I was looking through some of my old gaming magazines today. I was picking out a few to sell, but I wanted to make sure they had nothing I wanted to really keep. Anyway, when thumbing through one, an advertisement for a mail order gaming store caught my eye and made me do a double take.
The ad had a picture of the PSIV box art, but it was not any form of the box art I have ever seen before. It is similar to the US and Europe art, but has some interesting differences. The first thing I noticed is that Alys is front and center, holding a sword and shield. Chaz is not in the picture at all. Rika and Rune are still present, but both are in very different poses and holding swords. It also looks like there is a dragon in the background. The logo is different as well; it has stylized letter that are similar, but different, to those in the US logo and includes both "Phantasy Star IV" and the "The end of the millennium" subtitle (I think, it's hard to read) which no final release used together. There's also a NYR rating (not yet rated), so this could be really early cover art.
Has anyone seen something like this anywhere else? I'm attaching a scan (borrowed from retromags), but it's kind of dark even after I increased the brightness. The printed ad is really dark too, but I'll see if I can get a bigger or brighter scan from my magazine in a day or two. I've confirmed that this was shown in ads from this store in both EGM and Gamepro for March 1995, but so far I haven't seen it elsewhere. It could possibly be something the store used for filler, but Gamepro's February 1995 issue had a similar ad using the standard US box art. I can't see why they'd go to self-made filler after using the real cover art.