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Back in the “good
old days” of gaming, many companies would include small game-related
objects along with their product. Infocom was probably the most well-known
for this practice and reached their peak with their
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy packaging that included, among
other goodies, a piece of lint. Lord British’s Ultima games could
contain anything from a lush cloth map of the Ultima universe to an
iron ankh. But just as movie theaters discontinued giving away dinnerware
settings and banks quit giving away toasters, so too did game companies,
for the most part, discontinue freebies in their packaging.

Instead,
many reviewers now receive tchotchkes, or trinkets, that are not available
to the general public. Sometimes these tchotchkes are dispersed at
the E3 and reach a wider audience, but most often they are of limited
distribution. As you may imagine, adventure game tchotchkes are probably
the least distributed mainly due to the small amount of publications
that actually review adventure games and the cost of producing such
an exclusive item.

Over
the years I have collected numerous adventure related tchotchkes.
They range from game-related mousepads – Microid’s Road to India,
Cryo’s Odyssey and The New Adventures of the Time Machine
– to matchbooks from The Spacebar, an ornate Prince of Persia
3D letter-opener and even a theatre pass to an exclusive screening
of the Myst 3 trailer. Yet, intriguing as these may be, the
best is yet to come as I delve into my private collection to present
the “10 Best Adventure Game Tchotchkes of All-Time.”

Number
10