AVGN Bad Game Covers - The Complete Marathon!

welcome to the art gallery here we'll be looking at videogame cover art there's a saying don't judge a book by its cover which is true sometimes the cover does not accurately represent the work that is inside however the cover is a work of art in itself and it's the first thing you see it was especially important in the old days because we didn't have the Internet to tell us what the game was like the cover had to tell us everything so it's about time we give game cover art the attention it's due usually we sit down and play the actual games to review them in depth and that's all fine we will do that you will see a new nerd episode in time for Christmas but since it's the season of giving I'll be giving you a little something extra every day until Christmas we'll be observing some of the most exquisitely bad works of art from game history pro-wrestling for the sega master system absolutely stunning this work is all about irony in a sense that it uses the term pro for professional yet goes for an amateurish style the background grid paper is reminiscent of the graph paper used in school for math and geometry students always doodle on that paper right and I don't mean they doodle on it I mean that mean they they they on I mean they scribble on it okay anyway it looks like something a bored student would draw door in class when they're supposed to be doing their work the most striking thing about the cover is the wrestler who has no head yet is doing a chokehold on a head is it his own head or somebody else's whatever the case it's a very non-traditional wrestling move once again it's ironic that the cover is so traditional with the same font and background as other Sega Master System games they all have a uniform look but this wrestler who stands outside the corner of the game box his method goes literally off the grid let's assume he is wrestling his own head it's body versus head it depicts the internal struggle of brains against bronze the wrestler who develops his muscle over mind shows that muscle is winning the battle and after all the term professional wrestling implies the staged form of wrestling to entertain at the audience's suspension of disbelief can we suspend our disbelief or does this cover make no sense Mega Man for NES splendid this is what you call a work of fine art this is the expression of an artist's nightmare as he finds himself stranded in a homemade mustard and blue spacesuit surrounded by radioactive asses in tropical sci-fi land the dollar store brand colored pencil art style is meant to give the sense of the childish feeling of pre-adolescent fears and tension and that's why they held an art contest in Nintendo Power magazines for kids to submit their own designs and then they picked the winner but that's not true I just made that up what actually happened was they picked the loser you have this proportionally incorrect and aesthetically awful human figure that shrunk down to a minor detached element in the overall composition framed by rounded corners to be framed within glowing neon grids to be framed within the enclosing canvas if you even have a chance to look at what's going on you'll see Mega Man has no neck and is wearing shoulder pads as if to deliberately hide his head like a turtle he's cowardly shrinking into his own suit as you can see by the wrinkly oversized sleeves with the way his body is like leaning is kind of like he's doing a dance like hey look at me I'm hip I'm cool check me out look at that tired weepy pathetic face which is no more intimidating than the way he's holding his gun you're looking down the barrel yet he's pointing the gun to the side and wait a gun doesn't make a man have an arm cannon oh never mind that's just in case you ever happen to have played the game before you know Mega Man who ever played Mega Man certainly not the people who designed the cover well for Megaman 2 they got a better artist and apparently gave them much more time but why is Mega Man still holding a gun and why is his foot turned like he broke his ankle look at crash man giving a lap dance to dr. light look at him feeling up that thigh and what about the European Mega Man - what is going on there is that his arm or a hovering bowling pin or I don't know some kind of vaginal ultrasound thing in Mega Man 3 he's blasting a robot right in the crotch he's smiling and looking at he's looking right the crotch like he knows what he's doing in Mega Man 4 he's jumping off a cliff while Faro man is standing on top of the fortress on top of the fortress by the time they got to Mega Man 9 which was a downloadable game that didn't even need a cover they were like yeah we get it it's a joke now haha shatterhand for nes marvelous it's a beautiful portrait of a man who just felt the need to smash his fist into the game's own title he's breaking his hand on the word hand how profound but he's not really hitting it dead-on he is perhaps punching at something else and his knuckles just happened to graze it it was an accident he can't see with those ultra dark sunglasses on but he only broke off part of the H so it's all good people question what the Mona Lisa is smiling at but I wonder what is the shatterhand man punching at or could it be that he's not really punching at all notice the way his arm has been it's too relaxed to be a punch I think he's given you a bro fist bump his expression seems to say so bad with the exaggerated perspective of the fist in the foreground the detail should be more focused more present