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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.
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
(Weeps into hands)
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.
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.
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..
These games boxes don't have a thing on Taiwanese motherboard boxes. If you want to talk about cheesey artwork, they're untouchable.