Blizzard isn't just releasing remastered versions of its first two real-time strategy games today: it's also bringing back the Battle Chest, a bundle containing both games that was a stroke of marketing genius back in the mid '90s.
Before there was The Orange Box, there was the Battle Chest. Before we had convenient digital stores like Steam and Battle.net where we could buy games with a couple clicks, we had to go to a physical store and hope they had the big bulky boxes full of disks or discs that we wanted. There was only so much shelf space to go around, which meant new games would often push out the old—only the bestsellers got to hold onto that hard-won and vital visibility. So Blizzard, circa 1996, figured out how to gosh darn guarantee that it would never have to surrender its shelf space by making a box so big it stood out from everything else in the gaming aisle—and then making it such a good deal no one could pass up buying it.
