Legends of Box Art

you should never judge a book by its cover but this is a video game when i was a kid i had the weirdest games this was pre-internet time so i didn't know about chrono trigger or metroid i was out here getting biker mice from mars okay and the toy story game and they both had isometric racing which is not a good idea why did i have biker mice from mars instead of zelda cool box art maximum carnage this is another one i had as a kid because a look at that box man it's so red there's like a evil demon on there with a spider-man even the cartridge is red so you know it's good as an adult i look at this box art and all i see is the ljn logo the cover art for pac-man 2 on the other hand not not quite as good bronchi the branches saurus this was intended to be the gex killer bronchi would teach little kids about asthma see his little inhaler there what they didn't expect was that gex team had already recruited the greatest designer in the biz dontel indigo needless to say the cover art for gex was exactly correct and even funnier than the game box art was generally much better back in this era you have these beautiful hand-drawn illustrations even for aerobiz compared to now where you can only have black white and a shadow man on the front it's like the marketing team is saying to the consumer don't worry there are no original ideas here super mario bros 3 is one of the all-time iconic box arts because of its simplicity yellow background cool logo and a very stylized drawing of mario with these thick lines that minimalist design was a much bolder choice back in the day where covers were very busy and colorful and was typically reserved for games that didn't need marketing like zelda sonic and knuckles mortal kombat halo 2 doesn't even say halo on the front it just says two you know what game this is [ __ ] it's covered too right i forgot what it was however you can't apply the same strategy to 3d balls because nobody knows what that is nobody is going to tell santa they want balls for christmas it's hard to pinpoint what makes a cover great it's got to have that drama but it can't be too complicated it's got to be clean but it can't be boring a truly great work of art has the ability to transport you to another place entirely and if you listen carefully you can even hear the image [Music] now look at donkey kong the colors just jump off the box with these beautiful 3d models draped in the shadows of glossy foliage diddy kong is hanging on for dear life under randby who has this rough rhino skin texturing this is one of my favorite covers even though donkey kong has hot dog fingers talca glow on the other hand not quite as good as the lawnmower man cover art spiderman for ps4 this is fine this there he is on a red background but now let's take the same idea to the next level wow look at that spider-man crawling up the building with his reflection in the glass and you can see all the way down to the street such a great use of perspective there is a sense of place and scale yet spider-man remains the focal point and the graphics here's a grain from infogrames called alone in the dark 2. what a majestic cover let's go ahead and slap a big stupid-ass stick around there jack is back baby i don't know what the [ __ ] that means cover art can be a great way to differentiate your game in the marketplace if every game has a dude with a gun you can be the game that has a spider with a gun and a knife take duke nukem everyone knows this game is a doom knockoff so to combat this image they designed their cover art to be a one-to-one copy of doom castlevania what incredible artwork on these games [Music] until you hit this one no it's it's not worse than bio freaks right but it's not on par with dino city now is it just some default looking anime characters with very little attitude it's better than russell grant's astrology but it isn't good like donkey kong where things really start to get messed up though is on the ds version of the game because it was already on the ds but then on the 3ds version it's really starting to get very little and then on the switch version nobody's going to find this astrology one of my biggest no-nos are templates capcom did it konami did it sega really did it the master system cover art this is where creativity goes to get murdered these are an abomination imagine your entire collection of games all with identical grid backgrounds gary kitchen was one of the great game designers like tim clancy that really understood the allure of mystery what is the free offer you have to buy the game to find out that's the genius of it all who is this man on the cover art of columns 3 and why is he also on sonic for the game odama nothing is left to the imagination you look at the artwork and go okay yes i understand what kind of game this is bonus microphone included obviously this is a racing game titles will often have different cover art depending on which region they are released in in japan and europe phalanx is some kind of spaceship game but in north america we know that it is actually a game about an old man with a banjo i think it's a lot of fun to go through your favorite games and compare the artwork to other regions see how they take different approaches to make the game appealing sometimes we're out here whooping their ass other times we got [ __ ] smoked like really bad like damn here is the japanese box art for mega man 1. the first thing you are going to notice is that they spell the mega man wrong but this is fixed by writing it in english so japanese people won't know the artwork itself isn't bad it's not great but then you realize it was pretty good actually not only does the american art hit you with the capcom template but rockman also shows up now here's the european version what the hell no bonus microphone let's do a test boom boom which one of these do you prefer we're just walking down the hall of fame now here's a beautiful design by the guy who does kanye's merch well that's just green pac-man eating a purple apple what the [ __ ] is changers hey hiya it's me checkers the last one i want to talk about is busta move which is actually a very fun well-made game and here's the box art and what's [ __ ] up about this is that it's actually a significant improvement over the box arc for the ps1 version where this guy's eyes are in jail to bring things to an even further degree of [ __ ] there is also a game called bust a groove [Music] so when you ask your grandma for the cute bubble popping game with the dinosaur and she is faced with this or this she will probably gravitate towards the game called super bubble pop [Music] or she might get bubble bobble which has the correct dinosaur but is a completely different game unless they're using this cover art which is a [ __ ] disgrace at which point your grandma says [ __ ] this [ __ ] go ahead and give me uh one copy of russell crowe's astrology [Music] you

Channel: videogamedunkey

Views: 5,036,781

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Id: BCd7ZCN5uhk

Length: 8min 16sec (496 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 13 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/wikiwut]

lol a young Gerstmann in the last astrology box art

[u/Thatoneguy3273]

Cheggers will haunt my nightmares

[u/manbrasucks]

Maximum Carnage 100% can be judged on it's box art. Dope game.

[u/DrBirdie]

That megaman box art..

You vs. the guy she tells you not to worry about

[u/bultard]

All three Dark Souls box art in Japan just fit the games so much better.

[u/corollatoy]

Russell Grants Astrology

[u/[deleted]]

'Don't worry there are no new ideas here'

This entire console generation

[u/tof63]

For context on the Cheggy box art, Keith Chegwin was a presenter for children's shows on the BBC. He also appeared on Extras, the Ricky Gervaise show after his first show The Office.

Here is a video of Chegwin's outtakes from a scene in Extras.

Here's the final scene.

[u/DazzaWright96]

Did not expect to see Keith Chegwin in a video game dunkey vid