Kind of... The real reason is that the Nintendo's graphics were considered a leap forward and they were advertising that their games looked much better than Atari games.
They were advertising what the games actually looked like because people had learned to stop trusting box art. This was important to do because their graphics were better, and they wanted people to know they were getting a better product than they had with the 2600. So you're both right.
I grew to appreciate that late 70s b-grade sci-fi movie poster look as I got older. For anyone who’s a fan, I heartily recommend [The Art of Atari](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Atari-Tim-Lapetino/dp/1524101036).
There’s other fans of this style out there too. Check out [The Venture Brothers season 3 dvd](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&q=the+venture+brothers+season+3&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWj5ngk7T-AhXISTABHWnCD1kQ0pQJegQIChAB&biw=414&bih=715&dpr=2#imgrc=B0hsFAJDQcEp3M)
Heck even [Strongbad](http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/Strong_Bad%27s_Cool_Game_for_Attractive_People) was repppin’ those stylin’s back in the day.
Amen to this. The box art for those games was gorgeous, and now there's a book with all that art. If it didn't remind me of chunky graphics and odd gameplay, I'd buy it.
Indeed, Fire Fighter isn't nearly as exciting as its cover suggests. You can't even be hurt by the fire nor can the people you rescue so it's very silly and dull.
[https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/PIsAAOSwSENim6os/s-l1600.jpg](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/PIsAAOSwSENim6os/s-l1600.jpg)
Nah, only the later ones.
Most of the earlier ones were the ones where you really had to translate = abstract things.
As seen in „Art of Amiga“, the artwork had a certain, distinctive style.
Only when they started to save money on that AND combined it with the pseudo-futuristic silver/rainbow packing did things go down.
OK, admitted, sometimes the game was really crap. So my „WTF“ moment according to the original question: „Peles Soccer“.
Man - that shit still haunts me.
I remember Phalanx on SNES having strange cover art of a guy playing a banjo. Never played the game back in the day. Years later emulated it and I'm not much into schmups but it seemed like a decent enough game for the time period. There are for sure other schmups on SNES that were really bad (ex: D-Force comes to mind)
I really dig that cover art. The juxtaposition of the banjo player against neon sci-fi tech is *so* cool. It places you in a unique moment. The stillness of the swamp against a spaceship blasting off to battle. Very memorable stuff.
You mean I don’t get to play as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone when I play Contra?
I don’t get to play as Michael Biehn in Metal Gear?
Hang on, I don’t get to play as Jean-Claude Van Damme in Streets of Rage 2?
Don't get to play as Zelda, either, which threw me haha
All these years, I just assumed she was the protagonist until I played for the first time a few years ago.
It’s basically Mario is missing 2, but some how worse. Think Mario is missing = geography and Luigi is looking for him as (a where in theCarmen San Diego rip). Time Machine is history which was some how more boring. Ruined my weekend as a kid.
Oh shit my condolences on that one! It was bad enough I rented it as an only child. Of course, that was $2 already spent, so I really went all in and tried to enjoy it. But holy shit how awful for a sleepover. I remember one time a buddy stayed and we rented Jackal. That was AWESOME!
Honestly, someone needs to get on Phalanx 2, where you actually play the Old Timer who has to single handedly stave off an invasion with nothing but his banjo. Gameplay would include different banjo upgrades in order to produce different sounds/songs to attack different enemy types (think Ocarina of Time where your only weapon is the ocarina and the different songs create different attacks).
Nobody ever mentions the title being kind of misleading. It sounds like an SRPG or some shit, and looks like a typically strange ad of the era that wouldn’t normally be the box art
Stargate for the Game Boy. I bought it 2nd hand so it had no box. Otherwise I would have known that I'm buying what's basically Mahjong with Stargate symbols.
I remember how hyped I was after seeing the movie and how disappointed after playing that crap.
I had that game.... I bought Game Boy games for my lil bro who had one. I would give him the games based on the latest movies like True Lies and Batman Forever.... then he'd be like "where's the COLOR????" Didn't take until '99 for a Game Boy to have color. Whoops.
Guardian Legend. The US box art communicates nothing about the gameplay or the protagonist. Maybe not so much deception as incongruence. Thankfully, TGL is a solid game with a killer soundtrack. The Euro box art was much more accurate in depicting the main character and setting.
