Be Excellent To Each Other

OK, lets collate some crap game covers for a possible feature for the super secret webazine with attitude.

I start the bidding with this masterpiece I found earlier:

Blimey. Jennifer Grey's career really went downhill after Dirty Dancing, didn't it?

Ok who wants to post Metrocross?

I though we could take Metrocross as read.

Can we include modern atrocities such as this?

(This cover is, in fact, brilliant.)

The PAL boxart of Street Fighter Alpha (PS1 and Saturn) still beggars belief.

Unfortunately google seems to be bereft of a single image.

For posterity:

The day that Crouchy did indeed get his nachos.

Crouchy the Tramp? 2nd cousin to Twitchy the Tramp?

You obviously are unaware of Fighting Talk. Or was it Football Weekly?

'Twas Football Weekly where the tale was related of Crouchy declaring his nacho-having ability.

Worth it for the stupid expression on blue-flying-kicker-guy and the OTT muscles.

Oh and I thought I recognised that Phalanx cover.. it's a scan of my own copy!

First, this one, for the ludicrously arty title (it's a puzzle game)


Possibly the third worst depiction of Megaman, ever (after the two infamous NES North American boxarts of the first two games)


"Spock, why do you keep shouting 'duck'?"

"Horses? Where?"

Daedalian Opus is the English translation of Puzzle Road (the famous GB tetronimo tangram game), isn't it?

The intralevel music is catchy. I should whip out Reason and do a crap cover of the music. See what I did there?

Why do a feature on this? It's been done to death on every forum for the past 5 years. Next thing you'll be compiling a list of stuff that only happens in videogames.

In real life you can't rummage through peoples belongings and break their pots. lolz!

I imagine most things have been done to death - take this page on Screwattack. Toilets in games.. Hitler's exploding head in Bionic Commando... polished videos but all been done before.

Got to start somewhere though.

Someone please find me the box cover of Dodgy Geezers on the speccy. I seem to recall that was ace, but not as ace as the theme tune on the B side that I strenuously tried to find on a google a while ago, but couldn't see a thing.

Not sure if a direct link works...

Bless you DM, that's ace. Now, if you can find an mp3 of that theme song, I'll give you a free t-shirt.

I seem to recall that Dodgy Geezers 2 started by saying 'Please enter the code you received at the end of Dodgy Geezers 1'. That was not a sequel I enjoyed.

Can you lose Dodgy Geezers 1?

PM me desired t-shirt style, size, colour, and your address plz.

Heh I've just listened to it myself.. might have to keep that on my PC for a bit.

Because the last time we did it, we did it 100 times better than anyone else. So thphhhhhhtttt!

It's reminicent of a bygone age when games developers took the time to write, record, and produce an utterly crap song to go along with their games. It's ace.

It reminds me of that Shakin' Stevens (album, single?) where at the end of it he says something like 'If you have a Spectrum 48k computer, you can play my game on the reverse of this tape', and the game was a little maze puzzler where you had to get to the centre in order to earn gold records, if I recall. The only trouble with the game is that it was extremely formulaic and once you had the few variations down, it was easy to beat. Ace though!

I like post that image at least once a week.

Brillo. Bats, that was it. Bats in a maze. Almost pacman-esque except the bats always went the same way.

Just been taking photos of my stuff and I can't decide whether this one is really good or really bad

It looks like some sort of Aryan propaganda

I just found this little gem in my collection... Now there's a shameless cash in!!

I quite like that one

Can I drop this abomination here?

Ha, I didn't know about this thread, but I saw that in Tesco Earlier and thought, what a shit game cover.

Looks more like a poster than a game cover.

-edit- Whoops, just realised it's in German. Oh well, the English one is exactly the same but in English, natch.

Good gods.

Shouldn't there be some type of vehicle on the cover at least? Unless it's like Micro Maniacs and Wild Wild Racing where they're on foot - in which case, the sulky bint in the long dress is knackered.

That one in the middle... I think mummy had a few boxes of wine while pregnant with her. Look at her eyes!

I was going through some of my Genesis and Master System collection the other day, and had to take a picture of Golden Axe, if only to show the level of artistic talent that was required to draw box covers for Sega in 1989.
A true classic of bad box art.

Could this be the most unappealingly greasy hero in box art history? Also, his cowboy hat is curiously absent.

That's one of the better ones!

Sorry to dig this one up again but we were lurking around Snesorama and came across this monstrosity.



Not even Japan escapes bad game covers.

What the hell is the game?!

"Deep Frying Bits Of Your Victims Simulator"

I walked past what was our old newsies just now and thought "I really fancy buying the latest £1.99 Codemasters game" earlier today.

Coverart is something that is lost on todays generation. The artwork is what would make you pick a game up and look at the screenshots on the back. In those days it would be ages before the reviews would appear. I know there are still software shops but these days with reviews available pre-release on the internet, you are buying games on far more than just a pretty picture.

Perhaps we could look for good game covers?

I figured it was worth scanning the whole of this cover. One from my pile of Mega Drive games... Mahjong Cop Ryuu: Hakurou no Yabou. Not too bad artistically.. it's just odd.

(Click for a bigger version)

Its called Ramen Hashi and is basically a noodle stand sim.

A, er... A 'noodle stand sim', you say?

Science Papa kind of terrifies me. Plus I have residual resentment that Mama can cook, garden, and craft but science is for Papa. Freaky, freaky Papa. I also think his hair is about to get caught in those random gears and scalp him like he's an underpaid teenage girl working a loom during the industrial revolution.