more realistic than in descending planes but instead the fist is as unnatural as possible with odd folds that resemble foreskin on a penis and did I mention the biomechanical skeletal structure underneath the skin no well that's because you don't see it at first because it's almost hidden behind the bulky text and only one knuckle is hitting the letter yet two knuckles have damaged flesh it begs the question what did he punch the first time it's a piece together the whole story I'm gonna look into the background my guess is that's supposed to be the Empire State Building New York City that's a real place you can't be a to live there but this guy just couldn't take it so bad fists flying shattering as it hits the fourth wall reality so what's with the terminator thing going on I think it represents man and machine specifically humanity's dependence on technology and tools the hand as man's biological inherent machine the hand to do man's dirty work which reminds me whoever made this cover was jerking off action fighter for the illustrious Sega Master System a masterpiece undoubtedly let's begin with the title action fighter tells you everything you need to know action suggests battles shootouts vehicle chases and explosions the single word action encompasses everything we expect in a game on the primitive subconscious level fighter what do you know a generalization of more the same action implies fighting fighter implies action no two words in the history of civilization have so eloquently overstated one another there's no question of what kind of fighter this is not an idle casual go-with-the-flow kind of fighter could this game by any chance be some kind of puzzle game or video poker no action fighter damn it just to make sure without any doubt you know what it is boom action fighter it hits its mark more effectively than a cow pissing on a flat rock it's well worthy of the trademark that's right patent that it's so brilliant you wouldn't want anybody steal on that name this isn't just any cartridge it's the mega cartridge also trademarked notice how the G droops down and touches the Mega that's class look how the background grid enhances the obvious nosov a condensed kerning and then there's an image on the cover too right oh yeah that's it it's down there it occupies less than a quarter space of the overall canvas nothing suggests action and fighting more than a magnifying glass on a highway this is a special magnifying glass that doesn't make things larger instead it forces the perspective into a Hitchcock vertigo effect it's this really an action game or some kind of detective game it seems the detective is using the magnifying glass while driving rather than shutting down the street and getting up close to survey the area this detective is going to fly right through emphasizing the importance of high-speed action over tedious scrutiny the lack of details on the building's intensifies the feeling of vision to be focused on one point rushing to a particular goal a clue one vital clue that we so eagerly wish to have the cover leaves you in suspense what is the clue is there a clue did the human being who made this have any clue shingen the ruler on NES here we have a decently rendered male face which seems to disappear into an image of an army riding on horses it's as if a cloud of less detailed more generic art floated in front of them why would this be so important that it needs to intrude on the focal character it's as if the background took a bite out of the side of his face I believe it symbolizes the conformity to a larger society of socio-economic repression it should be noted that sometimes the art on the box is different than the art on the game cartridge on the cartridge he's obscured even more by the goddamn instructions why is this on the cartridge seems like somebody really hated that artwork and wanted to do everything they could to cover it up or maybe they'd never seen a videogame before the instructions come with the game you know on paper in a little booklet you don't need it on the cartridge of course it's not the full detailed instructions but they sure fit as much as they could just for a quick reference in case you're playing the game and you either lost the instructions or you find it easier to look at the cartridge while you're playing the cartridge and this would only work in a top loader if you had the original NES model you wouldn't even see the cartridge maybe it's meant to be read like some kind of art house poetry yield money disaster product yeah this product was a disaster that you should yield before spending money Shingen seems to be peaking out from the cluttered mess of periodic table like frames of clinical information as if to say hey it's me me look at me look at me this is horseshit I can't even pretend does this make you want to play the game was it so complicated they had to put the rules on the cover is it because the game is called Shingen the ruler they thought it must have the rules I'm surprised they didn't put an image of a measuring ruler on it but we're going to need to find the longest tape measure in existence because I didn't know they stacked this high phallic sore phalanx for Super Nintendo well the game is a 2d space shooter it says plain as day the hyper speed shootout in space many would say this cover has nothing to do with the game but of course it does there's a spaceship see they got it in there that little magic Disney Tinkerbell Sparkle whizzing by way way way back there in the background there's no getting around it