Top Ten Worst Covers
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1. Mega Man (NES)
Despite looking like some kind of Senior Citizen Superhero, enough people bought the original Mega Man to merit nearly 2,000 sequels and spin-offs.
Today, Mega Man is a recognizable and well-loved videogame character who has starred in approximately three hundred different games with confusing titles, such as Mega Man Battle Network 2, Mega Man X5, and Mega Man & Bass Legends: Battle Network Zero Revision X v4.2. But if you go back and look at early Mega Man artwork ... well ... you get the feeling someone in Capcom’s marketing department was a little lazy:
DRAMATIC RE-ENACTMENT:
Capcom Marketing Guy: Hey, I need you to whip up some box artwork for a new state-of-the-art high-resolution Game Pak we’ve got. It’s called Mega Man.
Artist: What’s it about?
Capcom Marketing Guy: Beats me, some guy who’s like ... this man with ... mega powers, I guess. He’s like Superman I think, but he wears blue armor and has this arm cannon thing.
Artist: OK, well, I’ll just draw a picture of a syphilitic old man wearing blue and yellow armor because I really like the color yellow. Also, instead of armor, I’ll just give him a futuristic t-shirt with extra long sleeves that bunch up near the shoulders and elbows. I don’t know what an "arm cannon" is, so I’ll just give him a ray gun pistol and have him hold it at this really awkward angle. Oh, and I’ll put this white burst of light behind his prominently exposed crotch and have him standing in a field of giant colored contact lenses…
Capcom Marketing Guy: (interrupting) Yeah sure, do all that, and add like a futuristic Tron Tic-Tac-Toe thing in the background while you’re at it. OK, gotta go, bye!
Horrid box art is everywhere. This is really just the tip of the iceberg. So next time you’re in the video game store, take a minute to look over the budget titles. Examine these shoddily done pieces of graphic design and take a moment to think about the poor soul who labored to produce such a work, most likely receiving only a paltry amount of compensation for his or her trouble. Then laugh and make a sarcastic remark about it to your companion, pointing and saying something witty like, "Boy this box art looks like crap!"
Because it probably does. And so do you.
Special thanks to VGMuseum for providing most of the covers featured in this article!
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