Finding cool box arts makes me extremely happy, and I want to share some good ones I discovered not long ago. It’s a little long but I figured some of you would appreciate it :
They all come from adventure series Tantei Jinguji Saburo, also known as Jake Hunter, of which we only got a DS game that was a compilation of the first famicom games. If I’m not mistaken, all the covers were done by Katsuya Terada, who is an incredible artist and is still making illustrations for the series that is now 30 years old !
This one is from the first game in the series subtitled Shinjuku Central Park Murder Mystery and it’s already incredibly stylish for a first cover, with that cool retro look now.
Here’s a cover of the PS2 game Kind of Blue, still sporting some cool artwork. Also as shown in the cover, Jake’s secretary Yulia Marks is gaining more prominence in every installment, which is a very pleasing evolution of the franchise.
and here’s the cover of the last Jake Hunter game that is very different from the previous ones but also very stylish ! It’s going to be released in a few months, making it the second game to be released in the west.
I haven’t been thoroughly impressed seeing a box art for a long time, what are yours that really made you go “wow” ?
Probably wouldn’t have gotten Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age this soon if I hadn’t found that gorgeous steelbook edition in a store(lucky too, sold out in most places I’d been):
I’ll stop for now, but good box art is by far the main reason I still get physical copies of games.
Sidenote: I really like Steelbooks, though I get the impression that they’re viewed as tat by a lot of folks. But I’m a sucker for nice, somewhat heavy, expensive looking boxes with lovely art.
To start, the PS2 Metal Gear Solid Essential Collection is one of my most prized collections, simply because it came with Yoji Shinkawa versions of the box art, like this one of MGS1:
Look at that! Look at how effortlessly it displays the mood of the game through its lighting and the placement of the bonfire! You look at that and you’re like “yup, that’s Dark Souls.” Instead we got “blue and orange box art #452.”
And I don’t know if this counts, exactly, since it’s for the official soundtrack, but it’s a digital game, and it’s the “cover art” image I most associate with it - Transistor:
I had a friend tell me “Do you know about 4 Resident Evil ?” and I was like “what which one”, he said “you know, 4 Resident Evil” and this conversation dragged for a long time and I gave him a lot of flack for this not knowing why he said that until I dusted off my games and found myself in front of that box art screaming “WHY DID THEY PUT 4 BEFORE THE NAME”
I’m not sure if it was just a regional boxart for Europe, but the immediate violence in Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance’s boxart is a lot. It works for that game, but I remember looking at it and being shocked that a game company could put that on a box.
When I think of physical games I think mostly of my fairly extensive gamecube library I acquired over the years, and a really obvious standout for me is the GC cover for Viewtiful Joe!
It was also available in yellow but that’s nowhere near as iconic as that beautiful pink. It also looks so much better than the PS2 copy.
(Embed doesn’t seem to have worked from my phone, will edit when I get home)
