Blindly judging a game by its cover art

[Ronnie]

Back when we didn't have internet on our phones, we had to browse the shelves and pick out our games without reviews. Some we knew would be solid like the Nintendo titles and others were unknown games where we had to judge the cover art to see if we wanted to buy it. Ever bought a game and became disappointed because it wasn't as cool as the cover made it out to be?

I was a huge fan of the Tony Hawk Pro Skater series. One day at Toys R Us I saw Kelly Slater Pro Surfer. I was a young boy who thought it would play just like Tony Hawk but with surfing and I was sold. I was then disappointed by how awkward it controlled and the lack of licensed music.

[Dandy Druid]

There was this one medieval fantasy game with a hot girl on the cover for Gameboy Color. Little did I know we would play as some random amnesiac dude and kill bugs in some basement first thing, no hot chick in sight. I felt robbed.

[Zapp Branniglenn]

I loved Final Fantasy 10 as a teenager. I thought it was just the coolest game. But I had a real crisis trying to buy its sequel for a bargain price. Something about Yuna holding a gun was a red flag that I couldn't ignore. Looked up some reviews online first, and it basically sounded like softcore porn with turn based gameplay and a barbie dressup mechanic. I eventually bought it and didn't like it, but I guess it counts since the cover art was so unappealing that I almost didn't buy the sequel to one of my favorite games even at a price tag of ten bucks.

I also remember almost not pulling the trigger on the Legend of Zelda Windwaker. Since the game looks like such a cartoon and I was trying to prove to my big bro nintendo games aren't just for kids. Very tall order during Gamecube era.

Edited January 9, 2018 by Glennstavos

[Light Strategist]

Can't say it's really been a situation I've been in.

The closest I can really offer is (of all things) being skeptical about whether or not I wanted the Fire Emblem Awakening Special Edition 3DS XL when I was buying my 3DS.

And it was because I said yes that I am here today. Best decision I've made.

[Ertrick36]

1 hour ago, Glennstavos said:

I also remember almost not pulling the trigger on the Legend of Zelda Windwaker. Since the game looks like such a cartoon and I was trying to prove to my big bro nintendo games aren't just for kids. Very tall order during Gamecube era.

I think that post Nintendo 64, it all was a fairly tall order, what with Nintendo becoming more "family-friendly" oriented around that time.

Though it definitely would've worked if you had, say, Conker's Bad Fur Day.  Granted, that wasn't a game made by Nintendo, but I don't know any games developed by Nintendo that are aimed at older audiences.

 

Anyway...  Let's see...

For FE, my references would primarily be the stickers of FE characters in Smash Brawl, and obviously the playable characters and assist trophies.

These along with the Awakening cover...

pretty much all affected my initial perception of the series.  Which led me to believe it was a very anime game about sword dudes.  I honestly don't remember too much about how I felt prior to playing, but I know I probably wouldn't have went out and gotten it myself.  I... probably thought it was just another traditional JRPG, which definitely wasn't the case.

And there was also this, which I think I mentioned in the "Video Game Misconceptions" thread:

It made me think FF X was a fishing game.  I mean you know, Tidus is wearing what looks to be something akin to fishing waders, and he's standing in water.  Obviously it's a fishing game, right? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I'll also throw in another game...

First image is crummy, I know, and neither of them are of the cover, but I didn't have an actual case; it was just this disc and the title screen that were the only things that shaped my perspective.  And yes, it was a first impression because while I had seen maybe bits of original Dragon Ball before (specifically remember seeing bits from Goku's fight with Piccolo), I never actually sat down and watched it in full.  In case you couldn't tell, I was not into anime all that much; my sister was the big otaku nerd of the family.

Since I was borrowing the game, and my family was... reasonably poor, it was one of those things where I had to play it because I hardly have many other games to play.  But... I mean, I wasn't a huge fan of anime, but seeing all this crazy shit, muscular dudes, and specifically a guy with a sword (Trunks), I think I took quite well to the game on initial impressions.

And one more...

When my family got this... probably on Christmas or one of our birthdays, my eyes just lit up.  Mario, Link, Bowser, and Pikachu all together, ready to engage in some "4-Player Action" that I'm pretty sure meant fighting?  Sign eight-or-ten year-old me the hell up!  And of course it really didn't disappoint at all.  I had a birthday party, and we played the ever-loving shit out of this game.  Even as an adult, there are still times when I play this or another Smash game with folks and it's just the best of times.

 

If there was ever a time a cover disappointed me... it was probably with some NES title.  I mean, you know how that can be; there's so many games for the NES, and they all did their best to look cool as hell, but some just really sucked.  I don't think Mario was ever really disappointing for me, but there were a lot of really "out there" games.  I remember being particularly disappointed in Fester's Quest, when I not only moved super friggin' slow, but I also just couldn't figure out what to do.  Low mobility in games often killed them for me in my early years.

Edited January 9, 2018 by Ertrick36

[Zapp Branniglenn]

1 minute ago, Ertrick36 said:

I think that post Nintendo 64, it all was a fairly tall order, what with Nintendo becoming more "family-friendly" oriented around that time.

