The worst video game box arts ever

There are many games that we think are good and bad, but no matter how good or bad a game is, that doesn't mean it won't have any poor box art. When I think of poor game box art, these are some of the ones that come to mind:



I shouldn't have to test everyone's knowledge about Mega Man. It's a great series, and it's earned its place in history, but this cover for the Blue Bomber's very first adventure, GOD! For pete's sake! Do you really expect me to believe that's Mega Man?! This 50 year old man in a halloween shop-esque costume with some oversized pistol?! That's not the Mega Man! Just some dope. And what's with the palm trees in the background?


Phalanx for the Super Nintendo. I'm sure I wasn't the only one who had a "What the heck is this?" feeling when they first saw this game's cover. Look at this. This is a space shooter game, and the cover features an old fat dude playing a banjo with a spaceship in the background. Who's idea was this? "Oh hey! Let's put a guy playing a banjo on the cover with a spaceship in the background!" And this cover art is the sole reason this game is so infamous! I'm not even sure if most of the people who saw the cover have actually played the game, which is sad, because I've played it, and it's a pretty decent shooter. And it had no chance just because of its cover! What the heck were they smoking?


*sigh* Where to begin with this one.... Well, it's a guy dressed up in army fatigues, holding an uzi, and trying to look threatening, but his face doesn't look threatening at all, and he looks more like he has to go to the bathroom and can't hold it in. Also, when I was a kid and I first saw this cover, it made me think of Joe Pesci in Home Alone for some reason. Not sure why, nor do I care.

My vote goes to an old PC game called Crime Wave - here's a little piece I wrote analyzing it: http://huguesjohnson.com/features/crime_wave/

And here's the awful front cover:

Oh God, that's hilarious.

These covers are awesome! I wonder what these guys had in mind when the made those hilarious covers. From the all games I have, I don´t remember anyone with covers remarkable as those. They were not great, but not bad as that.

Got some other ones here:



This is the cover for the european version of Mega Man 2. Not only does the guy that's supposed to represent Mega Man look nothing like the actual Mega Man either, but his mega buster is shaped like a bowling pin, and there are these things below him which I guess one is supposed to be the giant fish from Bubble Man's level, but it looks nothing like it, a dragon, which is presumably the mecha dragon from Dr. Wily's castle level 1, but it looks nothing like it does in the actual game, plus it's the wrong color, and there's this shadowy guy I don't even recognize. Plus there's this cliff behind him with a head sticking out of one part of it. Don't know what the heck that is about.


The cover for the very first Resident Evil. This cover is so bad. For one thing, the guy looks nothing like any of the characters in the actual game, and he looks like a deranged psychopath who's about to go postal and go on a major homicide. Plus he's so crazy he probably doesn't even notice the spiders behind him who are about to pwn his sorry butt. And what's going on above him? I don't know if that's the ceiling of the room he's standing in, or if it's some kind of hallucination or some psychedelic drug experience or something. And why are there spiders attacking him instead of zombies? I know that one of the enemies in the game is a giant spider, but the main villains are zombies for pete's sake!


These guys think they're so tough and so bad, but they look more like two lost New Kids On The Block. If these two had an encounter with real gang bangers, they'd probably get their faces kicked in. Wussies


Oh God, I can't stop laughing. These babies' parents must not be raising them properly, because they look like they're messed up on an illegal substance. These babies "Party" too hard.


Uhhhh.... Ummmm..... I, uh.... I'm at a loss for words with this one. I don't know what to say. I can say this though:It looks like an amateur photoshop edit.

When I was a kid, I didn't think the Mega Man 1 box art was that bad. Seeing it again now, I can't imagine why anyone would want to buy that. I guess rentals really saved that series early on.

That last one, Karnaaj (what does that even mean?), is the worst of the lot. Photoshopping some guy with blue hair and black eyes is just horrible marketing.

Crime Wave's cover seems like the product of a group asking how many cliches they could get into one cover. Random karate guy is just so strange there.

I think Karnaaj is supposed to be as in "carnage"

Ohhhhh. Now that you say it, I can see that. Really, would have been so hard to call the game "Carnage Rally"? At least then people would know how to spell it later.

Ha Ha Ha, this is some of the wackiest and worst stuff I have ever seen.

Time for some new ones:


Oh wow, this is really appealing. Could this be anymore bland and boring? Who would want to buy this looking at this cover? Couldn't they have used something more exciting to look at like maybe a dog fight or something?


Anyone who's played Star Soldier should know that it is a SPACE SHOOTER, so how come there's a guy holding a gun in his hand on the cover? You fly around in a starship the whole game. You're never on foot killing enemies with a gun in the game ever. Perfect example of false advertising.