Game.Box.Art

Okami Cover Art Marred by Ad

2008-04-17T11:00:00.005-05:00

Rawmeat Cowboy over at GoNintendo picked up his copy of Okami at his local Gamestop yesterday (that was his first mistake) and was dismayed to find that underneath the cellophane, which has a sticker proudly displaying the game's "A" rating from 1up.com, is another rating, a 9.5 from Play magazine, printed directly on the artwork. Here's what it looks like with the cellophane on:

and off:

Why would they do that when you've already purchased the game if you're removing the cellophane? Well, Capcom is obviously aware of Gamestop's policy of not displaying sealed copies on the sales floor. They remove the game from the case (discarding the shrink wrap) and place a price sticker directly on the box to prevent theft. Because removing the shrink wrap also means the sticker is gone, Capcom has to print it directly on the artwork to insure it gets its message across. Just another reason why Gamestop sucks.

I don't know if this only applies to copies of the game sold at Gamestop, but I doubt Capcom made an alternate version just for them.

If it helps sell some extra copies to people who may have otherwise passed it by, that's a good thing in any case, but people really need to stop shopping at Gamestop. Just go to Best Buy, they'll have 10 times the amount of copies and won't get pissed at you if you don't reserve stuff.

[via GoNintendo]

Collector's Edition Round Up

2008-04-17T09:37:00.009-05:00

Some publishers have practically made an art out of putting together the most pointless "Collector's Edition" versions of their games to get you to shell out an extra $10 with as little cost to them as possible. The recent Rainbow Six Vegas 2 LE comes with a poker chip keychain, which is the kind of thing you'd expect to get for free with your pre-order, and that's about it as far as tangible goodies go. The rest are videos included on a bonus disc. Wow. And the cover art is lame. It's certainly a contender for worst Limited Edition ever.

$70 LE's are increasingly becoming a thing of the past however. The new trend is to charge $20 extra or more for the Collector's Editions to make them a little more attractive, especially when it's a AAA title people have been waiting ages for. Halo 3 of course had its Legendary Set which featured a Master Chief helmet for its packaging and cost an absurd $130. Within a month Amazon was clearing the things out for $60.

Then you've got the GTAIV LE which is actually a decent set at $89.99. The game itself comes in a black metal safe deposit box emblazoned with the GTAIV logo, complete with working lock and keys hanging from a special Rockstar keychain. The lockbox also houses a soundtrack sampler CD (meh) and a very classy GTAIV artbook, which looks like it may be a little light content wise.

All of THAT comes in a special black Rockstar DUFFEL BAG. It looks surprisingly nice and Rockstar's logo is so simple (the R with a star next to it) that you could actually use the bag without feeling like a dork. Just writing this is making me want it and my plan has been to Gamefly GTAIV and return it when I'm done (which is pretty much what I do with every game now).

Seeing all these expensive editions, Konami wanted to get in on the action, so they produced their own $85 version of Metal Gear Solid 4, the most highly anticipated PS3 exclusive yet. Thing is, they remembered to jack up the price but forgot to put anything worthwhile into the set. It has a bonus Blu-ray disc with not one, but TWO "making of" features you'll never watch, as well as a soundtrack CD. That's it. Not even a pack of MGS4 cigarettes. Oh, and the cover art is better. At $70 it would be a weak special edition. At $85 it has crossed over into "what the hell were they thinking" territory. Anyone who buys this turd deserves to be robbed at gunpoint. The robber needs the money more than you do. He has a family.

Also, keep in mind that a Director's Cut of MGS4 (you know, like MGS2:Substance and MGS3:Subsistence before it) is pretty much a certainty for next year and it'll probably have its own LE version. I bet they'll call it MGS4: Subservience.

The latest game to join the "enhanced collector's edition" club is Bethesda's long awaited Fallout 3. Just announced last week, it will contain a "nearly 100 page" artbook, a bobblehead figure of the iconic Vault Boy, and a Making of Fallout 3 disc, all housed in an awesome "Vault-Tec" lunch box for $80. Not a bad deal considering all that extra stuff will make it more expensive to ship. The MGS4 LE certainly doesn't have that excuse and it's still more expensive than Fallout's.

