CatPix Posted June 16, 2013 Share Posted June 16, 2013 It seems there was a mentality back in the 1980's about Japanese style artwork not being "marketable" or "readily accepted" in the US. Business people are VERY conservative when it comes to marketing, and they they try to give the consumer what they think they want, and in the 80's and early 90's, that would have been "westernized" art.Marketers advertise to parents as much as kids, and I can only assume that market research revealed that many parents in the 80's were biased against Japanese style art. Probably due to old attitudes carried over from WW2. This attitude still exist. I think TVtropes or another kind of website made a comparison between US releases and their original counterparts. Truely, most Japanese covers carry a cartoonish and kawaii feeling. But there was also some European covers given as examples. And even European originated titles were given a more "violent" aspect when going to the US market. Also many games receive a specific European artwork that is closer to the Japanese one than the US one, and more and more, European editors tend to keep the original Japanese art. On the other hand, some foreign box art can carry a different message. Which one let you think you gonna sweat for hours in a rather harcore game? Of course, being that this game is based on European medieval legendes, it's a certain cultural bias to prefer a more Western-like style for it. Amusingly enough, this work in the other way too : Aren't the Turtles so much more cute in their PAL version? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dripfree Posted June 16, 2013 Share Posted June 16, 2013 Not sure If it's fair to include bootlegs in this topic but who has seen some of the asian Famicom bootleg carts. There are some that are so stupid and weird it just blows my mind! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torr Posted June 17, 2013 Share Posted June 17, 2013 okay a few more..... and uhhh, I think this guy needs to brush his teeth. I'm sure I've seen this exact image on packing for white halloween facepaint or fake fangs or something... Zoom! (Sega Genesis) WTF is this thing?! It's a turnip with bat's ears and a lion's tail in the disco from hell, duh! I just can't remember if thats the seventh or eighth layer... Strider for the Genesis is a great game! Alas, the box art sucks. This looks like some high school wrestling coach, not a ninja. I always thought it looked like Captain Kirk. hillariouse topic there are so many. I always laugh at iron sword. Thats freakin Fabio Is that a game or a ramance novel I never knewho Fabio was as a kid, I just thought he looked like my uncle Bradley! In hindsight, who were they marketing this cover too? Okay, we've got a frustrating platformer disguised as an RPG that the housewives are gonna love, we just need Fabio to really seal the deal! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tempest Posted June 17, 2013 Share Posted June 17, 2013 LOL what's with these dorks? Just pretend they're all looking at your crotch. Now the picture takes on a whole new meaning (especially the dork with the glasses, he's way too excited by what he sees). 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dripfree Posted June 17, 2013 Share Posted June 17, 2013 (edited) Why the "NEW" in the title? Was there an older Dracula game for the Intellivision that they were distinguishing it from? I'm sure I've seen this exact image on packing for white halloween facepaint or fake fangs or something... Wow good eye Torr. I work in retail and I'm almost positive your right on that. I'm gona watch for that this Halloween. Edited June 17, 2013 by Dripfree Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
retrorussell Posted July 16, 2013 Share Posted July 16, 2013 Ya know, I never really liked the old NES boxes. There was but a single pixelated character on the front, maybe two. I mean, if you haven't played the game before, this cover doesn't really seem to draw you into thinking, "Oh my God! That game looks so damn cool!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted July 16, 2013 Share Posted July 16, 2013 The side of the Virtua Tennis game for N-Gage doesn't even have the title "Virtua Tennis" printed on it. It's just mostly all white save for the N-Gage logo and little tiny black numbers. HOW could you not know you forgot to add the title of the game on the side? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+atari2600land Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 I found one. What does a baby have to do with Super Bust-A-Move? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
akator Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 Marketers advertise to parents as much as kids, and I can only assume that market research revealed that many parents in the 80's were biased against Japanese style art. Probably due to old attitudes carried over from WW2. Good point. And let us not forget all of the anti-Japanese rhetoric from the 80s during the Reagan years. There was a lot of vitriol about how Japanese cars were destroying Detroit, Japan owned most of New York, the massive trade deficit to Japan, buy USA and not Japanese, and how the Japanese really won WWII it just took 40 more years. No wonder they didn't put the Japanese cover art on video game boxes Funny we should mention Japanese vs. North American/European box art. It may have been more of a matter in those days that anime/manga as a style was all but unknown here in the USA. Anyway, here's a comparison of superior Japanese cover art to its Western counterpart. Case in point - Phantasy Star 2 for the Sega Genesis. Get a load of what we got here in the West... That girl with the horns looks absolutely nothing like Nei from the game. And that middle aged guy with the laser gun? Is that supposed to be Rolf, the hero of the game? Does that dude look anything like the fascimile in the Japanese art above? Obviously, Americans only want video game box art that looks like it was airbrushed on the side of a 1970s custom van. If it can't be airbrushed on the side of my van, I don't want it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 A lot of the classic bad art fits into one of three categories: Cheap fantasy novel covers. The Fabio, Strider, and Phantasy Star II covers fit this very well. If it works for paperbacks, why not for games? Stuff produced in the office on the cheap. Because it should be simple, right? The Dracula cover, Rival Turf, and Super Bust a Move are fair examples of this. Bob in Accounting has a teenager in art class who draws well, and he can bang out an image for free. American Mega Man and Zoom are probably examples of this. #2 and #3 are probably a lot more common than you would think. I have no doubt it's even more common now considering the prevalence of photoshop and the uniformity of modern game covers. Then there's outright copying. The Dragon Warrior cover is treading a fine line between originality and plagiarizing the 1983 Larry Elmore Basic D&D cover. I have a feeling the artist was shown the Basic D&D cover and Nintendo said "we want this, but we don't want to pay to license it, or get sued, so get to your easel." 