With a pickup of a near mint copy of Casino Games, I’ve become (re)obsessed with Australian soft box Master System games.
This is purely nostalgia, because these were how the first ever games I played at home were presented, in ‘VHS clamshell’ style puffy plastic cases.
The Australian distributor for Sega were a company called Ozisoft, who were notoriously cheap. To save money they got the inserts and carts and manuals sent from Japan, but sourced cases locally from the lowest bidder, and you end up with these soft box variants of some games.
Regular cases were also used at various points in Australia so it was pretty randomised which version you could end up with. Originally these were generally considered the inferior versions to the hard plastic case releases, due to them being, well, inferior versions.
However these days the soft boxes are really hard to find in good condition, because they crush so easily most were destroyed or damaged over the years. So I grab nice condition ones when I see them cheap.
For more info on Ozisoft and Sega in Australia I’d recommend reading various items on Retro Gaming Australia, which isn’t updated anymore but has a lot of good info recorded about the Australian market.
Nintendo Sega Japan! 