I would've preferred a Vault Tec thermos to go in the lunch box, but Vault Boy actually works pretty well as a bobblehead.

[Fallout Image Stolen from Kotaku]

Bioshock Regular Edition Cover

2007-06-07T15:10:00.000-05:00

This cover just screams out, "Buy me, or I'm gonna punch you in your face right in front of this little girl!"

Games like this make me wonder if regular edition box art is purposely made to look lame in order to encourage people to buy the Limited Edition.

I mean, come on. Bioshock is one of the best looking games ever made, with an umistakable art style, and they slap a goofy looking Big Daddy in an awkward pose on the cover. Does he really need to be throwing a punch at the person holding the game? It looks more like he's holding his fist out, waiting to be acknowledged with a little return fist punch. That's how Big Daddy rolls. Don't leave him hanging now...

Personally, I think people might be disappointed when they find out you don't get to play as Mr. Driller's misunderstood sibling, punching anyone who tries to get near his Little Sister.

That'd be a cool twist in Bioshock, if there was a hidden mode where you get to play as one of those drill handed muh-fuh's. I probably wouldn't punch guys so much though, seeing as I've got a 4 foot drill mounted on my other arm.

Shadowrun 360 & PC

2007-05-29T16:20:00.000-05:00

Shadowrun is an interesting case not because it is a particularly good cover or even because the PC version is different from the 360 version. What's odd is that they're different while being almost exactly the same. I'm not sure why Microsoft decided to make the cover art different for the different platforms but having it be the same exact design just with slightly variant art makes it even stranger.

I assume it's supposed to symbolize the PC/360 cross platform play as the guy with the sword on the 360 box looks like he's the guy with the shotgun in the bottom corner of the PC box. Likewise, the guy with the shotgun on the 360 box is the guy with the sword on the PC box.

I'm thinking, either way, that guy with the sword is screwed.

Bioshock LE Cover/Contest Winner Revealed

2007-05-18T15:16:00.000-05:00

Bioshock publisher 2K Games recently enlisted (read: bribed) fans on its Cult of Rapture community site to design the cover of the Bioshock Limited Edition for them. I can't blame them, that's more time they have to play the game! Thousands entered, but only a few won.

Without further ado here are the three winners:

3rd Place(Alun Bestor)

Not too shabby, but certainly a little too abstract. I'm not sure if that symbol has any significance in the game but it seems kind of random to make the focus of a box cover. It also looks unfinished, with nothing going on in the periphery of the cover. That said, still better than anything that I would've designed, especially if the symbol was created by this guy.

2nd Place (Jason Montgomery)

Wow. Now THAT is a nice design. It completely incorporates the art deco style so prominent in the game itself and just overall looks awesome. I love how it features the image of the city from the logo and depicts Rapture as it was no doubt originally conceived, as a beacon of light. This guy definitely put some thought and creativity into his design. Congratulations on winning Jason, I can't wait to bring this bad boy home! Wait...what's that? This isn't the winner? You mean, there's a cover better than this? Well alright then, bring it on!

1st Place (i.e. what you'll be bringing home on August 22nd) (Adam Meyer)

Alright, I'm ready, where's the cover that's better than the 2nd place entry? Oh, I see, it's inside this envelope with the logo on it, cool!

Hey, this isn't an envelope...

Oh. This is the winner. No, no, it's cool. See, it's got the logo and...umm, the logo. Damn, that's a nice looking logo.

In all fairness, this design looks the most producable out of the three finalists and the 2nd place design didn't feature the logo at all (even though the entire design is inspired by it). It's not bad by any means, just compared to the 2nd place entry it's not even in the same league.

Here's to hoping Jason Montgomery's design gets used somewhere in the packaging, perhaps on the back of the case or at least the cover of the instruction manual.

What they should do is use Jason's design as the etching on the metal case and put Adam's logo on the slip case. Bam. Problem solved, everyone wins. Well, except the third place guy. I'm sure he'll try harder next time.