the main focus is an old man playing a banjo because isn't that the first thing you think of when you think of a hyper speed shoot out in space but maybe I'm wrong maybe this guy is in the game yeah in fact he's a major part of the game you just never unlocked that part yet this is a mall Santa Claus this is what he does the rest of the year he's sitting on his porch playing his banjo he's been drinking a lot of moonshine so he fantasizes and pictures himself flying a spaceship shooting aliens perhaps a projection of his deep-rooted racism against anyone or anything foreign or he's just a jolly old drunk playing a song about a hyperspeed shootout in space I wonder if the actual man in the photo knew how to play the banjo was he just posing with it or could he have actually been playing something when this picture was taken what am I doing here Super Nintendo his dad had this cover looked anything like it was supposed to it wouldn't have been as interesting there's thousands of generic space shooters out there so this was an unconventional yet ingenious way to make it stand out from the rest it worked because after all these years we're still talking about it this is the North American version of the cover in all other parts of the world it actually focused on the space ship which looked like while this version wasn't balanced it was phallus Snow White for PlayStation 2 this is terrifying this isn't Snow White this is more like evil porcelain dolls come to life that should be a horror film by full moon as evidenced by the full moon in the background this is the stuff nightmares are made of this will haunt your dreams for eternity Phoenix Games also made this scary-lookin Pinocchio game I guess they specialized in up fairy tale covers frightening young children somebody didn't understand the idea of cover art it doesn't have to look like the shitty in-game graphics and am i reading this correctly does it say Snow White and the Seven clever boys I thought it was the Seven Dwarves were they trying to differentiate it from the Disney film to avoid a lawsuit well it was originally from Grimm's fairy tales so if they're gonna avoid the name what about the likeness it obviously looks like the Disney characters although twisted fucked-up versions and are they seven boys really boys or more like old men besides I only see four where's the other three well there's three trees maybe the witch turned them into trees or perhaps the trees are a representation of humanity's dying relationship with nature the game is rated 3 and up I think that means these demonic need to take 3 more Souls oh oh no no no no ah give me out here you New York for NES Oh action in New York action in looks like it was written with a quill pen is that the type of font you'd see on the cover of a science fiction action game or in a line a text from the Declaration of Independence it's hardly noticeable but New York is printed so big and clear just so you know where this game takes place it reminds me that game alien Tiger meteor massacre in Middletown New Jersey anyway that's some banner like a bumper sticker graphic with the Statue of Liberty in the center with a big halo or Nova blast around it this is a nice graphic for a t-shirt or a hat this is like something you'd see in a gift shop this is the perfect postcard to promote New York City because nothing says New York more than a man screaming point-blank at a robot I tell you crazy happens in New York City people screaming at robots a man shattered his fist against the fabric of space and time maybe that robot is the shatterhand man after he finished punching all the flesh from his body the man's face radiates with anger beaming with expression while the robot stares back at him with a flat featureless face like a metal trash can look at the intensity the raw emotion so powerful that it harnesses the lightning the Lightning portrays nature the only thing that comes between man and machine it splits the contrast between the imperfect emotionally driven human being and the unflinching synthetic creation of his own design the robot represents technology the man represents humanity's frustration yet unwillingness to live without technology this does not look like a man who is in combat in a science fiction world this looks like a man who is mad because his iphone froze the man is clearly not ready to attack the robot wouldn't his arms be up how did he get so close before raising his arms to fight that's because he has no intention to destroy it he just wants it to do what it's supposed to but the Machine doesn't care it looks like the robot has just shot a laser from its eyebrows and we just happened to catch this image the very instant before it blasted the man right through his eyeballs splattering his brains all over the place if only he had his laser reflected visor down dumb by the way the game is a 2d space shooter the European version of a game called scat it's the same game only the title is different scat stands for special cybernetic attack team but the word scat actually means animal Rallo Gump an obscure dos game from the 90s well it's cute in an infantile way it's like a child exploring the world for their first time this child dreams of flying like Superman while wearing a weird hat notice the bird-like creature devoid of wings but the human also devoid of wings is the one who manages to fly it depicts the freedom of one's own imagination of ambition to defy all implausibility x' below the ground is cross-section doubt so we can see the fish with the lack of