Swag from gaming companies

[forte]

Have you ever mailed a game company and ask for something and actually get a reply? I did once, and thought you guys might want to hear the story.



Back in 1999, I bought a copy of Mega Man 8 Anniversary Collector's Edition at WalMart new which advertised as coming with an Anthology booklet. Well, I opened it up...and there was no Anthology booklet! So, since this was back in the days that companies cared about customers, I wrote them a letter telling them my copy didn't have the booklet and asking if they'd please send one. I eventually got this in the mail, postmarked Sept 1999. They sent me the Anthology booklet, plus a set of Mega Man X pogs, and three Mega Man X postcards (featuring Mega Man X3 characters) I've never seen before. I kept it all, plus the envelope, figuring it would be a cool story and collectable. Of all the companies I wrote to, they're the only one to ever reply.

Anyone else have such an experience?

[foxhack]

Not gaming ones.

20th Century Fox sent me a replacement booklet for The Simpsons Season One, and Mondo Macabro sent me a second copy of their original DVD release of Clonus because I wrote them an email explaining that I was sad and disappointed that I wasn't able to find one with the original cover art. (They rereleased their DVD to try to get some extra sales from the Clonus ripoff, The Island.)

[soera]

I didnt but a friend of mine did way back in the day. He bought Ultima Exodus and played it for a few days and couldnt get no where. He got frustrated and wrote the company and they sent him this impressive package of books, maps, and all sorts of other stuff. I wish he would have kept it. I havent ever seen it all again.

[desocietas]

POGS! awesome

[amauriel]

Mine isn't gaming, but I have two similar stories.

I was sorta a weird kid (not much has changed) and I was crazy into K'nex. (The building toys.) When the school science fair came around, I had just gotten a motorized K'nex ferris wheel toy...and I wanted to have it on display. So I picked the project "How do Ferris Wheels work?" and got to work. Well, I lived just south of Cedar Point, so I figured I'd start research with them. I wrote them a letter saying that I was doing this project, and they wrote back that they had removed the Ferris Wheel from their park to make way for more roller coasters...but that the company that had made their Ferris Wheel was Big Eli and I got their address. So I wrote Big Eli. They sent me not only a bunch of beautiful glossy pictures of Ferris Wheels throughout history (which made the poster board a breeze!) but the real construction and maintenance manuals for their most popular models of Ferris Wheel. I was in 6th grade and although I couldn't even read those schematics, I thought it was sooooo cool. Still have all that stuff in a box in our storage room.

Story 2: One of the stranger hobbies that I've picked up over the years is balloon twisting (like the dogs and hats and things). I started about 5th grade or so, and I still do it from time to time today. When I was younger, I'd just go up to clowns at fairs and things and ask them to show me how they did something. (I still do if it's something amazing...there aren't that many balloon twisters and most are happy that you've noticed a particularly difficult twist. It's really a craft, as strange as it sounds.) Anyway, my mother just didn't know what to do with this new-found hobby. There weren't any stores or anything that sold balloons. So she went up to a clown one time and asked him what brand of balloons he used. He told her that the best were Qualatex, and he always went through them directly. So Mom called Qualatex to see if we could just buy single bags of balloons (they're sold by the gross and one bag lasts me a while.) They were so surprised that there was a 10-12 year old that interested in ballooning that they just sent me this amazing pack of stuff. All sorts of balloons, their catalog, a bunch of starter guides and things. I used what they gave me for free for several years. (Now, thanks to the internet, there are many websites that will sell Qualatex by the bag rather than the case. I've used other brands and they really are the best!)

[kingrat101]

Thats cool, I dont know if this applies but the coolest thing I've gotten was the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time soundtrack for registering Ocarina 3d within the first week.

[psydswipe]

I've got a few as well but they are not as random as yours because I sort of knew a couple of the people, knew them through the Internet anyways.

A guy who did some freelance work for us eventually got a job at Blizzard. My co-worker who is a big Blizzard fan moved a few years back and I wanted to get him some Blizzard swag. I wrote to the guy to see if he remembered us and he sent a package of stuff. I can't even remember what he sent though. I think there were some WoW books, a Diablo figure, maybe some type of cards (do they have a trading card game?), and probably a few other things.

Back when I played Tribes on a game team one of our members worked for Microsoft, maybe he still does. I can't remember his exact position but I think it had to do with marketing Halo. My co-workers and I had been playing Age of Empires II after work once a week and I was able to get my teammate to send us a bunch of copies of the expansion pack. They were gold copies not that that really matters, those are just the early copies before the game hits retail though at that point the game was already in retail. He also had sent our team leader all of the Xbox launch titles (might have even sent him a Xbox, again I can't recall exactly).

More in line with your story I did write Sega a few times as a kid and would get hand-written letters back along with tips and cheats.