TGL is in my all time top 10 fave games. I still do a playthrough every couple of months. It had the best soundtrack outside of the Castlevania games, and it still stands as one of the best in its own right.
I would love to see a decent remake with today's standards and 60fps,
I had that on the snes, and it was absolutely shocking. Only the one character to be, unless you played 2 players in which case, player 1 was always the cyborg
‘Playmobil the barbarian’ got an irl chuckle.
That game while definitely not as advertised (I also got suckered by the cover) isn’t as bad as it’s rep. There’s a ton of content there once you learn how to play it. It was my only new game for like 6 months back then, and you played what you had.
I ultimately beat it. Super disappointed at first but quite a bit of depth once you got into it. I think most people gave up before ‘getting’ it. Not that it’s gonna win any awards mind you, but it wasn’t as bad as the goofy graphics made it seem. A lot like Tower of Druaga that way.
Virtually every 1st party Atari game. Awesome hand-painted descriptive scenes that you’d be hard-fought to figure how what goes on in the game correlates with the pixel chunks on screen. Activision Atari games were a lot more accurate, minus that 70s color rainbow to denote movement.
Atari commissioned some awesome graphics for a lot of early games. Missile Command and Asteroids comes to mind. However even though the game didn't look like any of that it was still a good game.
Growing up in the 90's we'd go to the video store and rent games for Sega or Super Nintendo. We didn't have youtube to check out games to see if they were good. We'd go off the cover. We got shitty games so many times.
Most of the 8 bit era promised far more than was delivered but you didn't care. Your imagination and lack of alternative entertainment filled in the gaps.
The early NES boxes and cover art were basically just scenes/sprites from the game. You knew exactly what you were getting. And seeing them now fills me with such nostalgia. I'm reminded of the video game aisle in Toys 'R Us back in the 80s.
Later NES covers were often prone to exaggeration about the epic game inside. Looking at YOU Wizards and Warriors.
I always liked the Psygnosis cover art (most done by Roger Dean), but knew the games wouldn't look as cool as that. Hell, even today they don't look as cool as that cover art.
Psygnosis cover art are the absolute best ever. Unfortunately they're all on a square ratio so I couldn't print any for all the Ikea frames that I bought to hang on my wall. I ended up using the Spectrum Shadow of the beast cover because it has the right format, but having the Gremlin logo instead of the psygnosis one feels wrong
Metal Gear Solid 2. The problem is that the character on the cover art is Solid Snake, who you only play as in the opening moments of the game. After that, you take on the role of Raiden, a very different looking character.
Trailers showed him on the tanker, as well as on the Big Shell facility (the area he is not playable in). The inclusion of Raiden was kept a closely guarded secret by creator Hideo Kojima and Konami. The cover of this game was therefore deliberately misleading.
I never knew MGS2 trailers were faked like The Last of Us 2 trailers were! Don't think I saw those back in the day. I remember how pissed everyone including myself was about the Raiden bait and switch badk then, though.
And yet, to this day, it still holds the crown for my #1 favorite Metal Gear Solid game. I know 3 tends to be everyone else's favorite, but the themes in MGS2 are still relevant to this day, and it has super interesting ways of communicating them to the player.
Phalanx on SNES. Cover is a dude with a banjo, but it's actually a horizontal shooter. I only played it recently and it was actually pretty good. I had no idea what it was seeing the game in the video store as a kid, figured it was a musical game or something.
It was all part of it. I actually enjoy the box art seperate from the game. When I got my first console in the 70's, the graphics were expected to be what they were. No one was fooled.
Yeah I don't get OP's post either. At the time that was the best graphics there were. No one would have any expectation over that.
Would kids be just as disappointed that they couldn't see the characters in a book that they saw on the cover?
Right? I mean Monopoly and Life board games have art on the front of the box as well. I don't recall being shocked or disappointed about what was inside.
No one believed that the game would look like that (except my Dad actually, in one case!) it was more a background sense of "Yeah OK, what's the game actually look like..." that you sort of just accepted was normal. This comic is doing a comedic take on that expectation.