imagination being trapped in his own boundaries the eye on a silver pedestal that sees the world through the child's vision the only way to see true magnificence is to open your eye big and wide behind the mountain the most terrifying part of the whole image a scary face that came loose from a totem pole the creature of nightmares but the kid who is in control of his dreams has the monster barricaded behind the mountains locked away as seen by the keyhole but with no key in sight the nightmare is effectively locked away or somebody who took a lot of drugs well what kind of game what kind of cover is is Rallo Gump what is a dump like Forrest Gump or the Gump from the Oz books this is one a few covers where the artists put their name on it no and a free game comes with it just in case Rallo Gump doesn't catch on ghost lion for NES its medieval aerobics time the tights the sword the jewels the Egyptian snake armband the wild golden hair going past her ass the oversized sleeveless shirt that looks like she borrowed it from Arnold Schwarzenegger you know what this is awesome I want to see somebody cosplay as the ghost lion girl this is an 80s metal album cover there's no doubt about it but the last minute they decide to turn it into an NES game instead I want to hear the band ghost lion there was an 80s band called lion who did the Transformers movie theme song there was also white lion and apparently there is or was a band called ghost lion according to myspace so what about the lion why is it behind the mountains is it giant it doesn't look like any of these elements exist in the same place notice how three dimensionally detailed the girl is compared to the flatness of the lion in the pink background plain I think that's all part of a cardboard cutout and she's posing in front of it kind of like one of those promotional movie theater backdrops you can get a picture with she sees the ghost line thinks it's so funny she gets a picture with it but she happens to be cosplaying as something unrelated that's exactly what's happening why else would she be smiling and looking right at the camera if she was really going into battle she looked much more serious but the one part that bothers me is that you don't see the whole sword it takes your eyes off the composition like she's poking at something what is happening is she stabbing somebody is that why she has that devilish grin there's no question what decade this is this is the 80s but you want to know a little surprise the game came out in 92 but could you imagine if she was wearing flannel and baggy jeans that would look stupid Eliminator boat duel for NES um yeah here's what I think happened they hired somebody to do the cover they told them the game is called Eliminator boat duel so naturally the cover gets finished at the last minute they take one look and go um we said Eliminator boat duel this is just two people riding on a boat but there was no time to redo it but they had to do something quick to make it more exciting with less than an hour to send it out to the printers the quickest solution was to paste on these flags just so you know there's some kind of race going on to add neon streaks to the back of the boat to emphasize speed to add this cheap splashing whirlpool effect and it changed the colour of the water to bright glowing pink except that part they'd missed before it would have looked like two people leisurely riding a boat now it looks like two people leisurely riding a boat on an alien planet instead of all these added effects it might have been easier to just change the name to vacation boat ride if you look closely at the woman's hair I don't think it's hair I think it's a surfboard and she's leaning behind it what's with the glowing mountain peaks are those supposed to be sunsets two sunsets it is an alien world maybe in the same solar system as Tatooine or is this what the earth looks like after electro brain zaps all your brain cells ah just looking at it's burning my eyes get it off the screen the European cover was much better absurd yes but it looks more like a boat duel clearly our race is going on since there's actually more than one boat even though the guy and the girl are still relaxed but that's because they're so good at winning this is mr. and mrs. perfect how can I not mention the giant magnificent breasts goddamn and they came so close to being covered by the Nintendo seal equality somebody said make sure to move that down a little imagine seeing that on a game when you're five years old in the u.s. we definitely got the shittier end of the deal for this one even the end label couldn't spell eliminator eliminator this is street hockey 95 for Super Nintendo so let me guess they didn't know if it was gonna be a fighting game or a hockey game so they got Little John and asked him and he said what so they went with a font and color scheme to imitate Street Fighter and asked him to do an impossible levitating kick and then he said okay but okay wasn't good enough so they added hockey elements and then he said yeah this is like MTV regurgitated all over a Super Nintendo box I don't get any of this what's with the Barbie doll girl that mask he's wearing that mean dog on the cover just to prepare you warning this game is badass woof woof there's nothing correct about any of the sizes is the girl small is the alley enormous is the man giant is that his shadow why doesn't the girl have a shadow why would she paste it in last minute and for a game about hockey there's very little hockey equipment on the cover that