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I'm sure this problem will sound familiar: You want to swap out some jewel cases for your (Japanese) PC Engine or Sega Saturn games, but the replacement cases you can buy at the usual online and brick & mortar electronics retailers are flimsy made-in-China trash with shitty molding that cracks the minute you try to take the CD tray out.

Anybody know where one can order the type of high quality (thick and sturdy) jewel cases that OEMs use?

depends on the qantity and the quality you really need.

If you just need a few in the very best quality to swap out your broken ones, get old stock CD-Rs, 10 packs. Made in Japan. They used REALLY high-grade cases. I bought 100 or so (TDK and Verbatim) not too long ago.

If you're OK with very good (but not perfect) quality, get a the 25-pcs packs from protected.de (7 EUR plus shipping). Next best thing and on par with what you would get from bigger manufacturing facilities today. Of course their cases have the two lines on the right (not the dots that easily damage manuals) and they have four instead of six manual holding taps. Definitely make good replacement cases. AND the top parts of their cases fit onto PCE HuCard cases - hardly any other jewel case tops do.

For single jewel cases Japanese/US PS1, Japanese/US Dreamcast games and Japanese Saturn games, you can just swap the jewel cases from CD-Rs, for US Sega Saturn/Sega CD, that's trickier, Limited Run Games, sold some Sega CD/Saturn replacement cases for US Sega Saturn/Sega CD cases in a pack of 10, but they were quite expensive with a very high shipping cost, I grabbed one just in case, but now they are sold out, there are some people selling them on ebay though for like around 150 bucks.

speaking of those, I was rather disappointed with the quality. They used rather soft plastic and the cases have a tremendous amount of ejection rings (from the moulding process), even directly on the front side. Yes, they're the best you can get (never got the other ones though which were available through a seller on Amazon.com), but they certainly could have done better.

Interesting, I remember one of the Limited Run Games guy on twitter saying that their cases were of the same quality as OEM cases (unlike the chinese ones you can get on ebay which are made from molds and hence do not have accurate measurements compared to OEM case), I got a 10 pack of the Limited Run Games here that I received a few months back, but haven't really looked at them to compare them to OEM cases.

I think their comments back then refered to the 1st shipment of replacement cases from that other manufacturer (don't recall the name right now), but from what I heard the 2nd shipment turned out a lot better.

The LRG cases aren't bad, don't get me wrong, and since there's nothing else available, it doesn't matter anyway. Just sayin's that they could have done a little better with the small details.

Yes indeed, this was a comment made when they opened the order for a shipment of 500 packs back in August




Oh Interesting I wasn't aware they used a different manufacturer for the 2 batches, I got the second batch shipment, which they shipped out in November or December




Still interesting info, I wasn't aware of any of it, so are you saying that they improved on the finer details in the second batch?

na, sorry, you misunderstood me (or I wasn't clear): all the LRG ones are identical, but the other manufacturer (VCG) did two runs and the first one wasn't great. And I think the comparisons made to LRG's units were based to that earlier cases. A year later there was 2nd run from VCG and it was a lot better than the first one.

Awesome, thanks so much for your help! What's your verdict on the CD trays that protected.de sells separately? It looks the clear ones resemble those a lot of Japanese DC games had.

They're perfectly alright.

So my replacement jewel cases from protected.de arrived. They’re noticably worse than OEM cases (a bit thinner and with moulding circles), but noticeably better than the cheapo replacements from stores. So I’d say they’re a decent and inexpensive compromise. I also found that they open a bit harder than original cases (say for Saturn) but somehow that’s not an issue on HuCards.

I ordered a couple of CD trays too, but I don’t like them. They do look like the ones in most Japanese DC games, but the discs are a lot harder to pull out.

Will try some NOS Japanese CD-Rs next and report my findings.

it's really the best you can find locally (well, maybe unless you take 8,000 pcs on a palette).


that probably comes down to the design of the holding mechanism in the middle of the tray. My best guess is that manufacturers wanted to differentiate from each other and went wild.

Let us know which CD-R brands you tried.

And what about the "fat" Saturn and Dreamcast cases? Anyone knows if these can actually be bought?

you mean the 14mm ones. Unfortuntely only in Japan.

Apparently those cases are officially called "medium jewel cases." I don't really know of any replacements, other than buying a really cheap new old stock game and swapping them out.

Here's a list of the Saturn games that are packaged this way:
https://www.satakore.com/jpnmediumcdcase.php

Not sure about DC. A couple of PCE and 3DO games have these cases too, actually.

If you are after the thicker cases for saturn and dreamcast you used to be able to buy them from Amazon Japan. Try searching for: "CDワイドプラケース"

This seller has some black tray one left in stock, I have not purchased so cannot vouch for quality: https://www.amazon.co.jp/（有）田口化成-CDワイドプラケース黒/dp/B00377NISE