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15 Truly Hideous Examples of Game Box Art
We've discussed it before, but it's something that bears repeating: sometimes the art on game boxes just isn't very good. 1up has rounded up 15 examples of poor art direction for a smattering of games since the start of the hobby. They've taken some pains to avoid oft-repeated examples of this malady, and managed to remind me again of my favorite space shooter advertised by a man with a banjo. "E.T. The Extra Terrestrial : Interplanetary mission. (PS1) - This is not a game cover. This is what you see when you lose at Mystery Date. 'I got the Jock.' 'I got the Trust-Fund Brat.' 'I got the Elephant Man and a bouquet of alien flowers that laid eggs in my face.' The whole thing is creepy enough without actually commenting on E.T's robot stalker friend hiding in the distance. There's something to be learned here for future game-cover artists: Don't bother actually filling in your backgrounds. That way the cover can double as a superfun coloring book for the kids."
I'm surprised they left the Xbox remake of bomberman off the list. How many people did that box art let down? I suppose from an artistic standpoint it wasn't so bad, but it was totally misleading.
Some publishers seem to not understand the relationship between packaging and sales. If you look at a game that was given shelf space but then proceeded to fail spectacularly, it usually has stupid box art and badly done screen-shots. I have worked in games and this has become a peeve of mine, you do everything you can slaving to make the best possible game, and then the publisher creates the one thing it is responsible for: the box the game goes in, and turns out some embarrassing little surprise. Gamers do "judge the book by it's cover."
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
as much as I personally loved the box art (and that I'd have bought the game even if it had come in a blank cardboard box) I've heard many times that it was one of the reasons why the game didn't sell as well as it could (I bet that if they had put Fall From Grace on the box sales would've easily been 2x...)
-- the cake is a lie
I guess this is where I complain about Quake3. I mean, id had the gall to rush it out the door for pre-orders to be delivered by Christmas (not a big dealie to me, but I'm sure to at least a few others), and they sent the darn CD and key in a plain white cardboard CD mailer. The gall! Plain white!
Of course, a few weeks later they realized the erros of their ways and sent me the l33t tin edition of Q3A for Linux....
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
also - the Castlevania cover art was A PICTURE OF THE COVER ART! That's what was ridiculous about it - the first cover was an excuse to put "konami's best" on it - but then the innner graphic wasn't just the cover graphic - it was a direct picture of the non-konami's best cover. It even had the T for teen rating twice.