Gaming Holiday Cards

This post is about greeting cards game companies sent to the press, most are from many years ago. Unfortunately, I only have a few so I wasn't sure if I should share them. In fact, I skipped writing a post about them the last two Decembers before finally deciding to post them this year because even if they aren't too interesting where else would anyone really get to see them, you know, on the off chance someone wants to. Back in the early 2000s my employer received many cards but most were eventually thrown in the trash by my co-workers. I was able to hold onto a few and while we're still in business, nobody sends us physical cards these days. Once in a while a company does send a link to a digital card like this year's from Capcom: Happy Holidays featuring Monster Hunter. Not sure how long that link will be active so I grabbed a screenshot which fails to display that the snowflakes are dropping down the screen. Digital cards are easy to share so I expect this one and others are posted to social media for the public as well.

First up is Sammy Studios which has the most boring card because it is just a regular greeting card. It does look nice and at least some folks signed it but an original card with game-related art would have been more fun. 

The second card is from former publisher Southpeak and defunct developer Renegade Kid. While the other cards are probably all from around 2000-03 (none are actually dated), this one is likely from 2010 based on the game being promoted.

Next up is one from Sony Computer Entertainment America with the PlayStation controller button icons representing snowflakes. It's a very shiny card that looks quite nice in person but not too good when scanned. That very blue image is the scan where the gray parts should actually be white and the blue is silver when it's not reflecting other colors. I'm adding a couple photos to try and give a more accurate look at it. I do like the appearance of this card quite a bit but nobody signed it! What's up with that, Sony? 

Last is a long foldout card with four panels on each side.This one isn't gaming specific as it represents the many divisions of George Lucas' companies back whenever this card was made: Lucasfilm Ltd., Lucasfilm Animation Ltd., Industrial Light & Magic, Skywalker Sound, LucasArts, Lucas Online, and Lucas Licensing. It is signed by six people who I will assume were all public relations representatives at LucasArts. 

Before ending this post I decided to see if any old holiday card links are still active and I found Atlus' 2016 and 2017 digital cards. Both feature a few rotating photos of the Atlus (and Sega in 2017) sales and marketing team. Here are a couple screen grabs of just a single photo from each and, like the Capcom card above, the snow does move if you visit the links.