The Cult of Rapture via Kotaku

Big Brain Academy Wii Degree

2007-04-20T16:30:00.000-05:00

Now this is more like it, US and Japanese box art that couldn't be more different right down to the different names. My Japanese is only advanced enough that I can read the hiragana (which is in romaji underneath it anyway) not understand what it means, but I'm guessing Wii de Yawaraka Atama Juku doesn't translate to Big Brain Academy Wii Degree.

The first thing that comes to mind is: What is up with Nintendo of Japan and yellow box art lately? Regardless, the Japanese design looks nicer, particularly the images of the puzzles in the background. The US box art is way too goofy and slapped together looking (as most US box art usually is). I'm not a big fan of Mii's either and the Japanese version doesn't make them the main focus.

It's interesting that this game is being branded with the Touch Generations logo in the States. So far, Touch Generations has been used exclusively for Nintendo's DS games that appeal to everyone and focus on touch screen use. Perhaps we'll see a Waggle Generations line of games in the Wii's future.

Also of note is the "Game Experience May Change During Online Play" on the US box, indicating previously unannounced online play. I can only imagine the kind of smack talk one might hear after a particularly rousing match of "Count the Boxes".

Super Paper Mario

2007-04-05T02:49:00.000-05:00

Super Paper Mario just might be one of those rare cases where the American box art is actually superior to the Japanese design. Not that the Japanese cover is bad by any means but the US art is a bit more cohesive and decidely less...yellow. The US cover also incorporates the "into-the-screen" 3D aspect of the game into its design, which is a nice touch.

I do like the strange fellow peeking out from the flap in the corner of the Japanese cover though...

I also find it interesting that every character on the Japanese cover, including the butterfly, is facing the opposite direction on the US cover. It's like whoever was in charge of the US box art had to make it as different from the Japanese cover as possible.

GTAIV fake box art...

2007-02-12T18:51:00.000-05:00

I wouldn't normally post fan made box art but this one is pretty funny. It never ceases to amaze me how some of these things get passed off as legit for as long as they do (that is to say: at ALL).

Unless Elisha Cuthbert, Vin Diesel, and Michael Madsen(?) are not only doing voices for GTAIV but actually lending their likenesses to it(I must've missed that press release!), then you've gotta believe it's a fake.

Source: Grand Theft Auto IV Box Shot - Real or Not? - IGN PS3

Crackdown vs. Riot Act

2007-02-01T20:07:00.000-05:00

The localization process for a game sometimes brings about more than just a change in cover art for a game and this is evident in Crackdown's localization for Japan, although being renamed Riot Act sounds more like a trademark issue than a localization issue.

The anime style art on the Riot Act cover is definitely an attempt to make the game more appealing to a Japanese audience even though the in-game graphic style is better reflected on the Crackdown cover.

I can't say I'm overly fond of either cover and there's definitely not a clear winner in this case. The anime characters of Riot Act seem to have more personality but the main guy is just so goofy looking it brings the whole thing down. The US cover is way too inspired by the Grand Theft Auto covers for it's own good but I'm sure that's intentional. The game itself is inspired by GTA so they might as well ape it's box art too.

White Knight Story Art

2007-01-31T17:36:00.000-05:00

Kotaku's Luke Plunkett is a man after my own heart, getting excited over newly released concept art for Level 5's upcoming PS3 RPG, White Knight Story. I've never gotten excited over screenshots of games even back in the days when video wasn't prevalent on the intertrons, and nowadays, hell if I've seen a video I've seen a shit ton of screenshots as far as I'm concerned. Actual art though, now that's what warms the cockles of my heart. The bread and butter of good box art is good concept art (character designs in particular) so this sort of thing is fair game here on Game.Box.Art.

The game itself looks pretty damn sweet and if you haven't seen the trailer yet, do it now, I'll be here when you get back.

