Why album covers are square but game covers aren’t?
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Before the CD most music album covers were square to fit nicely around a vinyl record so all the artwork were square. Granted the artwork made for compact cassettes were rectangular but with a very high aspect ratio. So the music CD album covers were usually made square around the CD so they could reuse the artwork from the vinyl records.
Similarly a lot of game artwork were made for square boxes around the cartridges. But there were a major difference between music and games. Music formats were all standardized. All CD players could play all CDs. But for games there were a huge difference in the consoles, so this had to be clearly marked on the box. And people wanted the consoles with the most games so the console manufacturers wanted games shelves full of their logo on all the games. So they demanded that games all had a big logo on them with the console both on the front and on the spine. And they all had to be the same format so they could be neatly stacked on shelves. To fit square artwork on a box with a huge banner over it they went for a rectangular box. This also made it fit more neatly into book shelves. So while music shops had to build new shelves for CDs the computer shops just bought standard bookshelves, or more likely used the ones from the bookshop that just went bust in the mall where they opened.
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