stick he's holding is awkwardly turned so it might as well be a canoe paddle I like the way he's pointing at you as if saying yeah you want to play this you know you do you know you're gonna be coming back for street hockey 96 and 97 which never happened although there were other street sports games like Jam it yeah I'll tell you where you can jam it the game used the multiplayer adapter Hudson's super multi-tap just in case you'd ever want to play street hockey 95 with four people at a time as soon as anybody sees that cover they go oh okay okay that's that's fine irritating stick for PlayStation irritating stick who puts the word irritating in the title of a videogame does that make you want to play it I don't even know what kind of game it is but I don't care I'd rather go out in the woods and play with an actual stick who buys a game called stick when you can get sticks for free but that bright bold font tries to sell it the best it can like this is going to be the most exciting thing you'll ever see see it for the thrill of a lifetime one night only irritating stick the comic style zapping effect seems like it desperately wants to emphasize how irritating this stick is as soon as you touch something with this stick zap it's so obnoxious it fills the entire background there's no room for any other artwork it's all about the electric force of this horrible stick the original game was similar to operation or the wire loop game where you need to avoid touching anything or else you get an electric zap but the word irritating doesn't describe it too well it's just a bad choice a word kind of like when Nintendo had a console called revolution and they changed the name to Wii it's not even like a sword or a spear instead a cheap plastic lightsaber you know the kind that light up except this one hasn't even been lit yeah the batteries are dead moving on to the hands it looks like the crappy in-game graphics of the time did they know that on the cover to the game you're allowed to make the artwork more realistic I guess it doesn't matter when you have a stick that's so irritating it emits lightning it begs attention and I've given it crack out for NES this is what happens when you smoke too much crack this is clearly nothing more than a bad drug trip or it's just a bad ripoff of the game fast food or it's just the Twizzlers mouth making every possible appearance it could in the 80s your eyes have no room to rest on this cover the way it's tilted I can't look at it without going like this it gives you a dizzying effect it feels like you're flying into its world rushing into the simple one-point perspective as the objects on the receiving planes come whizzing towards you eyeballs teeth skulls gloppy drops of moustache bubbles neon cannonballs bouncing off the walls this cover screams what the god damn help me out here what's going on this cover is so intense on the cartridge they had to cut off the skull just to give us a little break yet the alternate placement of the Nintendo seal equality allows us to see the green guy popping up from the hole in the floor he looks so frightened see even he couldn't take it where in the universe or multiverse would a place like this ever occur well if you don't dismiss all possibilities then just for the sake of existence whoa a brick tunnel full of baby blocks flying out from the far reaches of space it has no beginning and no end and infinite zooming chaos but if you look far into the background that tiny white space is that a wall are we going to smack into it like a bird hitting a plane or is that an open doorway the light at the end of the tunnel a white purgatory could you imagine going from one extreme to the next first it's over stimulation and then complete sensory deprivation this artwork is a metaphor for life it's crazy but then one day it's all gone in for Commodore 64 the game is called cockin even though it involves chickens and has an alternate title chicken chase some whack-job decide to call it in and instead of chickens on the cover people wearing chicken hats dressed like rag dolls with lifeless dummy faces the dudes holding a shark on a string that bites her elbow while she hands them a testicle really what else is it supposed to be an egg and why is it flesh colored the cover is extremely rare no high quality image of it exists so at first I thought he had a nut sac on his chest until I realized the second testicle is just the negative space between her fingers the color blends in with his chest how hard was it to make an egg white and is not perfectly oval either it's a testicle you know that expression I'd give my left nut that's what's happening in the actual game you're a rooster chasing hens around to mate with them chase the chickens what are you Rocky the intricate folds makes the woman's shirt seem realistic but the body is so lifeless it's as if they put a real shirt on a mannequin body she has no collarbones and a long neck yeah but what about the testicle how could you talk about something else it's right in the middle the whole composition draws your attention to it in-between the man's fist the triangle shape she's making with her arms the heads both leaning to the side and right in the center look at the gonad the shark the heads the gonad now find out how they all relate because your guess is as good as mine treasure master for NES this is a surreal stream of consciousness that represents sensory overload to the video game brained kid of 80s this is his fantasy everything awesome and rad that ever existed all comes