Though it definitely would've worked if you had, say, Conker's Bad Fur Day.  Granted, that wasn't a game made by Nintendo, but I don't know any games developed by Nintendo that are aimed at older audiences.

Actually, we DID have Conker. It was one of our favorite games as kids, right up there with Goldeneye. But my bro moved on to the more sleek PS2 and the frankly incredible Grand Theft Auto 3 gave us the stigma that mature definitely = superior. And when they finally put up a trailer for a Conker "sequel", it was clearly a game for Xbox, not Gamecube. But being super into mature games as a kid is not something I feel guilty about, as it let me discover some of my favorite games from the Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, and God of War franchises. That backlog of Gamecube games I missed was what kept me warm at night during the sub par Wii era, at which point I stopped caring what other people thought about the games I was playing.

So I thought of another disappointing game, Superman 64. Though I'm not sure my brother and I, young as we were, fully grasped how awful the game was at the time. But the cover art was great, Superman looks just how he did in the cartoon that ran around the same time, as well as the Justice League show that succeeded it.

[Flee Fleet!]

Some years ago, I once saw this game at a mall with those Jackie Chan cartoon characters on its cover. I expected it to be some fighting game or something.

Turns out it didn't have anything to do with Jackie Chan....instead, it was SNES9x but somehow in CD form. 

I don't regret buying it.

[DragonFlames]

I bought Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World for the Wii because I thought the girl on the cover (Marta, one of the main protagonists) was cute... Best decision I've ever made since it led me to my absolute favourite (J)RPG franchise and game franchise in general. It was also my introduction to action RPGs, which made it a "gateway" for other awesome games like Nights of Azure, Ys VIII, Okami, Shadow of the Colossus etc.

I bought The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel on the Vita because the box art gripped me. It, along with the logo, looked pretty awesome. It turned out to be a really awesome game as well.

The same goes for Nights of Azure, which I bought purely because the box art seemed interesting. Slight overabundance of fanservice aside, I love this game to death. Currently playing the sequel and while the fanservice in that game is even more... uh, in your face, I absolutely love the gameplay and story so far. 

So far, I'm 3 for 3 on games I bought on a whim (i.e. because of the cover art) and liked, but that can (and probably will) change in the future.

The opposite also holds true on numerous occasions. I avoid games with the EA, Activision or Ubisoft logo like the plague and anything with Pokémon on it will also not make it into my game collection anymore since I was devastatingly disappointed by ORAS.

[Armagon]

11-year old me picked up Super Smash Bros. Brawl on a whim. I saw the box-art and thought it looked weird. "Why is Mario realistic and standing next to all these Playstation and Xbox characters". Yes, i actually thought that characters like Link and Samus were not Nintendo characters. The only other characters besides Mario that i recognized where the Pokemon characters but even then, i thought Pokemon wasn't a Nintendo IP. Anyway, i bought Brawl and that was my gateway into Super Smash Bros. It was also there that i learned how uncultured i was for thinking Link wasn't a Nintendo character.

This next one is weird because while it is the box-art, i actually found out about it through StreetPass Mii Plaza of all things. If you don't know, one of the mini-games in StreetPass Mii Plaza is a puzzle mini-game. You get pieces of a puzzle for every person you StreetPass, provided they have a piece that you don't. One of those puzzles was the box-art for Xenoblade Chronicles. This was before Shulk was announced for Smash so i was really in the dark as to what Xenoblade was. Anyway, i remember finishing the puzzle and thinking to myself "what the hell am i looking at". I saw the Monado (didn't know it was called that at the time) and thought it looked dumb. I saw the Mechonis in the background (also didn't know what it was) and thought the game had to do something with a giant alien robot from space. I didn't bother to do research at the time so i kinda just forgot about Xenoblade until Shulk was announced for Smash. It's ironic to think that i learned about Xenoblade Chronicles, my current favorite video game franchise of all time, not from Smash or word-of-mouth or anything like that, but through StreetPass Mii Plaza.

My first ever Mario game was actually Mario Part 8. I picked it up because i thought the box-art looked cool. I never played Mario Party prior to that so i didn't know what to expect. I don't regret it though, because Mario Party 8 was actually really fun. I also remember being super bad at the game but i was also like 7 or 8.

Speaking of Mario (this one doesn't have a box-art as it was a digital purchase), i remember buying Super Mario Bros 3 from the Wii Shop Channel because i was upset that my favorite game at the time, New Super Mario Bros. Wii got damaged. Then i got even more upset when i played Super Mario Bros.3 and it was much harder than NSMB Wii and it didn't let me do things that i could before. So 10-year old me wrote off the game as actually bad. I don't think that anymore though. I played Super Mario Bros 3 again like a few years ago and really enjoyed it because i actually knew what to do and what to expect from an NES game.

