Mega Man 1 (North America), Mega Man 2 (Europe) and Mega Man 9

They say you can’t judge a book by its cover but damn if it doesn’t influence people buying video games. I once watched a woman in an EB pick up a copy of American McGee’s Alice for her daughter because she “liked the box art.”

So Continuous Fire is doing one of THESE, I’m certain this sort of article has been done to death but we’re going to try and avoid your Phalanxes, Cosmic Fantasy 2’s and Suikodens.

That said I don’t think any list can exist without at least MENTIONING Mega Man 1. It’s a notorious example of how a terrible piece of box art can affect game sales, as Mega Man failed to garner a good audience until after Mega Man 2 sold well and people were thinking “eh? There was a number 1?”

However few ever bring up the absolutely dreadful Mega Man 2 Europe box art, with Mega Man sporting the best long sleeve blue tees under his armour! And while the Mega Man 9 cover is INTENTIONALLY bad (Ninja Wily! Buzz Saw Robot! TWO GUNS!) we here at the Player Inventory don’t deal in irony, so on it goes too.

Karnaaj Rally

Seriously, this looks like the work of someone who did an intro to Photoshop tutorial they found on Google. Note the palette swapped hair, cheesy motion blur effect on the car and wavy checkered flag background.

Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom

I was going to say something it was a silly concept to make a game featuring living talking vegetables and then making the box art out of models of said character from the Dollar Store, but damn those Christian kids love their Veggitales. Maybe this game was ahead of its time!

Trouble Shooter

The amount of perceived xenophobia from video games early days is borderline silly now that we’ve ultimately embraced Japanese culture over here. I don’t I ever knew a kid that didn’t know that a good majority of video games during that era were made in Japan but hell considering most box art choices you’d think the publishers were making a strong case to convince us otherwise.

Vic Tokai then decides that for Trouble Shooter the big-eyes-small-mouth anime babes wouldn’t fly over here so they replaced them with Olivia Newton John wannabes. Yeah, that’ll get the kids to buy your game!

Taking it to the Hoop

He sure is!

Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2: Turbo

Outside of the realm of the actual game itself the Street Fighter series has gone through terrible phases of poor marketing. To me it seems odd because it’s like a no brainer; promote Ken and Ryu. But taking a look at various toys, comics and two movies people seem to NOT want to do this. Why?

Poor rendering aside the original Street Fighter 2 cover does have Ryu on it… getting his ass kicked by perennial third string character Blanka while Chun Li kicks at him when really she should be using those pointy tits of hers to poke out ol’ jungle boys eyes out.

Street Fighter 2 Turbo doesn’t get much better. I totally get why Sagat is on the cover; it’s a good way to show “hey guys you can use the bosses now.” While his face of indifference is a bit of a problem my real complaint is WHY IS HE FIGHT E.HONDA? Can you choose a bigger supporting cast loser? And why is sumo buddy wearing a picnic blanket anyways?

Pulse Racer

Released in 2003, cover art deigned in 1983

Rival Turf, Brawl Brothers, Tuff E Nuff

Jaleco is the king of bad cover art (note, 5 Jaleco titles made this list and I didn’t even notice till I started writing this up!) and while modern efforts have been poor it’s Jaleco’s 16 bit efforts that provide the most entertainment.

Rival Turf proves that it took a long time for people to purge the 80’s from their system. Is that Ralph Machio, the Karate Kid, on there? Further more Brawl Brothers looks somewhat pedestrian at first glance, but look a little closer and you’ll notice the half and half fused man that is suppose to represent both protagonist! Finally there’s Tuff E Nuff, asking if you’re enough of a man to handle poor spelling..

Anticipaction

I’ve played Anticipaction and I probably had about only a tenth of as much fun as these clowns seem to be having.

Left 4 Dead, The Orange Box

I remember working my way through the commentary nodes for Left 4 Dead and found the whole game creation process fascinating. However I had to laugh at how they felt the Left 4 Dead cover was “iconic” and “worked well at conveying the concept of the game.” Really, because your thumb is often bitten off during Left 4 Dead gameplay? What’s sad is there’s so much great concept art for the game, but instead Valve went for the “shock factor” hand that ends up getting censored in foreign markets.

Though really Valve has had a history of terrible box art back from the old Half Life days and its numerous add ons, expansions and spin offs. When the Orange Box was released last year many non gamers were wondering what the hell this game even was. What do nerd man, the toilet sign guy and cartoony fatso have in common? It didn’t help that Valve also decided to use a packaging level wall of text to describe everything to consumers.

Guitar Hero World Tour

Far be it for me to call Activision greedy, I mean video games get made to make money after all, but the utter laziness in the Guitar Hero World Tour cover is astounding. Actually getting worse than the Guitar Hero 3 cover (featuring slut whore Judy Nails and Slash after a Krispy Kreme bender) we get a bright orange gradient background and a bunch of faceless duded TOTALLY ROCKING THE FUCK OUT ensuring that in the end nothing from those two all important words that will really impact the buyers decision: GUITAR HERO. I’ll say this, its good Activision to give the iPod guys a new gig after Apple unceremoniously dumped them.

Picross DS, Crush

Box art for puzzle games have always been notoriously bad. How do you show off the gameplay without it being a total bore? Unfortunately Picross DS plays it to close to the true nature of the game, whereas Crush goes full bore with trying to make its game look exciting and only succeeds in creeping the ever loving shit out of me.

Samurai Showdown

Because when I first saw Haohmaru I totally thought he looked like Charlie Sheen with a Billy Ray Cyrus mile high mullet.

Jewel Master

Watch as I stop the Beast of Indifference with my rings of garishness!

My Hero

What caused Nintendo to win the 8 bit war uncontested? While many fingers will be pointed at various factors I say Box Art is the clear reason. Compared to the awesomely pixelicious “standard” box art of the early Nintendo games the Sega Master system “grind and a stupid illustration” concept doesn’t scream exciting. While most bring up pro wrestling as the ultimate offender (with good reason) My Hero wins my vote. That punk is TOTALLY faking a knockout from that whiffed punch.

Kid Kool and the Quest for the Seven Wonder Herbs

It would take Seven Wonder Herbs to even figure out what the fuck is going on here. And why is that lizard humping Kid Kool’s leg?

Sonic Blast Man

“Don’t worry hookers; Sonic Blast Man is here to save you in this suit I made in my mom’s basement!”

Burn Cycle

Burn Cycle, probably the only CD-I game worth the CD it was burned onto, has cover art that aptly depicts the phases of emotion your average CD-I owner went through.

Phase 1: Absolute elation that you finally got a nifty game console

Phase 2: Realizing that this isn’t much of a game console at all, your pain and anger mix to create a disgusting seething reaction

Phase 3: Embarrassment to the point of wanting to hide your visage from public

Bubble Bobble Revolution

This is sort of the reverse of the late 80’s early 90’s trend, where instead of disregarding the aesthetic value of the original Japanese art and replaces it with a garish westernized version of it they decided to try to recreate it, poorly. Made even perplexing by the fact that when Bubble Bobble was released on the NES they actually got it right the first time!