to the party there's covers where the artist didn't have enough time but I think this is one instance where the artist might have had too much time we got to sell the game what do we do sharks are popular put a shark on there how about submarines and spaceships yeah that's good what about robots I've got to have a robot and a spider on a circuit board uh yeah do that pyramids mushrooms bubbles the transformers grid pattern space what about treasures it just have a kid with sunglasses and zebra patches given thumbs up smiling at the consumer saying yeah you like all this the kid is just as happy as the artist nobody's ever made such an amazing box art it's win all the way around it depicts narcissism the kid is looking at you like yo I'm so cool he is the treasure master or perhaps he's calling out to you and desperation trapped in some kind of floating rectangle sort of like the General Zod prison thing from Superman 2 the game was created for a contest by MTV in which gamers would put in a code they'd complete the game and then they'd get a number to call it and win prizes which makes sense because this looks like something MTV barf tub you know Castlevania 3 also had a contest win a trip to Dracula's castle yes Dracula's real castle I bet that's where the kid who won the treasure master grand prize ended up in Dracula's dungeon being tortured for all eternity carnage rally for Game Boy Advance good god there are no two elements in this picture that belong together it's a mishmash the computer-generated title the blurred image of a car a blue haired screaming maniac photoshopped in front of it I don't even know where to start what is carnage why is the letter R singled out the end could have just as well sprouted the flags why is the car so blurred that you can hardly tell what it is why is the man so sloppily cut out and why is he leaning at such an awkward angle perhaps the car is ramming into the side of his head what was the purpose of dyeing his hair or excuse me photoshopping his hair blue is this some sophomoric acting or what I've heard the game itself is actually pretty good but who'd want to play it based on the cover if it's a game about racing show us the car not some goofy guy who just made the most epic photo bomb in history let's say I did buy the game based on the cover I'd be disappointed if he wasn't the main star I don't want to race cars I want to be the blue hair guy who runs around the track and goes huh maybe he's a former racer but he never achieved success so he's now depressed and losing his mind so he dyes his hair blue he shows up at the Raceway and starts making a total mockery of the profession maybe that's what he does every day there used to him yep that's him again clowning around just carry on with the race don't draw attention that's what he wants just ignore him he'll fighter for NES is that a title or what he'll fighter I like the way the title zooming into the foreground glistening like shiny steel that's the way you do it without much else to look at besides a plain blue background let's get straight to the point it's simply a naked man holding a skull has this guy been doing some bodybuilding or what he's so buff that his muscles take on alien features look how pointy his knee is and his hand completely disappears into the light aura of the skull the skull is not very pronounced the glow needs more transparency so you can make it out why is he holding a skull anyway he's staring at it like yeah I like death the crotch is bulging out from the tiny underwear which is conveniently covered by the text oval somebody clearly looked at it and said we can't show that cover it up which makes me wonder has anyone seen the original art hmm even the Japanese version blocked out the crotch the whole world was saying hey man put on some damn pants the sword looks like it's sticking in his ass he has no belt nothing to strap the sword onto unless you buy that it's hanging on the back of his thong it's in his ass you heard a sword in the stone this is sword in the ass he shits green rocks what do you expect the guy's so macho all he eats his stones and minerals he shits them out in the dragon's licking at him like yum-yum Oh God he'll fighter looks like hell to me scrap your dog for the Atari 7800 what's with the nose what's with the nose who cares about the dog look at the nose what was the point everything else is pretty sound but some wacky artists decided to give him a huge nose just for the hell of it he is the star never mind that it's called scrapyard dog maybe he's the dog the idea of faces inside of circles is pretty funny when you think about it like here's the circle and then somebody's meant to pop their head up into it we were only meant to see the dog he was supposed to lift his pet dog up in there but he came up to at the last minute and that's the image and there's nothing we can do about it maybe it's meant to be a freak show the circus colors support that I like how the dog is sort of looking at the nose like the dog isn't sure about it and the man isn't really looking at the dog his eyeline is going off somewhere else like he's talking to somebody I can't be in the picture or he's talking to the dog you know keeping it comfortable for the picture people do people like it's a good boy people say that pets sometimes look like their owners well if the dog had his nose or he had the dog's ears it would be pretty crazy this is junk what do you expect with a game called scrapyard dog rollerblade racer for nes rollerblades radical radiant blazing