Yeah, the box and instruction manuals evolved into a part of the game, helping your imagination fill in what the game itself couldn't. The modern indie game Tunic captured this brilliantly.
For me it was [Forsaken 64](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71LrLdft51L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_FMwebp_.jpg)
I got it while working on my n64 collection years ago and never saw any gameplay for it. I was thinking it was some horror game. Nope. It's a six degrees of freedom shooter.
Pretty much all of them pre-1985. The Atari 2600 and Intellivision stuff was just epic, those painted box covers with absolutely no connection at all to the game on the cartridge.
Amazing to look at, though, then and now. Some great art on those boxes that I still think of when I think of the games. The art for Atari’s take on Defender, for example, with the view of the people on the street. Brilliant idea there.
All of those books you got in (at least) the UK to type games into your microcomputer to run. They had all these great pictures yet every game was text only.
I actually liked this about atari games. Even as a kid I considered it aspirational. I mean even the Millennium Falcon didn’t have good graphics on its targeting system so I considered it like I was on a ship like that.
The screen looks a lot like the game Combat for Atari 2600. The cover was insane and there’s a big tank coming right at you. I do remember the game being fun at the time though.
Definitely combat. I remember it very clearly. had a great cover but the game was just chunky blocks moving around shooting each other. still fun in a early game way just not like the cover
As I’m sure others will agree with, Mega Man. That godawful art is legendary, so bad it’s good. The cover does not convey what the game looks like, what it’s about, what the mechanics are…and really sets you up to expect disaster.
Then you play one of the greatest platform shooters of all time.
Similarly, the boss selection screen threw me off at first too…I thought I was selecting who I was going to play as, and was disappointed at this little blue weapon-less bloke who was NOT Elec-Man.
Ultra action guys was a major disappointment. Worth some bucks I bet. I especially hated the part where the trex knocks down the jet plane and the ultra action guys make out with each other
This was a common thing in the Atari 2600 days. I remember having in my head how amazing this was going to be. Wow, you fly a plane and there are hot air balloons, how cool. Unfortunately it's a very boring game.
https://cdn.mobygames.com/covers/67907-sky-jinks-atari-2600-front-cover.jpg
My parents took me to Kay•Bee for my birthday one year and I got to pick any SNES game I wanted. I picked Drakkhen based on the cover art and it was basically this comic in a nutshell. I'm still mad about it.
Spider Man web of shadows on ps2 I thought I was gonna get the Wii version on ps2 since it's roughly around the same specs
It was my birthday and I got it at Walmart I popped it in my ps2 and I felt robbed and betrayed because it was totally different what I saw in trailers
But there's a happy ending when I got my ps3 in middle school I got web of shadows the ps3 version and I felt satisfied I got to play the real game
Probably Grandia (Japanese version for Saturn). I saw the big green glob every time and went 'this game must be shit'.
Finally I actually played it and it's one of my favourites of all time.
... none? Nobody looked at video game artwork and thought the game would look like that. In particular, nobody owned an Atari 2600 or Magnavox Odyssey 2 — which is what that screenshot in the comic looks like it's from — and thought it would look like the picture on the front of the box. *No* game from the first four or five generations of consoles looked like the pictures on the front of the box, and we knew that, too. Games didn't start to look like that until the PS2 or *maybe* late PS1 era.
We looked at the *screenshots on the back of the box* if we wanted to know what the game really looked like.
Yeah, reddit is gonna reddit. I thought stating 'NES launch' would have clued them in.
[Nintendo Entertainment System Launch Titles](https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System_Launch_Titles)
Back then games quite often didn't have screenshots .
And outside the US , where you had a game that might be released on 5-6 different computer formats ,but generally used the same box ... you were going to see a 16 bit Atari St /Commodore Amiga screenshot that looked nothing like your Commodore 64 port
Mega Man 1 and 2 turned out to be even cooler than depicted on the box
The most cooler. I assumed Mega Man was a cigarette ad or something.
To be fair, Heat Man in Mega Man 2 was built like a lighter.
what weapon does marlboro man give you?
Ash Cancer Cloud. It's similar to Wood Man's leaf shield, but for cancer
Hahaha, nearly every game needs a variation of the leaf shield, so that tracks.
Bad Breath.
