Little Big Planet Ultimate Combo Pack

A box with a game and a controller inside it shouldn't be this collectible, but here we are. The Little Big Planet Ultimate Combo Pack for Playstation 3 bundles the Game of the Year Edition of Little Big Planet with a DualShock 3 controller, all packaged together in a cardboard box. No charge cable included, because the PS3 era was wild like that.

What makes this combo pack interesting from a collector's perspective is its sheer practicality turned relic. This was a product designed to get new players into the Little Big Planet ecosystem with everything they needed, and that utilitarian purpose means most of these were opened, used, and eventually separated. Finding one complete and intact, with the GOTY edition and the controller still together in the original box, takes real effort.

The Game of the Year Edition itself includes all the DLC and updates that made Little Big Planet a genre-defining creative platform, and the bundled DualShock 3 adds a hardware element that bumps this beyond a standard game release. Hardware bundles from the PS3 era occupy a weird and wonderful space in collecting. They're too niche for mainstream attention but too interesting to ignore for anyone serious about documenting the console's retail history. The Ultimate Combo Pack is one of those pieces that tells a story about how games were sold and marketed in the disc-based era, and that context gives it a charm that only grows with time.