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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."
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.
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
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.
Good post ....
Actually I loved all those quirks.
Two that I can remember:
In Triple Strike: If you got behind a cloud and could manage to hide but not stay straight horizontally, if you made it to the edge you'd have two planes when you came out the other side!
In Blackjack, if you followed your disk precisely horizontally with the dealer's eyes if he started to Shift them back and forth he'd throw you the Ace of spades on your discard deal.
That's one thing I love about what I mentioned in the parent. The Blue Sky Ranger newsletter is probably the only internet newsletter I subscribe to and read full through. It covers those quirks and the design and artwork of games each month I still enjoy playing all the games on my Mac through emulation.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny