US Dreamcast Games - Why black & white?

[ave]

This has always bothered me. The games look awfully inconsistent on the shelf. Just... why? Was there any reason why one game has a black cover and another game received a white one, some kind of rule according to genres? Or did they just vary it with every game released so there would be the exact same amount of both colors out there? On pictures of complete US collections, the amounts of white and black games seem fairly balanced.

Anyone who can enlighten me? Because as of now, I just think that it's a bad design choice with no point. :p

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

Why would you put DC games on a shelf with the covers facing out? Unless you have only a handful of games, it's going to be very hard to fit them all. I always put mine with the sides (the labels) facing out.

[Borman]

I had thought it was a rebranding thing. White towards the beginning, black towards the end?

[GodofHardcore]

Sega knew.......Sega knew

[Rabid Peanut-Butter]

I had thought it was a rebranding thing. White towards the beginning, black towards the end?

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was this. It applied to console boxes and accessories too. To make matters worse, you also have the bright orange spine with the Sega All Stars re-issues. It's quite a mess on the shelf.

I did like the look of the black rebranding though.

[dark]

It was just a design change - at some point in mid-late 2000 (up through the end of US game publication in 2002), all new games were published with the black design. All games from launch up to that point in the US had the white design.

[Jenkins]

I think - like dark already said - it was just a design change. The black labeled games are looking better.

Sort by release date (gamefaqs):
09/09/99 - Sonic Adventure (white labeled)
11/30/99 - Shadow Man (white labeled)
06/29/00 - Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (white labeled)

08/22/00 - D2 (black labeled)
09/07/00 - Shenmue (black labeled)
09/27/00 - Looney Tunes: Space Race (black labeled)
09/30/00 - Q-Bert (black labeled)
06/18/01 - Sonic Adventure 2 (black label)

The change was around Juli '00.

[ave]

Ooooh! Ok, now that makes a lot of sense. At least there was a reason behind it all... and while it's kind of annoying, it's still way better than Sony's PS3-messup. Spiderman-font, seriously? And all of a sudden a few years later, PSP and PS3 games receive different spines designs... ugh.

Why would you put DC games on a shelf with the covers facing out? Unless you have only a handful of games, it's going to be very hard to fit them all. I always put mine with the sides (the labels) facing out.

Then you must have noticed that the spines of US games are black and white, too, and that it looks inconsistent if you have a lot of them on the shelf.

The ALL-Stars orange design annoys me too. I have only about 10 black and 10 white US games and 2 orange ones, so it looks really messy. Like a music CD collection...

[la-li-lu-le-lo]

Then you must have noticed that the spines of US games are black and white, too, and that it looks inconsistent if you have a lot of them on the shelf.

I'll take your word for it - I left all my game cases at home, and I don't honestly remember. I do remember that several of them have orange labels, though. It never really bothered me; it adds some variety to my collection. I like seeing a lot of different colors on the shelf. Japanese Saturn games have different colored labels too - they just have the Saturn logo in the same place. I think the Saturn logo on the front is always the same, but the spine can be different colors. Again, I don't have all of my Saturn cases with me so I'm not sure (I have a few).

[sayin999]

It was marketing reasons. When they did their big seganet launch they decided to give the dreamcast a new image to try to make the system a huge seller as well as take sales away from Sony. So they went with black as they felt it looked edgier and changed consoles box to give it a more consumer electronic look. The original white design was used in the beginning cause the marketing was different style. Similar what they did with genesis/mega drive where they went from grid on black back drop to red stripe.

[dark]

If anyone is bugged by the different colored covers intermixed in their collection, I just do the obvious and put all the black label titles together on the shelf, the white label titles together, the Japanese label titles together, the PAL cases together, etc. Then everything looks pretty neat and organized :)

[Rabid Peanut-Butter]

If anyone is bugged by the different colored covers intermixed in their collection, I just do the obvious and put all the black label titles together on the shelf, the white label titles together, the Japanese label titles together, the PAL cases together, etc. Then everything looks pretty neat and organized :)

But, but.. then they're not in alphabetical order!

[dark]

But, but.. then they're not in alphabetical order!

You could always alphabetize them by color ;)
I always remember whether a game was white or black label anyway, so this could help you find the game fastest.