It’s not so much a problem these days with videos, screenshots and reviews everywhere for almost any remotely popular game, but before the internet, sometimes you just had to trust the publisher. And that meant box art. Dirty, damn lying box art.
The folks over at Outside Box have put together this amusing video that looks at seven games with somewhat duplicitous box art. As you’d expect, all the titles are from the early days of gaming.
My favourites, easily, are the ever-notorious Phalanx and Saboteur II, with the latter promising panthers, ninjas and motorbikes and delivering… well, let’s just say you’d have been a very sad kid if your parents had given it to you as a present.
While we still have box art today, it doesn’t carry the same weight it did before. No, now we rely on trailers, which may or may not be rendered in-engine, or be dolled up with effects that can’t possibly be active if one expects playable framerates. The more things change… the more they stay the same.
7 Times Epic Box Art Overpromised Wildly [YouTube]
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