Judging a game by its cover: regional box art

When I was on Okinawa, Japan, I noticed the covers of MS Combat Flight Sim 2 was different. On the US cover, there was an F4U Corsair on the foreground with a Japanese A6M Zero going down in flames. On the Japanese version, it was opposite: the Zero was on the foreground and the Corsair was going down in flames. I almost bought it just for the cover

Ico.

Here's an older post on the Katamari-cover controversy:

http://www.joystiq.com/2005/08/29/we-love-katamari-coming-to-america-with-bad-box-art/

Some pretty boxarts is atleast something that we have here in europe. But i'd rather have boring box arts and some good freaking release dates... a half year/year after the states is rediculous >_

The box art for Europe doesn't even look that great.

It's interesting (though not at all surprising) that the aggressiveness apparent in so many of the American covers is almost completely toned down in the Japanese versions. Guns are aimed away from the viewer and made less prominent, facial expressions are less angry, camera angles are higher (making characters appear less menacing). The Backyard Wrestling cover is completely changed to emphasize the sex instead of the violence.



Kinda makes me sad in a way, that we apparently need to see anger and gun barrels in order for publishers to sell us games.



That Sudeki cover is amazingly ridiculous when you look at the comparo. I mean both of them are kind of ridiculous in different ways but with the Japanese cover next to it, the chick's breasts just look so, so over-emphasized in the US one. The look they went for in the Japanese version is really common to the way people take pictures there - I don't know what it is, but the common way you take a picture of yourself or someone else if you want to make someone look cute there is to shoot from a high angle downward. It's pretty much the opposite of the way we do it here; we apparently think people look best looking up from a low angle. It's just interesting, is all. But that breast shot cover is just ludicrous when you see it in context like that.

God damn you, I want my Shadow of the Colossus NOW

That's nothing. If you want to see some bad cover art redos, just look at the art for the old Japanese PC-Engine games versus their US Turbografx-16 counterparts. It took some pretty bad artwork to make games like Bomberman and Valis look unplayable.



PC-Engine= anime artists at the pinnacle of their cultural relevance

TG-16= High school art student copying the cover of a romance novel

Nothing here can beat the Mega Man 1 US boxart.



Stuff of nightmares, that was.