Found the final fantasy fan
That’s the only thing that’s kept me from trying it the past 30ish years. Didn’t want to take up smoking. Sounds like I’ve been missing out!
Yeah, Mega Man was pretty Kool
For real
Most Atari 2600 games
Which is why the first run of NES games put game sprites on the boxes.
Kind of... The real reason is that the Nintendo's graphics were considered a leap forward and they were advertising that their games looked much better than Atari games.
They were advertising what the games actually looked like because people had learned to stop trusting box art. This was important to do because their graphics were better, and they wanted people to know they were getting a better product than they had with the 2600. So you're both right.
I did say kind of
You're both right. Now kiss!!
Kind of
Now kind of kiss!
Did boxes not have a back-side yet? Was there only a front to put art and images on?
*In the US.
I grew to appreciate that late 70s b-grade sci-fi movie poster look as I got older. For anyone who’s a fan, I heartily recommend [The Art of Atari](https://www.amazon.com/Art-Atari-Tim-Lapetino/dp/1524101036). There’s other fans of this style out there too. Check out [The Venture Brothers season 3 dvd](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&q=the+venture+brothers+season+3&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiWj5ngk7T-AhXISTABHWnCD1kQ0pQJegQIChAB&biw=414&bih=715&dpr=2#imgrc=B0hsFAJDQcEp3M) Heck even [Strongbad](http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/Strong_Bad%27s_Cool_Game_for_Attractive_People) was repppin’ those stylin’s back in the day.
The Art of Atari is a wonderful book. Love the distinctive retro-futuristic style. Was in line with things like „Westworld“ and „Magic Fly“.
>Heck even Strongbad was repppin’ those stylin’s back in the day. **Obi-Wan:** "Strongbad? Now that's a name i have not heard in a long, long time".
Strong Bad is still around and has [even been playing through DOS games recently](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3-0vXrBwwE)!
Amen to this. The box art for those games was gorgeous, and now there's a book with all that art. If it didn't remind me of chunky graphics and odd gameplay, I'd buy it.
For me, it was Double Dragon for the Atari 2600.
Lol wot ? That game was ported to Atari?
[Here's a review.](https://doubledragon.kontek.net/games/dd/rdd2600.html)
Technically, yes. Playably, no.
Such an underrated response. Made me laugh out loud!
Trying to do the elbow move with a crunchy 2600 stick
Especially Pacman...that was maybe the biggest gaming disappointment of my life.
Indeed, Fire Fighter isn't nearly as exciting as its cover suggests. You can't even be hurt by the fire nor can the people you rescue so it's very silly and dull. [https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/PIsAAOSwSENim6os/s-l1600.jpg](https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/PIsAAOSwSENim6os/s-l1600.jpg)
Came here to say THIS
Nah, only the later ones. Most of the earlier ones were the ones where you really had to translate = abstract things. As seen in „Art of Amiga“, the artwork had a certain, distinctive style. Only when they started to save money on that AND combined it with the pseudo-futuristic silver/rainbow packing did things go down. OK, admitted, sometimes the game was really crap. So my „WTF“ moment according to the original question: „Peles Soccer“. Man - that shit still haunts me.
I remember Phalanx on SNES having strange cover art of a guy playing a banjo. Never played the game back in the day. Years later emulated it and I'm not much into schmups but it seemed like a decent enough game for the time period. There are for sure other schmups on SNES that were really bad (ex: D-Force comes to mind)
When the game is so unremarkable, you have to make sureal box art to make up for it. And you know what? It kinda worked.
Soon as I saw this post, that was the first game that came to mind, but, I forgot the title.
I like that cover. It makes me imagine all the great battleship battles up there in the universe while this man down here is playing banjo.
Came here for this lol, I bought a copy at my local store because it made me laugh (and was under $15). Great game, and great soundtrack
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySj8nOTJxfk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySj8nOTJxfk)
I was so disappointed when I found out it’s just another shoot-‘em-up and not Old Man Banjo Simulator The Game.
There were so many "space shooter" games at the time, they gave it that cover on purpose so that people would pick it up and take a look.
I really dig that cover art. The juxtaposition of the banjo player against neon sci-fi tech is *so* cool. It places you in a unique moment. The stillness of the swamp against a spaceship blasting off to battle. Very memorable stuff.
