Slashdot Mirror
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."
Having looked at the site before it gets slashdotted I'd like to comment on it.
All of the box he featured were from games from the 16-bit era, or earlier. Does this suggest that hideously bad box art is a dying trend? Off the top of my head, I can't think of any recent game that has had bad box art. Most box art today is spectacular, like for Warcraft 3.
Has anybody seen any recent (i.e. N64 / PSX and onward) games with bad box art? Maybe there was a few for the PSX / N64, but the latest consoles? It's hard to say, though recent Japanese games may have "wierd" box art.
Some may consider box art almost like garnish etc, on food, even though its not functional, it gives a better feel to the product.
Also a case like activision's sky jinks would discourage purchase. Still, you cant judge a book by its cover on old games, or you might miss some memorable gaming moments.
Indeed
How about the game that head the best looking box art but REALLY SUCKED when you played it?
Gorkman
I hope that the illustration of this game... was somehow misleading... o not so creative like their atari siblings... trying to capture the essence of this game in an image... may need help from the goat.cx photographer
No. Zero Wing had one fairly poorly translated scene. There are games that are FAR worse. If the worst you've seen is Zero Wing, consider yourself a non-gamer taken in by a pop-culture meme. And if you're looking for other top choices, as a rule of thumb, if you can hazard a single guess as to what it's supposed to mean, it won't make the top ten.
I think there should be a list for game packages that are way over dramatized compared to the game. You know what i mean. Those game art packages with some fancy oil painting while the actual game characters consist of 64x64 pixel drawings.
.smell my feet.
The Intellivision was a great game device (we were lucky enough to hve one.) For 2 player games (football /baseball/autoracing/ armor battle) it couldn't be beat.
I still have mine, and hook it up ocationally.
It had some problems though
The paddles had 16 directions (atari had eight). But those paddles could be hard on the thumbs.. And the buttons on the side of the paddles weren't great.
But it cost more than the atari, which didn't help.The games cost more. Also some where significantly more complicated (entering plays for fotball required reading the manual.) which made it harder for the real young kids. Also It came out later than the atari and had a smaller installed base.
I liiked it anyway..
Ultima VII:The Black gate.
The box was plain, deep Black with the gametitle in dark blue.
It was so radiant Black and opposing the screaming color schemes of other games in that time, it really stuck out.
Not to mention that U7 was one of the best RPG's ever made, and the black box foreshadowed the deep, dark and brooding storyline.
Intellivision had some weird overloading quirks.
:)
In Intellivision baseball, for instance, rotate your thumb rapidly clockwise (or maybe it was ccw) around the number pad while pressing the side buttons. If done right, your baserunner becomes semi-transparent (flicker) or even invisible and stays that way. Football had a similar quirk, but I don't remember it being very useful.
In the Triple Strike! tank battle, rotating the disc about 90 degrees rapidly (one screen edge to the other and back) in a corner and pressing buttons rapidly (press 2-3 at once with your thumb and rotate it across the pad) would cause your tank to float across the screen as a bulletproof flickering object. If timed right, you could stop the tank (reconstitute) in a wall by pressing a side button and be invincible because you could still shoot out, but couldn't be hit. I think I also could do something like this on the 2600 Combat, but it didn't leave you safe (you just drive into and through the wall to the other side).
In Astro...something... (the asteroids falling from space game), holding 9 or something like that (maybe the bottom row of buttons?) while clicking the lower right side button caused it to start in a slow-mode, so racking up 1 million points becomes much easier (there was a contest for doing this back in the 80s, where you send a photo of your screen with the high score, which was won with somebody who hit 2.? million). I racked up about 4 million that way, but never sent a screen shot in, since I knew I cheated (I also broke 1 million in a real game, but a while after the contest ended, and was about million off from the winner). Ah, the good ol' days
Football was basically a 2 or 3 play game when good players competed - the screen pass to the top of the screen, some other kind of pass that lined up like a screen (usually a bomb pass), and a 4-5 yd quick pass. If the opposing player judged which you were using wrong, it was pretty much instant 50yd gain on the screen or fake screen. There was only one defensive lineup that worked at all against the screen, but even that would usually give up 5-6 yds if played correctly and the opposing player didn't go for the sack or intercept (an intercept usually went for a touchdown on the screen).
...Zork was an early Infocom text-only adventure game, and was incredibly fun.
Well... it was fun once I figured out how to get past the ^%@*!$ rug.
push rug
shove rug
lift rug
roll rug
kick rug
burn rug
take rug [...GAAAAA!!!!]
move rug [...oh.]
Ah, my beloved Kaypro II. I still miss her.
Anyway, back to pretending I'm NOT really old. (Let's just say the crystal in the palm of my hand started blinking last year. Nothing to see here, move along...)