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Celebrating Bad Game Packaging Art
May Kasahara writes "Recently, I discovered The Gallery of Hideous Box Art, a collection of some of the worst illustrations ever to grace video game packaging. Many of the entries compare the US cover artwork to the (superior) Japanese ones; in some cases, comparisons with screenshots are also made. Come browse through the annals of video-game-artwork badness, from Strider on through to Wonder Boy III."
some of them aren't too bad. they look pretty anime-ey, but they aren't too shabby at all.
The only real dying trend showcased in this site is that of quality games (except for Rival Turf). I'd still rather have a kick-ass game than the shit they're pumping out today with nice box art on it.
One more generation after EverQuest II, and it might look as good as the box.
Incidentally, the new black on dark blue Slashdot theme looks terrible. The black border around the page doesn't help, either, although that may be due to weak support for Mozilla.
Back then, cover art was relegated to the airbrush drawings that artists came up with because nobody would dare put a screenshot of an 8x8 sprite on the box. These days, games are so good looking that actual screenshots are often times better than most artwork you could come up with.
I don't know how others make purchasing decisions, but if I see a game box without screenshots I say away from it. I want to see how the game looks as it will appear on my computer, not some Photoshopped, airbrushed to death artist's rendition of how they think it ought to have looked. Give me screenshots over "artwork" any day of the week!
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I have to disagree with this one, and present in evidence the words of the caretaker at my old school:
"I prefer radio to television, because the pictures are better."
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.