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."

Comments

What no bomberman?

[beef623]

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.

Been there, done that...

[Red Samurai]

Before you jaded Internet soldiers say it, yes, this has been done. Every website and its incestuous sister-daughter-wife has one of these worst-covers lists, including us now.

Just because they acknowledge it, that doesn't mean they should go ahead and do it anyway.

this has been a peeve of mine for a while now

[acidrain]

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."

Re:this has been a peeve of mine for a while now

[raddan]

It's funny. Now that I think of it, one of my favorite games of all time, Starflight II, had great box art. I bought the game simply because I loved the original game; no thought as to the artwork. But I do remember how intensely the pictures captured my imagination on the long car ride home from the store in the back of the family minivan (I lived in the boonies of Maine at the time). In fact, when I pictured what my own crew looked like, I pictured the crew shown on the cover.

Of course one of my other favorite games, Spaceward Ho!... not so good. IIRC, the "packaging" was photocopied (which explains why I can't find an example on the web). The game itself was fantastic.

Where is Planescape:Torment?

[MarcoAtWork]

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...)

Quake3...

[i.r.id10t]

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....

The best this, the worst that...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

What is the matter with the /. editors? These lists are content free. They're just a way to organise non-information, which you'll forget after about 5 minutes, in such a way that you have to click on a long sequence of pages, exposing you to as much advertising as possible. They are almost the lowest form of journalism. Given that there are many of millions of people out there in the tech world, many of whom are smart and interesting and working hard on cool stuff, surely there's something better to post than this drivel?

Re:The best this, the worst that...

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Said 1019680 to 613870.

Wow, What a crappy article.

[The Rizz]

This was a just plain bad article. Uninspired, filled with lame jokes, and with no real objectivity to it.

There were quite a few really crappy box art examples in there, yes, but there were others that got in there pretty much because the author didn't like the style the artist used. Hell, this article actually said on two of the entries, "my editor made me put this in here." Lame, lame, lame.

This has also been said before:

[pissedoffamerican]

5 pounds of shit does not need to be put into a 20 pound bag. (I know they like ad revenue, but geez...)

Re:Uncle Joey on Strider box

[anakin876]

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.

More bad artwork?

[Dogtanian]

Sheesh, some of the early 8-bit artwork from small British companies wasn't that hot. I could probably get some of those old "Your Computer" magazines I got from my Dad, and scan a few examples from them, but I'm too lazy. :-)

This Timeslip budget reissue cover is actually a later example, but it's still quite bad; it looks like they got a child from secondary school on work experience to do it.

Again, Misleading Headline

[Enderandrew]

There are plenty of articles depicting poor box-art.

This article however if you read it was fairly interesting in comparing America, European and Japanese box-art for various games, and showing how those changes came about. You can observe evolving changes and cultural differences.

The article covers both the good and bad, and certainly isn't simply a list of poor covers.