to design (SQ1500 and SQ2500), finding similarities and differences, thus identifying the unknown parts of the SQ3500 Turbo box to be reconstructed.
2. Assumption - looking into all available press-releases and information materials available for all three products (SQ1500, SQ2500, SQ3500 Turbo) in order to get a clue about what text they might have put on the box if they had ever got to it.
3. Compilation - drafting the exact task for the designer, with all available artwork, graphics (vector and raster), text (reconstructed, copied and drafted from available sources).
4. Investment - hunting down a complete-in-box SQ2500 (it finally showed up in Sweden, was quite a difficult deal I should say) that was needed to get high resolution scans of all sides.
5. Negotiation - finding a good designer with a brilliant portfolio and closing the contract.
6. Logistics - the designer and the SQ2500 box are in Russia (but in different cities), and I'm in Argentina with only 1 overnight stay in Russia. And another SQ2500 box is very hard to find, so quite difficult part as well.
7. Supervision - the easiest part (but that's thanks to the great designer I found, no problems here).
8. Correction - just did that already.
9. Production - will produce a single box (as I don't know any other owner of the SQ3500 Turbo).
10. MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
I'm currently on the item 8 - rather close to the end, heh.
Please have a look (this is not yet final, only the first draft - there are several misprints and other minor errors, so please consider this as work in progress that is somewhat ready to be shown to the community):
So, let me suggest 3 subtopics for this discussion:
0. Your opinion about the project.
1. What other unreleased prototypes that are somewhat present in our collections do deserve the redesigned "semi-original" retail packaging? Please keep in mind that we have to have at least some idea about what the original packaging might have been.
2. What released hardware does deserve a complete replica of the original retail packaging? Adlib Gold 1000 and GUS ACE come to my mind first.
3. What DIY enthusiast hardware does deserve a newly designed retail packaging? ARGUS and some Dreamblaster devices are the first on my list.
Fortex, the A3D & XG/OPL3 accelerator (Vortex 2 + YMF744 combo sound card)
AWE64 Legacy
Please have a look at my wishlist (hosted on Amibay)