Not bad, right? That's another game to add to your list of drool-worthy PS3 games that MAY come out in the US in 2008. Sony actually was pushing Level 5 to get the game out for launch but the developer thankfully told Sony (who is ponying up the dough for the game which will therefore be PS3 exclusive) to go to hell as they don't plan on compromising their vision for the game....

A vision which apparently includes giant eight-legged city-bearing uber-turtles, of which I am a huge fan. That dude in the image isn't even concerned; Wanderer from Shadow of the Colossus has nothing on this guy.

I think the entire world seen in Shadow of the Colossus could actually fit on that turtle's back.

Note to Level-5: I will be tremendously disappointed if I don't get to climb that turtle.

Source: Gallery: Gorgeous White Knight Concept Art - Kotaku

Mass Effect cover revealed.

2007-01-24T02:40:00.000-05:00

There's still no release date but "final" box art is a good indication that the game may actually see release before the summer.

I'm not thrilled with the design, it screams "Bad Sci-Fi Novel". In particular, the focus on the "main character" is kind of silly as the game let's you choose how the main character looks and even whether it's a man or woman. So just slapping some generic dude on there, flanked by two much more interesting characters, is not ideal. It would make a world of difference to at least give the guy some personality. It looks like they just photo-shopped in a character design that was probably used internally to demonstrate what the character looked like in that armor. The female on the right is in essentially the same position.

I'll be interested to see what this game's cover looks like when it hits Japan as they don't tend to use covers which are just mish mashes of pre-existing artwork.

And I've never been a fan of the logo, it's way too plain.

Final Fantasy VI through the years...

2007-01-20T19:51:00.000-05:00

Final Fantasy VI is one of my favorite games of all time and undoubtedly my favorite Final Fantasy game. This release is interesting as this is the first time in the US that the game is being released, by itself, as Final Fantasy VI. The original SNES release was known as Final Fantasy III since the true FF's II, III and V were never released here originally and IV was released as FFII. As a result we get something we've never had before : Final Fantasy VI box art!

I've got to give SquareEnix credit for not ruining the box art of the SNES ports as the US releases have arguably been superior or at least equally as good as the Japanese releases. This is usually not the case with FF games.

In fact the only thing really bringing the US box art down is the obnoxious Game Boy Advance logo Nintendo of America slaps on every GBA box which squeezes the art space down to nothing. Japanese GBA games come in awesome little thin boxes without any such distractions. I prefer the art on the US version a little bit but both covers are nice. You really can't go wrong with Yoshitaka Amano artwork and usually the only Amano artwork seen on US covers is each games unique logo, which is always designed by Amano.

Much like GBA games, the boxes for Japanese Super Famicom games weren't straddled with a silly design template, as SNES games were, allowing the art to fill the entire cover. There is simply no contest here. Hell, just the little Super Famicom logo is better than anything on the US boxart.

First of all, as this was the last US Fantasy to be numbered incorrectly it still used the sword logo rather than the Japanese logo featuring Terra(Tina in Japan) in the Magitek armor, easily my favorite logo in the series.

Secondly, the Japanese art is nothing short of breathtaking, truly giving the impression of an epic fantasy world. The US box is a slapped together Photoshop job which tied into the magazine ad campaign for the game which featured Mog (in that exact pose) against a variety of monsters.

That said, Final Fantasy III was still a vast improvement over Final Fantasy II's "logo on a red background" box art.

Next up are the Japanese and European PSX re-releases of Final Fantasy VI. This was actually the first time VI was officially released in Europe as it was passed over for release on SNES because of translation issues.

You can begin to see a trend with Japanese boxes not followed by the rest of the world: they don't like unnecessary junk on their boxes. A simple PS logo in the upper corner is sufficient to denote this a PlayStation game. The European version adopted the format of all the Japanese Final Fantasy titles after VI: the logo on a simple white background. I've always liked that format as the unique logo's are sufficient box art in and of themselves. For the Japanese re-release however, Square opted to reuse the art from the cover of the SFC version and it works just as well here. I still prefer the original SFC cover as it looks nicer filling the entire box rather than having the logo on a white field at the bottom.