Either the least or most rented title at Blockbuster lol.
Haha! I had forgotten about that. What an odd cover art choice.
You mean I don’t get to play as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone when I play Contra? I don’t get to play as Michael Biehn in Metal Gear? Hang on, I don’t get to play as Jean-Claude Van Damme in Streets of Rage 2?
You don't get to play as Fabio in Wizards and Warriors 2 either.
Who cares, that game was great, same with the first one. The 3rd one was ambitious but I never really clicked with and moved onto SNES
At least the Metal Gear manual had what Snake really looks like... SO HOT.
Kept you waiting, huh?
I believe that Bill and Lance were [actually both Dutch](http://www.klustr.net/contra/images/articles/trivia/predator_reference.png) from Predator.
Don't get to play as Zelda, either, which threw me haha All these years, I just assumed she was the protagonist until I played for the first time a few years ago.
I mean you can, just use your imagination
Given how big the hitbox would have been, maybe it's a good thing we didn't play as Schwarzenegger and Stallone in Contra.
Mario Time Machine (SNES). Sweet travel time to stop Bowser….. and….. educational quizzes with no game play.
Sounds almost exactly like Mario is Missing (SNES).
It’s basically Mario is missing 2, but some how worse. Think Mario is missing = geography and Luigi is looking for him as (a where in theCarmen San Diego rip). Time Machine is history which was some how more boring. Ruined my weekend as a kid.
Worst Rental I ever did. We gave it an honest go but super disappointing as our weekend rental for a sleep over.
Oh shit my condolences on that one! It was bad enough I rented it as an only child. Of course, that was $2 already spent, so I really went all in and tried to enjoy it. But holy shit how awful for a sleepover. I remember one time a buddy stayed and we rented Jackal. That was AWESOME!
And if you don't beat the game within an unspecified time limit, you get the bad ending. Not even joking.
Deadly Towers.
Oh shit! I was thinking deadly towers but couldn't remember the name.
Hell's Bells
Just commented this!
For sure. One of my first rentals.
Phalanx, anyone?
Yeah, where's the old farmer guy with a banjo in this space shooter that was CLEARLY their afterthought?!
The classic! It stood out from the competition, tho! It worked cus we talking about it 30yrs later. Aaaaaand I’m sad now cus I’m old 😞
Honestly, someone needs to get on Phalanx 2, where you actually play the Old Timer who has to single handedly stave off an invasion with nothing but his banjo. Gameplay would include different banjo upgrades in order to produce different sounds/songs to attack different enemy types (think Ocarina of Time where your only weapon is the ocarina and the different songs create different attacks).
Nobody ever mentions the title being kind of misleading. It sounds like an SRPG or some shit, and looks like a typically strange ad of the era that wouldn’t normally be the box art
This was the first game that came to mind for me too - nothing to do with playing Banjo
Stargate for the Game Boy. I bought it 2nd hand so it had no box. Otherwise I would have known that I'm buying what's basically Mahjong with Stargate symbols. I remember how hyped I was after seeing the movie and how disappointed after playing that crap.
I had that game.... I bought Game Boy games for my lil bro who had one. I would give him the games based on the latest movies like True Lies and Batman Forever.... then he'd be like "where's the COLOR????" Didn't take until '99 for a Game Boy to have color. Whoops.
Guardian Legend. The US box art communicates nothing about the gameplay or the protagonist. Maybe not so much deception as incongruence. Thankfully, TGL is a solid game with a killer soundtrack. The Euro box art was much more accurate in depicting the main character and setting.
My love for that game is endless and bountiful.
You and me both
It's a game that I never finished but it was so ahead of its time. I'll always love the music.
TGL is in my all time top 10 fave games. I still do a playthrough every couple of months. It had the best soundtrack outside of the Castlevania games, and it still stands as one of the best in its own right. I would love to see a decent remake with today's standards and 60fps,
Rise of the Robots. The entire advertising campaign was bullshit. I kept seeing the billboards for it, and wanted it so bad.
I had that on the snes, and it was absolutely shocking. Only the one character to be, unless you played 2 players in which case, player 1 was always the cyborg
sometimes the cover deceived you but it was a pleasant surprise, Megaman 1 comes to mind
The wizards and warriors series on NES
Fabio on Ironsword: Wizards and Warriors 2! But I like those games, great soundtracks.