colors that's the 80s that's what it was all about all those who lived it trust us we can tell you that chalk pattern background that's what the world actually looked like back then you'd be rollerblading with your flattop hair your rat tail in the back listening to Michael Jackson on your Walkman slapping high fives with Voltron you'd be eating your mr. t cereal and pee-wee Herman would come by and play pac-man with us it happens all the time it was so crazy there wasn't even such a thing as temperature no the man's wearing a sleeveless shirt while the girl is bundled up like it's the middle of winter don't judge a cartridge by its box check this out the cartridge has no background I suppose the box was finished last all it is is a solid hot pink let me tell you in the 80s that color was the most bodacious thing you wanted hot pink seriously our eyes were attracted to how bright it was look at it the way it burns into your retina that's awesome give me more nowadays most people seem to associate pink with feminine but back then it had nothing to do with that didn't matter if you're a boy or girl hot pink damn it it's so vibrant that it's actually bleeding into the graphics the labels on cartridges can fade a little so imagine how pink it was when the game was new it was so pink it was made to last the ages the contrast on the people is boosted so much that they blend together at first glance it looks like both bodies have merged into an eight-legged creature eight legs eight decades the 80s this game is the living embodiment of the 80s well the game came out in 93 well everything I just said here's a hot pink screen for you to look at yeah you like that yeah stare at it long enough you'll grow a mullet killer Kong this is X does EDX spectrum in America we would say letter Z X but killer Kong I can't look at it how could you look at that grinning gorilla without losing your the mystery of the Mona Lisa's subtle smile is nothing compared to this what does this gorilla smiling about like he or she probably she cuz the breasts know something that you don't but this is killer Kong so maybe this is thinking about killing you the way it meets your stare is unsettling it feels as if it is actually looking at you and the moment you look away it's gonna lunge out of the cover and show you exactly what it means by killer kung it kind of looks like one of those public domain VHS tapes or like somebody was trying to release King Kong on VHS but they didn't have the proper rights so they had to make this half-ass cover notice how the edges of the gorilla are so rough so it's almost being swallowed by the background it burns into your eyes and invokes visions of cotton candy bubble gum dreams but it's all a trick this game is very rare so it's hard to get a good image of it I wish I could tell what that round thing is on the eye it looks sort of like a monocle this is a high fashionable gorilla who likes to examine things up close particularly your innards the game itself is a clone of Donkey Kong and there were many Donkey Kong copycats floating around at the time that's what happens somebody makes a successful game and then others copy monkey see monkey do you see the monkey in the monkey see you hammer and Harry for NES a symbol of testosterone this guy is mr. macho right here this is the manliest man ever my is so hard what's with the Rambo headband his eye that's off-center weird look at him screaming out the side of his mouth like Sylvester Stallone on the cartridge it looks like he's trying to hump the text and logos just as he's about to bash your face with the Donkey Kong sledgehammer this guy is crazy he's wrestling bears drinking gasoline riding a bull on a highway playing baseball with his he just went mental and started a rampage through a construction area all the workers are fallen to their doom look at the poor guy still holding his jackhammer as he plummets from the top of the building notice that Harry's wearing the eye ram logo on his belt buckle remember when Mario wore a Nintendo shirt no I don't think that ever happened at least not on a cover you know this game was originally an arcade game in Japan and it was ported to the Famicom first why didn't they just use the artwork from the Famicom version now it's gotta be American and macho I like how the title has a white box behind it as if it wouldn't have stood out enough in front of the blue sky it looks like they forgot to put it there and then at the last minute right before it went to the printers somebody looked at it and went oh we got to put the title on there quick quick getting take it from the instruction manual or something hurry cut it out slap it on there hammer and hairy guy you don't want to with SuperDuper sumos for Gameboy Advance from Midway the same company that brought you Mortal Kombat now brings you three sumo wrestlers smashing their fat asses together dude it's a cover for a game endorsed by Nintendo that advertises itself with asses being smashed together its butt bash 3000 they're all smiling they like it you can hardly see the third sumo wrestler in the background and I know this is because it was from a TV show they had to include all three characters but they couldn't figure out a way to make it so you can see all three of them it throws off the symmetrical layout and the shadows on the ground contradicts the absence of a light source on their cartoon style bodies yeah but who cares they're bashing their butts together Ram and their rear ends clash in their cabooses or maybe not I first assumed