Below is the US artwork for Final Fantasy Anthology for PSX, the US version of which featured FFV and VI (the European version contained FFIV and V since VI was released separately).

This was I believe the first time Amano's art had appeared on a US Final Fantasy cover and set the trend for future re-releases to feature his art on the cover as can be seen on Final Fantasy Chronicles (FFIV and Chrono Trigger), and Final Fantasy Origins (FF I &II) as well as the GBA ports.

Chulip: Gamestop Exclusive

2007-01-16T05:01:00.000-05:00

When I wrote my post on Chulip the other day no retailers even had a listing for it, which was kind of concerning for a game supposed to be coming out in a month. Since then Gamestop once again had the game listed on its website, this time with a message declaring it to be exclusive to its video game retail empire.

Unlike Gamestop's last exclusive title, Tenchu DS, Chulip should at the very least be playable and has a good chance of becoming quite rare as retailer exclusivity usually means a pretty small print run.

This is one you might actually want to pre-order as most stores will likely only get a couple of copies, if any at all.

Bullet Witch: US vs Japan cover

2007-01-11T00:56:00.000-05:00

vs.
BulletWitch is another game I've been keeping an eye on for some time, primarily because of the excellent design of said Witch and her giant Broom Gun. The game got decent reviews in Japan, but Atari, who is publishing it here in the US, is supposedly fixing up some of the problems with the game before it hits in late February, namely the camera control and targeting.

As far as the box art goes, Atari stayed pretty close to the original design, zooming out from Alicia a bit (which let's you see some more of the intricate design on her gun) and shifting the logo to the top of the box to make it easier to spot on store shelves which often block the lower half of a box.

I'm not sure why they felt the need to change the cold blue cityscape background to some sort of fiery hell but I suppose the brighter color makes it stand out more. I definitely prefer the Japanese cover, perhaps because I have a thing for giant celestial objects. When it comes down to a Gigantic Moon or a Fiery Maelstrom I'm gonna pick the moon every time. Oddly enough, the Japanese cover of Chulip, my previous entry, has a giant Sun on the cover.

Anyway, the good news is that Jeremiah Cohn, the Product Manager on the title, posted on his blog that they are planning to include the original Japanese cover on the flipside of the insert, which is what all publishers should be doing when they bring Japanese titles over and mangle the cover art.

Ironically, BulletWitch's US cover art is pretty good so an alternate cover isn't as sorely needed as for let's say, any of the US Resident Evil covers, which are completely different and much cooler in both Europe and Japan and are usually exclusive to each market. But that's another post...

Chulip: US vs. Japan Box Art

2007-01-07T23:44:00.000-05:00

vs.

I've been waiting for something worth commenting on for my first post and it took exactly one week for this to pop up. Chulip is a game I've been looking forward to for awhile and a US release (courtesy of the fine folks at Natsume) has been in the works for ages. It's been so long since it was supposed to be out that I had assumed it just got cancelled like the equally odd Giftpia. The premise of the game is not your typical fare: You're out to kiss a particular girl but to do so you need to increase your reputation. To do that you need to try and get a kiss from EVERYONE in the game, most of whom have no desire to be kissed, least of all by you.

It's truly the type of game only the Japanese could produce.

Along with the news of the game's impending February 2007 release date comes the first glimpse of the US box art, which features the in-game character models rather than the beautiful hand drawn art of its Japanese counterpart.

The game has been out in Japan for over 4 years now and I've always admired this box art. It ranks up there with the European/Japanese ICO cover as one of my favorites. Unfortunately, hand drawn cover art may as well be outlawed in the US as you'll almost never see it survive in tact on our shores.

The US cover (on the left) isn't really all that bad however, and you can't really blame Natsume for changing it as the Japanese cover doesn't say much about the game outside of "Hey, check out how pretty my cover is!". The kissing concept is expressed in the new cover while also showcasing a variety of the game's unique characters.

I still prefer the Japanese cover but you've gotta give Natsume credit for bringing this one over at all (even if it is four years late!) What would be cool is if they printed the original Japanese cover on the backside of the insert as some publishers have been known to do.