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Judging a Game By Its Cover
1up has up a piece looking at the good and bad of gaming boxart. They cover some history of the art form, why things tend to change when they move from East to West, and some notables among the boxes of the past twenty-five-odd years. From the article: "After the American console market crashed in the early '80s, it was up to Japanese companies like Sega and Nintendo to pick up the slack. However, the cover artwork for many Japanese publishers' early games seemed to be lost in translation. The first generation of Nintendo Entertainment System cartridges were little more than enlarged screenshots showing off the main characters in all their pixelated glory. Sega Master System games were even worse: a plain grid on a barren white background, complete with a single, low-quality image." Relatedly, GameDaily is running an article on the history of game marketing, which I thought dovetailed nicely with this somewhat less serious examination of the subject.
...the boobies.
EverQuest. WoW. And countless others.
I was really hoping this was a look at how the SCREENSHOTS often depicted on the front/back/inside flap of the box look nothing like one can get on a 3mo old gaming rig.
A great example of a game cover being lost in translation is Ico. First lets all go look at the japanese cover of the game.
Not bad eh? Okay are you ready for the american cover? I cringe every time I see it.
Dooom
Much more important: use screenshots that aren't from cutscenes.
Anytime I see a game using nothing but cutscene art I know the actual in game graphics will blow. Cutscenes aren't the game, and showing cutscenes is just pathetic.
At Tokyo Game Show this year the preview of the new Metal Gear game was one of the more crowded areas, but no one got to see what the game would look like. We saw an impressive CG movie with all sort of nifty looking stuff, but I have no idea what actual gameplay will look like. Metal Gear has a pretty good history, so I'm sure the actual gameplay might be good. I *hope* that when it comes out the box will show what the game really looks like.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
It is WIDELY known that all Metal Gear Solid games uses the in-game engine to render the cutscenes. It's been a 'trademark' of Kojima ever since MGS1. It's also been stated MANY times that all MGS4 footage is NOT CG. What was shown at E3 and TGS are all real-time in-engine running on the PS3.