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<blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9293155" data-attributes="member: 7044704"><p>If you were around in the early 80s it was pretty easy to own Metagaming's whole catalog, the low costs on almost everything and (functionally) five-year company lifespan made that a very doable goal. Task Force was probably the second-heaviest microgame publisher in terms of product count, including some things that grew far beyond fitting in ziplock baggies like Star Fleet Battles and Starfire. SPI had a handful of their own, some of which wound up getting slim boxed sets and a few more that only got published in Ares magazine. TSR had their classic eight released in two batches of four, as did Heritage/Dwarfstar with their eight small-box games - which were the most expensive of their ilk and some of the best, with very ambitious designs and relatively high-end components for the format. Mayfair had four as well with the same ziplock bag packaging as TFG used, Close Simulations had a pair. Steve Jackson Games pumped out a slew of them as time went by, some in an odd one-page folding sheet format and then later in those hinged hard plastic pocket boxes, with some (especially Ogre and Car Wars) getting editions in multiple formats. There were a few oddballs in the 90s that tried using VCR cases for packaging, but for the most part the niche for microgames largely evaporated with the rise of CCGs, other small card games, and stuff like the Disk Wars fad.</p><p></p><p>EDIT: Oh yeah, there were also a couple from Fat Messiah Games, both in the TFG baggie format. Shapeshifters was a classic wizard's duel game worth of Merlin and Madam Mim, while Last Frontier: Vesuvius Incident was a pretty great solo "alien bughunt" game that was probably meant to be the start of a series of similar games. Those were both quite good, beacons of the microgame format in the early 90s.</p><p></p><p>And yeah, I'm pretty nostalgic about the history of these things. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Wofano Wotanto, post: 9293155, member: 7044704"] If you were around in the early 80s it was pretty easy to own Metagaming's whole catalog, the low costs on almost everything and (functionally) five-year company lifespan made that a very doable goal. Task Force was probably the second-heaviest microgame publisher in terms of product count, including some things that grew far beyond fitting in ziplock baggies like Star Fleet Battles and Starfire. SPI had a handful of their own, some of which wound up getting slim boxed sets and a few more that only got published in Ares magazine. TSR had their classic eight released in two batches of four, as did Heritage/Dwarfstar with their eight small-box games - which were the most expensive of their ilk and some of the best, with very ambitious designs and relatively high-end components for the format. Mayfair had four as well with the same ziplock bag packaging as TFG used, Close Simulations had a pair. Steve Jackson Games pumped out a slew of them as time went by, some in an odd one-page folding sheet format and then later in those hinged hard plastic pocket boxes, with some (especially Ogre and Car Wars) getting editions in multiple formats. There were a few oddballs in the 90s that tried using VCR cases for packaging, but for the most part the niche for microgames largely evaporated with the rise of CCGs, other small card games, and stuff like the Disk Wars fad. EDIT: Oh yeah, there were also a couple from Fat Messiah Games, both in the TFG baggie format. Shapeshifters was a classic wizard's duel game worth of Merlin and Madam Mim, while Last Frontier: Vesuvius Incident was a pretty great solo "alien bughunt" game that was probably meant to be the start of a series of similar games. Those were both quite good, beacons of the microgame format in the early 90s. And yeah, I'm pretty nostalgic about the history of these things. :) [/QUOTE]
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