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyHW Posted July 28, 2013 Author Share Posted July 28, 2013 Ya know, I never really liked the old NES boxes. There was but a single pixelated character on the front, maybe two. I mean, if you haven't played the game before, this cover doesn't really seem to draw you into thinking, "Oh my God! That game looks so damn cool!" I think it's cool. These covers are classics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
108 Stars Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 I absolutely LOVE a standardized look for boxes; I remember I was quite pissed when Sega switched from the Black/white grid to the blue stripe (red stripe in the US) Mega Drive boxes. They did the same with the PS3. That said, the box art of that era was mostly pretty terrible to begin with, so despite being standardized the western boxes are often ugly imo. I even hate it that my Final Fantay games sometimes use smaller or bigger fonts so they don't match when standing next to each other. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeETC Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 I never liked the "pixelated" NES box art either, but it was the Excitebike box art that drove me nuts. I remember when my younger brother asked, "Is that guy naked?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Necron99 Posted July 28, 2013 Share Posted July 28, 2013 Good point. And let us not forget all of the anti-Japanese rhetoric from the 80s during the Reagan years. There was a lot of vitriol about how Japanese cars were destroying Detroit, Japan owned most of New York, the massive trade deficit to Japan, buy USA and not Japanese, and how the Japanese really won WWII it just took 40 more years. No wonder they didn't put the Japanese cover art on video game boxes Obviously, Americans only want video game box art that looks like it was airbrushed on the side of a 1970s custom van. If it can't be airbrushed on the side of my van, I don't want it. I realize what the background is but at first it looked like a giant boob. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted July 29, 2013 Share Posted July 29, 2013 Strider for the Genesis is a great game! Alas, the box art sucks. This looks like some high school wrestling coach, not a ninja. Wow, if you put that guy in a white shirt, he'd look just like David Ryder from Space Mutiny! (AKA Blast Hardcheese, or Big McLargeHuge, or Slab Squatthrust, or ...) http://youtu.be/RFHlJ2voJHY 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jess Ragan Posted July 29, 2013 Share Posted July 29, 2013 I'm casting my vote for every Emerson Arcadia game ever made. Good lord, they're all watercolor nightmares! That goes double for Cat Trax, which looks like a guy copied a bunch of drawings from a Preston Blair animation book and called it a day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted July 29, 2013 Share Posted July 29, 2013 Has anyone mentioned the North American version of Battle Arena Toshinden for the PS1? This definitely falls into the "Bob from Accounting's teen art student" category. This was from 1995. This was the PS1's killer app launch title. And it has cover art which looks like it was scrawled on a napkin at the last minute. I remember being absolutely shocked at how amateurish this looked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyHW Posted July 30, 2013 Author Share Posted July 30, 2013 Has anyone mentioned the North American version of Battle Arena Toshinden for the PS1? This definitely falls into the "Bob from Accounting's teen art student" category. This was from 1995. This was the PS1's killer app launch title. And it has cover art which looks like it was scrawled on a napkin at the last minute. I remember being absolutely shocked at how amateurish this looked. Yeah, that's pretty lame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted July 30, 2013 Share Posted July 30, 2013 And how about the Euro version of Agarest? As I understand it, this wasn't the final box art, but it was intended to be the final cover design until the customer outcry to use the original Japanese art instead. Just the idea of going with this thing for a game like Agarest boggles the mind. Who in hell is this cover supposed to appeal to? I wonder which one of the Ghostlight employees that guy is? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JadeETC Posted August 4, 2013 Share Posted August 4, 2013 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BillyHW Posted August 6, 2013 Author Share Posted August 6, 2013 Oh dear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaybird3rd Posted August 6, 2013 Share Posted August 6, 2013 Anyone who still believes in astrology deserves to be stared at by an upsetting box cover. 6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted August 6, 2013 Share Posted August 6, 2013 That astrology one is genuinely hypnotic in it's awfulness. I get a feeling it isn't unintentional. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cimerians Posted August 6, 2013 Share Posted August 6, 2013 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gabriel Posted August 6, 2013 Share Posted August 6, 2013 I thought that was real for a second. If physical releases are still around in 2 years, I'm sure we'll have ones that look just like this by then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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