NES Black Box games Wed Apr 14 2021 at 18:35:55 When the Nintendo Entertainment System first shipped in North America, Nintendo wanted everything about the system and its marketing to reassure video game-shy toy stores that this was something different than the torrent of Atari 2600shovelware that crashed the video game market a few years earlier. One major component of this was a standardized packaging design for all games released by Nintendo themselves for the first year and a half of retail availability. Since this packaging used a black background for the game box, this set of games has become known as the Black Box games and is now a common collecting target.