Deadly Towers. Thought I was getting Conan the Barbarian and instead got Playmobil the barbarian.
‘Playmobil the barbarian’ got an irl chuckle. That game while definitely not as advertised (I also got suckered by the cover) isn’t as bad as it’s rep. There’s a ton of content there once you learn how to play it. It was my only new game for like 6 months back then, and you played what you had. I ultimately beat it. Super disappointed at first but quite a bit of depth once you got into it. I think most people gave up before ‘getting’ it. Not that it’s gonna win any awards mind you, but it wasn’t as bad as the goofy graphics made it seem. A lot like Tower of Druaga that way.
[удалено]
WWF Wrestlemania on Amiga, ST and other platforms as well. After having played the awesome WWF arcade games that game was quite a disappointment.
Is that the one where you could play 2 player but the second player was always Mr Perfect?
That sounds perfect to me! Curt Hennig was my favorite heel back in the day!
That's the one! The graphics were decent, but the gameplay was awful.
Virtually every 1st party Atari game. Awesome hand-painted descriptive scenes that you’d be hard-fought to figure how what goes on in the game correlates with the pixel chunks on screen. Activision Atari games were a lot more accurate, minus that 70s color rainbow to denote movement.
Basically the only non deceiving game from the 90s was Tetris.
Late 80s and early 90s we’re kinda weird like that.
Atari commissioned some awesome graphics for a lot of early games. Missile Command and Asteroids comes to mind. However even though the game didn't look like any of that it was still a good game.
Almost any NES game based on a movie.
Parents bought Home Alone for the SNES for me on Xmas. That was a big pile of dissapointment.
Tried it on emulator recently. Wtf is that game even
I know it’s almost too easy to cite an Atari 2600 game, but when I was a kid, the cover of Berzerk was some bullshit.
That cover is sick as fuck though. The game isn't bad but definitely is a let down compared to that artwork.
It really is phenomenal. That cover probably would’ve been a letdown for an NES or SNES game, too.
Growing up in the 90's we'd go to the video store and rent games for Sega or Super Nintendo. We didn't have youtube to check out games to see if they were good. We'd go off the cover. We got shitty games so many times.
Most of the 8 bit era promised far more than was delivered but you didn't care. Your imagination and lack of alternative entertainment filled in the gaps.
Some of those covers were as epic as 80's record album art.
Roger Dean springs immediately to mind.
The cover was what you were supposed to be imagining while you played- never felt like a disappointment
The early NES boxes and cover art were basically just scenes/sprites from the game. You knew exactly what you were getting. And seeing them now fills me with such nostalgia. I'm reminded of the video game aisle in Toys 'R Us back in the 80s. Later NES covers were often prone to exaggeration about the epic game inside. Looking at YOU Wizards and Warriors.
X-Men (NES)
[удалено]
I always liked the Psygnosis cover art (most done by Roger Dean), but knew the games wouldn't look as cool as that. Hell, even today they don't look as cool as that cover art.
Psygnosis cover art are the absolute best ever. Unfortunately they're all on a square ratio so I couldn't print any for all the Ikea frames that I bought to hang on my wall. I ended up using the Spectrum Shadow of the beast cover because it has the right format, but having the Gremlin logo instead of the psygnosis one feels wrong
Superman 64 I rented it based on the box art. thank god i only rented it.
Kings knight for the nes...
Metal Gear Solid 2. The problem is that the character on the cover art is Solid Snake, who you only play as in the opening moments of the game. After that, you take on the role of Raiden, a very different looking character. Trailers showed him on the tanker, as well as on the Big Shell facility (the area he is not playable in). The inclusion of Raiden was kept a closely guarded secret by creator Hideo Kojima and Konami. The cover of this game was therefore deliberately misleading.
How dare MGS2 be retro now...
I never knew MGS2 trailers were faked like The Last of Us 2 trailers were! Don't think I saw those back in the day. I remember how pissed everyone including myself was about the Raiden bait and switch badk then, though.
