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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."
Linked to on Slashdot's frontpage... I smell disaster.
some of them aren't too bad. they look pretty anime-ey, but they aren't too shabby at all.
Does Windows XP constitute as a game because I hate its art. I also kind of hate it.
While I wouldn't say it was hideous, this definitely seems to be the time to bring up the original box art for Wizards and Warriors 2: Ironsword, for the NES.
Why? Well, for no other reason than that that is, in fact, the one and only Fabio, in silly costume, portraying the main character.
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.
ah - I hadn't yet got to Rival Turf -- that is pretty bloody shocking.
http://kidfenris.com/wbface.gif
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Megaman? I mean it's one thing to make bad box art for a bad game (read: rival turf), but Megaman was a classic.. and the cover art, well .. check it out:
ack!
"Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness." --Eric Blair
Ack! Square
NAPOLEON AT BAY
Grandia
Astal
Alpha
Guardian Heroes
Hard Battle
G1 series-1
X-Men COTA
That's just the smell of a server melting under a Slashdotting.
(Weeps into hands)
Indeed
has a character that looks like Rosie O Donnel with a sword.
(AHHHHrrgh!)
Man, they just don't make art like that anymore. Does anyone have Starpath art online anywhere? Revenge of the MindMaster and Communist Mutants from Outer Space featured some pretty strange (but cool to me) cover art.
Blogging because I can...
I wonder if Tycho was thinking about this when he said that...
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that games for the BBC microcomputer had some of the worst cover images around. Looking back to Barbarian II (love the boobs!), Frak!, or even Spycat brings back disturbingly nightmarish images from my childhood.
Ladies, form queue here -->
How about the game that head the best looking box art but REALLY SUCKED when you played it?
Gorkman
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.
Surely not as hideous as slashdot's classic games colour scheme eh?
Ceci n'est pas une
don't forget this gamespy article.
They should write an article about bad translations in video games. Zero Wing would certainly be #1.
Homestarrunner.net -- It's Dot Com!
The overlay art on some of the Intellivision game controllers was well thought out and designed too.
Never understood why kids didn't like that about the Intellivision over the Atari - guess it's the same reason people buy Macs & PCs - Macs are superior in just about every way - as far connectivity, design, and interface, yet the crowd goes to what Dick & Jane have.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Definitely Zork. Great cover art, but the in-game graphics sucked.
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(For the humor-impaired: Zork was an early Infocom text-only adventure game, and was incredibly fun. Zork is probably older than most of the people who are reading this, which makes me feel thirty-one flavors of Geezer.)
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.
Check out Gamespy's list of Top 10 Worst Box Covers in their Humor section.
I remember Miner 2049er had particularly crappy art:
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Image here
(http://www.mutantes.com.ar/images/miner%202049
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
Every time someone mentions Fabio, I remember this episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000, where in the invention excange segment, there was a Fabio kit.
Went kinda like:
Fabio...Fabio...Fabio...Yes we're all Fabio, and you can be Fabio too, with our excluse Fabio kit. Comes with blah blah blah...
Crow and Tom Servo in horrid blonde wigs with carboard pecs taped to thier bodies...
oh god...I can't stop laughing...
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
... the worst cover art I've ever seen is this.
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
Isn't that the exact same expression as the Sta-Puff Marshmallow Man?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
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
Yeah, I have to agree that the "404 Not Found" box cover art is pretty hideous as well.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
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 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.
From GameSpy
Since older videogames had relatively simple graphics, box art artists often had to "embellish" and conjure up visions of what they imagined the game would look like if the creators had more than 16k of memory to work with.
Unfortunately, the guy who did the artwork for the Atari Computer port of Pac-Man envisioned Pac-Man as a buck-toothed, Frisbee eating, washed-up marathon runner with high socks who lived in a castle.
There's a rumor that a live-action Pac-Man movie may be in the works, but it won't be nearly as good as my version. If I directed the film, Pac-Man would be an unemployed guy in a yellow suit who lives in a dirty apartment and verbally abuses his wife (Mrs. Pac-Man). At the beginning of the film, Mrs. Pac-Man leaves Pac-Man for Dig Dug ("At least that way I'll get a good pumping every once in awhile," she'll say) and Pac-Man soon spirals deep into a crippling "power pellet" addiction. To make matters worse, the ghosts buy Pac-Man's apartment complex and threaten to evict him. Pac-Man is powerless to stop the ghosts, so he gets chased from his home and ends up chomping up marbles on the street. Eventually, he starts having seizures due to pellet withdrawal and ends up in rehab. He's cured and released, but ends up overdosing on power pellets, bursting into the landlord's office, and eating all the ghosts to death. Then Pac-Man goes on trial for murder and it's really dramatic.
Hollywood will no doubt steal my brilliant story idea. Just you wait.
Not as good as that "Cock'em", I'll admit. That's downright creepy.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
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..
looks like they not only took down that page that got ./ed, but also the rest of the site as well. none of google's links seem to be working.
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.
... it's not funny. ;)
No, seriously, I think (hope) that Zork is enough a part of computer lore that most (even younger) geeks would at least KNOW of it, having heard legend of these text-based adventure games back in the day.
These games boxes don't have a thing on Taiwanese motherboard boxes. If you want to talk about cheesey artwork, they're untouchable.
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You bastards!
Since I first saw it in a game magazine a while back I've been thinking that Everquest Online Adventures might just be the worst cover art in the past 5 years (if not more!). See here.
Dead Slashdot, I found the coolest site in the entire world. Please, post it for millions to see and click on and drive into the ground so the site that gave me some enjoyment can be completely wiped off the face of the internet in a few moments. Thank you!
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).
Should at least give them a warning, something like:
"Dear X,
Today, *you* have been chosen for the daily trample-fest that is slashdot.
You webserver will melt at T minus 10
Thankyou"
h
To sig or not to sig, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in the CPU to suffer the links and melted server of a bloody slashdotting or would rather those snot-nosed comments bear.
Patriotism is a virtue of the vicious
The screenshots you see on boxes are edited 99% of the time, so you might as well include them under the heading of box art. A friend of mine made decent money doing this for a well known company on a very well known game that was released recently. If you really want to see how a game looks, your best bet is to look up screen shots on gaming sites since they are supposed to be unaltered. Much like how game commercials these days show nothing but FMV and no in-game shots, game companies want the box to look as attractive as possible, so screenshots are included as part of the marketing package.
"What can a thoughtful man hope for mankind on Earth, given the experience of the past million years? Nothing." -Bokonon
http://www.back2roots.org/View/Strider%20Advert%2C 1
I see 57005 people