Ugliest box art ever..?

I've seen a lot of awful, hideous box art in my day. I worked at Gamestop for a while when I was a younger, have a pretty extensive collection of games myself, and up until now I've just been kind of dismissive toward crap box art, but I just came across what I'm pretty sure is the absolute worst art I've ever seen. From composition to color choice to empty space, everything about it screams "complete garbage."

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say "This is the worst box art ever made."

I feel like the old NES megaman boxes had their own charm and looked good in their ugliness. You can find something to like about most any cover. Color choice, strange expressions, font, anything. The cover for Xbox game Pulse Racer, however, has no redeeming features. If it was literally replaced with a picture of a pile of feces, it would probably be an improvement.

Can anyone beat this?

Almost everything that comes out in the USA that doesn't keep its original Japanese art.

These fail to grasp the feeling of Mass Effect, especially compared to the box art of Mass Effect 1.
Not to mention the japanese version of it, which is awesome.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

@Gargantuan: I honestly kind of liked the heavy Rain art. It got the effect down, desaturated, depressing, the soothing rain on glass effect, the soothing boobs on protagonist effect... other than the weird little duck origami I had no complaints about the Heavy Rain box.

@TaliciaDragonsong: I don't get it... Are you just upset Femshep isn't on the cover..? Surely you're not saying it's worse than the Pulse Racer art.

I've seen something worse, but I won't be able to find it. @Video_Game_King , can you help us out here? I don't even think you're the one that posted the one I've seen, I just think you'll know of something uglier.

Last Templar case. Not exactly sure how to post images on here. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

That US Ico box art was terrible

Guess which concept page is appropriate for this topic? Box in Boxart, that's what.

This is kind of awful..

@ascholzk: @msavo: ...Wow. That is... something. It's got some great artwork at the core of it, but it looks like someone accidentally printed my local supermarket circular on top of it.

Good find on that one.

@ZombiePie said:

Guess which concept page is appropriate for this topic? Box in Boxart, that's what.

We need to go deeper.

@Little_Socrates:

Not that I remember. Keep in mind that I've only done two blogs about video game box art, like, ever.

Behold...

Even on its own this cover is complete garbage, but it truly is crystallized shit compared to the De Chirico inspired original JP/EU cover.

@RockmanBionics said:

@ZombiePie said:

Guess which concept page is appropriate for this topic? Box in Boxart, that's what.

We need to go deeper.

The part I like about this cover best is that I can imagine a meeting where a stressed out artist presents the obnoxiously recursive art that his bosses demanded he crank out for the re-re-release, and his boss was all like, "I like it, but hmm, I don't know. There's just nothing on there that just screams 'play it!' you know? 'check it out!'" Can you punch it up some more?" and the artist just gives him the DIRTIEST LOOK when his back is turned.

I'd like to think shortly after this was submitted, the artist quit and is currently on a beach somewhere sipping on a mai tai.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

These fail to grasp the feeling of Mass Effect, especially compared to the box art of Mass Effect 1.
Not to mention the japanese version of it, which is awesome.

SPOILER WARNING: Click here to reveal hidden content.

You're out of your mind, the Mass Effect 2 box art is awesome, it looks like a movie poster. I would totally put that in a frame and hang it on my wall. I will agree with you on ME3 though.

@onan said:

@Gargantuan: I honestly kind of liked the heavy Rain art. It got the effect down, desaturated, depressing, the soothing rain on glass effect, the soothing boobs on protagonist effect... other than the weird little duck origami I had no complaints about the Heavy Rain box.

Can't tell if serious... Have you seen the European art?

The fact that this thread has managed to go so long without the original Mega Man box art frankly surprises me to no end.

I'm not really a fan of any of the HD collections, with just floating cover art of previous games and generic background. E.g. -

To be honest I'm not a fan in general of any greatest hits, platinum or whatever plastered all over the original art, just makes the product look super cheap and nasty.

Also the weird Final Fantasy box art you seem to get versus PAL -

@bonorbitz said:

Oh, good ol' SNES game box art! That shit was always fantastic!

Also, none of you fuckers have obviously ever owned Wall Street Kid.

Especially when compared to this:

@onan said:

@RockmanBionics said:

@ZombiePie said:

Guess which concept page is appropriate for this topic? Box in Boxart, that's what.

We need to go deeper.

The part I like about this cover best is that I can imagine a meeting where a stressed out artist presents the obnoxiously recursive art that his bosses demanded he crank out for the re-re-release, and his boss was all like, "I like it, but hmm, I don't know. There's just nothing on there that just screams 'play it!' you know? 'check it out!'" Can you punch it up some more?" and the artist just gives him the DIRTIEST LOOK when his back is turned.

I'd like to think shortly after this was submitted, the artist quit and is currently on a beach somewhere sipping on a mai tai.

Being a graphic artist my self, i have clients who nitpick everything, aside from telling me how to do my job, the people that know what they want are fine, but the people that don't know what they want you have to look out for. I made the coolest looking coat of arms, but the guy i was making it for just wanted me to pretty much copy paste one he found on the internet.

Great game though.

@TaliciaDragonsong: I liked the previous cover they had before people bitched and made EA change it the colors were better

Mass Effect 3 it's ok, but yeah 1 was the really good one.

@Vegetable_Side_Dish: The Foo Fighters quote made me laugh pretty hard, thanks!

Pretty, pretty, pretty bad. They did a great job with four though.

@SaFt said:

Pretty, pretty, pretty bad. They did a great job with four though.

This one's a huge shame because the Japanese box for 3 is my favorite of the series. The American boxart for 4 and Dead Souls are better than their Japanese counterparts, but 3 was a huge fuck-up.

@bonorbitz: Wrong thread! This is the "ugliest box art ever" thread, not the "most awesomest box art ever" thread.

@Zlimness said:

I don't know what you're talking about. That is awesome! WAAAAUUUUU!!! MUSTERIOUS DRUIDZ!!!!

@Taku128: I'm with you on that. Apart fro the slightly big logo, it's fantastic.

You're all insane. I'm seeing a lot of amazing box art in this thread.

I can't remember if it was the Canadian Uncharted 2 or Killzone 2 box art that was plastered in awards logos in both english and french.

I think the Bulletstorm limited edition is pretty awful

I came in expecting to see the same shit that always comes up in these threads, but I'm pleasantly surprised at the amount of shitty box art I haven't seen yet.

Oh my.. that looks fucking hideous. I personally don't give a shit about box art but goddamn..

Came in knowing that Arkham City GOTY edition would be in here

@Vegetable_Side_Dish: There was one very important logo missing.

This game has an anime art style with a young protagonist, so obviously the cover would look like this:

Was so bad they changed it before it actually released.

@DrDarkStryfe said:

My god...