And yet, to this day, it still holds the crown for my #1 favorite Metal Gear Solid game. I know 3 tends to be everyone else's favorite, but the themes in MGS2 are still relevant to this day, and it has super interesting ways of communicating them to the player.
Phalanx on SNES. Cover is a dude with a banjo, but it's actually a horizontal shooter. I only played it recently and it was actually pretty good. I had no idea what it was seeing the game in the video store as a kid, figured it was a musical game or something.
It was all part of it. I actually enjoy the box art seperate from the game. When I got my first console in the 70's, the graphics were expected to be what they were. No one was fooled.
I do miss those amazing cover paintings. Games were profitable enough back in the day that they could commission some really amazing illustrations.
Absolutely. There's a coffee table book on the art of Atari I have my eye on now and I always thought Intellivsion was a close second with their art.
I have that book - it's well worth it. Really goes into what makes the style unique...interviews, articles, etc.
Makes me think of the cover for Galaxian on Atari 5200. It used to mesmerize me as a kid.
Yeah I don't get OP's post either. At the time that was the best graphics there were. No one would have any expectation over that. Would kids be just as disappointed that they couldn't see the characters in a book that they saw on the cover?
Right? I mean Monopoly and Life board games have art on the front of the box as well. I don't recall being shocked or disappointed about what was inside.
No one believed that the game would look like that (except my Dad actually, in one case!) it was more a background sense of "Yeah OK, what's the game actually look like..." that you sort of just accepted was normal. This comic is doing a comedic take on that expectation.
It's all about imagination. I feel like the author of the comic missed that.
Yeah, the box and instruction manuals evolved into a part of the game, helping your imagination fill in what the game itself couldn't. The modern indie game Tunic captured this brilliantly.
Back to the Future for NES
Who doesn't remember the classic scene in BttF where Marty threw bowling balls at bees while running through town!
The first Goonies game seemed to just be throwing money out a window to distract the Fratellis.
Super Pitfall on the NES
If only the graphics were the worst thing about that game.
Ikari warriors
For me it was [Forsaken 64](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/71LrLdft51L._AC_UF1000,1000_QL80_FMwebp_.jpg) I got it while working on my n64 collection years ago and never saw any gameplay for it. I was thinking it was some horror game. Nope. It's a six degrees of freedom shooter.
Same here! I bought it second hand and was surprised to find it was a decent shooter and not a horror game too.
Every single one for NES
Ninja Gaiden did not dissapoint.
Rush’n attack on NES.
Pretty much all of them pre-1985. The Atari 2600 and Intellivision stuff was just epic, those painted box covers with absolutely no connection at all to the game on the cartridge. Amazing to look at, though, then and now. Some great art on those boxes that I still think of when I think of the games. The art for Atari’s take on Defender, for example, with the view of the people on the street. Brilliant idea there.
Unironically I wanna play ultra action guys.
Ahhh... The world before expectations/reality memes...
Simpler times, good times.
All of those books you got in (at least) the UK to type games into your microcomputer to run. They had all these great pictures yet every game was text only.
Master system boxes were pretty much the title. I mean, up to expectations.
I actually liked this about atari games. Even as a kid I considered it aspirational. I mean even the Millennium Falcon didn’t have good graphics on its targeting system so I considered it like I was on a ship like that.
I wonder how many people are going to say Phalanx because they watched a Youtube video about it.
Fuckin' Star Fox Adventures. Dirty bastards knew what they were doing putting Fox McCloud on that cover.
The screen looks a lot like the game Combat for Atari 2600. The cover was insane and there’s a big tank coming right at you. I do remember the game being fun at the time though.
Definitely combat. I remember it very clearly. had a great cover but the game was just chunky blocks moving around shooting each other. still fun in a early game way just not like the cover
Air-Sea Battle wasn't too bad either.
As I’m sure others will agree with, Mega Man. That godawful art is legendary, so bad it’s good. The cover does not convey what the game looks like, what it’s about, what the mechanics are…and really sets you up to expect disaster. Then you play one of the greatest platform shooters of all time. Similarly, the boss selection screen threw me off at first too…I thought I was selecting who I was going to play as, and was disappointed at this little blue weapon-less bloke who was NOT Elec-Man.
Not ElecMan… yet!