that the action graphic in the middle was meant to represent the impact of their high knees hitting but maybe they're actually pressing their asses together just holding them there and then farting simultaneously blowin farts up each other's creating an explosion the combined farts of three giant hamster shaped men creates a blast more powerful than a nuclear bomb it's so powerful that it sent them into an alternate dimension you see the city in the background just barely right that's because their reality is fading away as they enter the next dimension this is science here this is time-travel when Doc Brown needed plutonium that's because he didn't want to have to get the gas from three sumo wrestlers doing but Slams ultimate stuntman for NES somebody clearly wanted to create the most masculine cover ever guns sports cars throw it all in the meat headed message seems to be clear gun plus car equals awesome this is no ordinary stuntman this is the ultimate stuntman is this a guy who does stunt work or does he go around shooting bad guys it's a stunt man turned action hero notice the big bird which is partly obscured by the words it's holding a star as if to deliver it to the man and something is randomly exploding behind him just to break up the monotony there wasn't enough going on how about the car well it's a car which makes perfect sense when juxtaposed against the squid oh what a squid what is it doing halfway a hidden near the man's crotch he's so macho he's holding up the squid with his dick oh god I just can't look at it all at once it's hitting my brain too hard let's view it just a bit at a time okay ultimate stuntman a bird action guy I get it I'm with it still okay okay that's where I draw the line if awesome overload was the whole point then where's the hot chick where's the sunglasses the dinosaurs the robots I don't think they got enough stuff on here look at all the wasted space this is one of those unlicensed games it's one of those gold cartridges the squid gets mostly cut off if you had the cartridge without the box you'd be wondering what the hell that is on the back it says do not drop do not get wet do not leave in direct sunlight can you feed it after midnight then there's that weird switch what does that do position be only use this position if the game does not work with position a yeah that makes a lot of sense ex-man for Atari 2600 Wow I don't know what part of this picture is demanding the most attention the woman who's in the process of stripping down to her bare body or all the crazy going on over there the woman is depicted in a realistic way lots of detail has gone into the shape of her body the lighting and the tones of her skin sure her nose is a little flat but the guy on the right is a full-blown caricature style he has no neck exaggerated teeth and eyes those two different styles are so distant from one another that I don't even think the same artist created them both or it's meant to portray the separation between the glamorous supermodel and the geeky insecure guy but let's not skip over the title ex man thanks man to quote a line from Enter the Dragon you come right out of a comic book a Marvel comic book published on September 10th 1963 by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby you know x-men not just the name the logo itself it may not be identical but it comes pretty damn close well x-men didn't turn the em into a crotch they missed out on that what does x-man mean anyway it's on the dude shirt too or half of a shirt whatever he's wearing I suppose because it's a pornographic game when I missed in my Atari porn episode that the X means like xxx man I don't know what about the fact that he's grabbing his crotch when I see a man grabbing his crotch next to a pair of runaway scissors that can't be good or what about crabs oh no I'm not going to explain that one for the twizzler mouth making yet another appearance what's up with that all these things are after his crotch he's trying to protect his crotch from the risks involved in paying this hooker as he runs through the neverending maze of sexual frustration but he's smiling there's some kind of joy to it and that's when I noticed with the position of his hands you should be able to see both hands but you only see one that must mean that his right hand is going through the opening of his underwear he's jerking off that's what I call a video game cover pretty good video for Christmas Day huh give you x-man for xmas triple Xmas a woman getting ready to show her tits a guy with his hand down his crotch it's filthy but you wouldn't want it any other way would you Merry Christmas you filthy animals

Channel: Cinemassacre

Views: 2,025,834

Keywords: The Angry Video Game Nerd (TV Program), Bad Game Covers, Bad Game Cover Art, Video Game (Industry), Video Game Culture, AVGN, AVGN Bad Game Art

Id: Qh5S1eG1aBA

Length: 50min 3sec (3003 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 26 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/grim_tales1]

Kind of cool (and convenient) all of these were made into one video :) If you add it all up, thats about an hour of content (including the MK Video).

[u/AngryFanboy]

I really wish more YouTubers would do these. The NC for example. He does all the Disneycember re-uploads individually when it would be more efficient and tiger to supercut the lot. I know some have done it for him but an official one would be nice. Those and all his Zodmas episodes or NC episodes/months etc.

[u/sseidl88]

I like this, since I missed a lot of them