Edited January 9, 2018 by Armagon

[Magical CC]

Some dozen years ago I bought Hellboy game on PC without knowing it is based on a comic book. The cover is pretty dark, scary so I thought it would be a nice horror game like Clive Baker Undying. It turns out to be exactly what you expect from a comic based video game.

[EricaofRenais]

Box art was how I got in to FE,  when I was 16 we needed to buy a new computer and so my mom and I went to Circuit City (yes this was almost 11 years ago) and I ended up digging in the clearance video game bin and pulled out FE the Sacred Stones and loved the box art.  Needless to say I did some fast talking to get my mom to buy me the game, which she did and that is how I became a FE fan.  I would also like to say at that time I did not keep game boxes, but SS's box was the exception and I still have it, which says how much I liked the art.

Edited January 9, 2018 by EricaofRenais

[Gebby]

I can't think of a time I bought a game for it's box art that I was disappointed, it's an uncommon practice for me, but Gears of War's box art caught my eye and I was not disappointed by it.
On the other hand, based upon its box art, I didn't expect Oblivion to be that good, but it's one of my favorite games of all time.

Edited January 9, 2018 by Gebby

[Tuvy]

This game was my introduction to the Naruto series, and it did not disappoint.

Other than the fact that it was a pretty solid game, I have also picked up the rest of this series, which is basically just the 2nd and 3rd games.

[Shoblongoo]

I would absolutely by games for no other reason than the cover art back in the day 

You're an 8 year old kid who's just discovered video games and you see that on a box...how can you not???

[Ronnie]

59 minutes ago, Shoblongoo said:

I would absolutely by games for no other reason than the cover art back in the day 

You're an 8 year old kid who's just discovered video games and you see that on a box...how can you not???

At least in the 16-bit era, the sprites somewhat resembled the characters on the cover. It wasn't like the NES or Atari where you really had to use your imagination.

[Shoblongoo]

1 minute ago, Ronnie said:

At least in the 16-bit era, the sprites somewhat resembled the characters on the cover. It wasn't like the NES or Atari where you really had to use your imagination.

...somewhat related note.

The first time I played in Fe7 and saw Hawkeye I was like "Dude!!!!! The guy from Golden Axe in this game!"

[Reality]

Cookies and Cream - I thought it would be a kid-friendly co-operative game that I could play with my  niece, much like Lego Star Wars.

What I actually got was one of the most frustrating experiences of my life, to the extent that this game does a better job of haunting my nightmares than the developer's later games (dark's souls and Blood Borne) 

[NinjaMonkey]

16 hours ago, Ronnie said:

Back when we didn't have internet on our phones, we had to browse the shelves and pick out our games without reviews.

This is not true at all. Video game magazines like Nintendo Power existed in the late 1980's, and contained written reviews of games.

Edited January 9, 2018 by NinjaMonkey

[Ronnie]

7 minutes ago, NinjaMonkey said:

This is not true at all. Video game magazines like Nintendo Power existed in the late 1980's, and contained written reviews of games.

How many of us had parents who were willing to pay for magazine subscriptions? How many of us would actually carry said magazines to a store?

[NinjaMonkey]

Judging by how successful Nintendo Power was, quite a lot.

Edited January 9, 2018 by NinjaMonkey

[Kazuya]

I thought that BD was some stupid game about fairies with a bad name, I played the demo and hated it. Then I replayed the demo, loved it and then bought....it's my favourite game of all time.

 

Do I even need to explain SF1's box art? It's hideous and a turn off from buying it.

[NinjaMonkey]

59 minutes ago, Kazuya said:

Do I even need to explain SF1's box art? It's hideous and a turn off from buying it.

How is it hideous? It just looks like some generic fantasy dude fighting off a bunch of skeletons. In fact, I think it looks pretty decent to me, and certainly better than the infamous box art for the original Mega Man.

[Flee Fleet!]

9 hours ago, Kazuya said:

It's hideous and a turn off from buying it.

The art looks decent enough.

But the generic swordsman's stance makes it seem like he's bored with fighting skeletons. 

[Slumber]

Ah, the good old days before Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger made super Japanese artstyles accepted. 

Tons of featureless, ripped fantasy dudes fighting generic monsters in nondescript locations. 

A big one that actually kept me from playing a game was ICO. God that NA box art was so bad. By about the time ICO came out, I was already starting to firmly believe that just about any game that used 3D rendering for its boxart wasn't worth playing. Nintendo was the only one who could get away with it, but virtually every other example I could think of at the time, 3D rendered characters on the front of the box=bad. So I missed out on ICO for a good while, pretty much until Shadow of the Colossus was announced and getting buzz.

Edited January 10, 2018 by Slumber

[Kazuya]

18 hours ago, NinjaMonkey said:

How is it hideous? It just looks like some generic fantasy dude fighting off a bunch of skeletons. In fact, I think it looks pretty decent to me, and certainly better than the infamous box art for the original Mega Man.

Like it looks okay compared to the terrible Mega Man box arts but like no one can tell me that the Main Character doesn't look terrible, he looks so off and bad in that box art. Like compare his key art to the box art