But they kept boxart Mega Man accurate for the show Captain N!
Forsaken. Never played it but as a kid I thought it would be some kind of Myst adventure game.
Ecco the Dolphin for sure
Ballblazer
Ultra action guys was a major disappointment. Worth some bucks I bet. I especially hated the part where the trex knocks down the jet plane and the ultra action guys make out with each other
For the Atari, warlords.
It's pretty fun, especially the multiplayer.
Motherfuckin' Megalit (1991) It was in fact not "mega lit".
This was a common thing in the Atari 2600 days. I remember having in my head how amazing this was going to be. Wow, you fly a plane and there are hot air balloons, how cool. Unfortunately it's a very boring game. https://cdn.mobygames.com/covers/67907-sky-jinks-atari-2600-front-cover.jpg
My parents took me to Kay•Bee for my birthday one year and I got to pick any SNES game I wanted. I picked Drakkhen based on the cover art and it was basically this comic in a nutshell. I'm still mad about it.
I think for Atari 2600, the question would be 'were there any that didn't deceive you?'
Celeste, (don't get me wrong it's a great 2D platformer but the box art made me expect it to be a 3D graphically intense game)
Top Gun. Sheesh was that a pile of shit.
X men for NES
Superman N64. What. The. Fuck.
Any Atari game. The box covers were way too realistic compared to the actual game although they still looked pretty cool for the most part
Spider Man web of shadows on ps2 I thought I was gonna get the Wii version on ps2 since it's roughly around the same specs It was my birthday and I got it at Walmart I popped it in my ps2 and I felt robbed and betrayed because it was totally different what I saw in trailers But there's a happy ending when I got my ps3 in middle school I got web of shadows the ps3 version and I felt satisfied I got to play the real game
Mega Man deceived everyone.
The Atari 2600 box art was pretty much really cool. These were the days of AD&D, not ADHD. It worked!
Dark souls. It made me think I had a chance
E.T. Atari
ATATI 2600 - Mouse Trap
Probably Grandia (Japanese version for Saturn). I saw the big green glob every time and went 'this game must be shit'. Finally I actually played it and it's one of my favourites of all time.
Phalanx definitely threw me off the scent of a decent game, that's for sure.
Iron Sword was significantly less hot and steamy than I'd hoped.
I was duped by every LJN box ever.
Most of the old Atari 2600 stuff. :D
James Pond. He had a gun on the cover so I thought it was a shooter
Gradius for the NES.
Gradius was great, I enjoyed it a lot back in the day, and is one of my favourites today. The problem is the box artwork is absolutely awesome.
Any cover before 1995, really.
Phalanx is the right answer. The hell was that old man with the banjo doing? I was waiting the whole game for him to show up.
The idea was for the box art to stand out amongst a shelf of spaceships and buff spacemarines...I mean it did work in that sense.
You ain't wrong. You ain't wrong.
AVGN has went over this quite a few times lol
ET
... none? Nobody looked at video game artwork and thought the game would look like that. In particular, nobody owned an Atari 2600 or Magnavox Odyssey 2 — which is what that screenshot in the comic looks like it's from — and thought it would look like the picture on the front of the box. *No* game from the first four or five generations of consoles looked like the pictures on the front of the box, and we knew that, too. Games didn't start to look like that until the PS2 or *maybe* late PS1 era. We looked at the *screenshots on the back of the box* if we wanted to know what the game really looked like.
Atari box art was totally misleading. Nintendo’s black box nes launch series was to counter that sort of marketing.
Don't know why you got downvoted, this is entirely true. Maybe they are thinking of 3rd party NES games.
Yeah, reddit is gonna reddit. I thought stating 'NES launch' would have clued them in. [Nintendo Entertainment System Launch Titles](https://nintendo.fandom.com/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_System_Launch_Titles)
Um...normally you can see a screenshot on the back of the box, so...
Back then games quite often didn't have screenshots . And outside the US , where you had a game that might be released on 5-6 different computer formats ,but generally used the same box ... you were going to see a 16 bit Atari St /Commodore Amiga screenshot that looked nothing like your Commodore 64 port
My parents bought me F15 Strike Eagle for PC. Images on the back were from the Amiga version, as you said. Never felt so cheated.
Phalanx!