Social media and modern advertising has changed the way🐼 video game consumers purchase games today. With the ability to go online, read reviews, or even watch people stream their games live, we often know exactly what we are getting when we purchase a video game. Yet times were not always tha🌳t simple. Many gamers will remember earlier years scouring the aisle of Toys "R" Us or looking through toy store catalogues looking for the games we wanted to play with no way of really knowing which games were good and which ones were bad other than through word of mouth.
꧋Because of this method of shopping for video games, many gamers were probably left disappointed due to what was shown on a product's packaging and what the video game content actually contained. Younger kids in the eighties and nineties would typically cho﷽ose a game with the cover that popped out at them the most or was based on a popular franchise they enjoyed. While some box art hit the mark, many game covers were completely misleading and the games had little to nothing to do with the image displayed on the cover. With that said, let's take a look at some of the 15 most misleading video game covers to grace our store shelves.
15 Tetris
Tetris is one of those games that is so common that you can't see the name without picturing the seven tetrominoes falling down when you close your eyes. The title is so synonymous with gaming that you pretty much know exactly what you're getting. So lets take the Sega Genesis version of Tetris and rip the title off the box art. What do we get? Simply an image of St. Basil's Cathedral in Moscow. This may make sense if you are familiar with the Russian roots of Tetris as it has become an icon for the franchise,🍷 but it really makes little sense𒀰 when advertising the core gameplay.
What's so baffling is that other versions already had perfectly good box art for the game. Though each iteration varies slightly from version to version, I'd say the original Gameboy and NES box art nailed it, with colorful tetrominoes falli✤ng to form lines, depicting in one simple image exactly what the game is. It's both flashy and informative and a similar art style would have served the Genesis version much better.
14 ജ Night Trap ꦛ
Night Trap is an example of the live action video trend that started skyrocketing in the mid-nineties. Looking at the cover, you might assume you're party of an army squad raiding a haunted mansion killing its demon inhabitants. That's not quite the case. You play as an agent stationed at a control panel monitoring various rooms in a house where a teenage slumber party is taking place, complete with teen girl shenanigans and a musical number that shares a name with the game. Though you're objective isn't to be a creepy voyeur, but to set off traps in different rooms when monsters are found who are harvesting the blood of the girls. Another version of the box art at least has the game's leading lady portrayed by Diff'rent Strokes' Dana Plato, pointing at the three vampire antagonists in the background. Although𓄧 the covꦗer would still be misleading, at least it features main characters from the game.
The 🦩game is actually being rereleased later this year digitally for Xbox One and Playstation 4. If you are actually a fan of the terrible box art, Limited Run Games is releasing the title on a physical format complete witꦜh your choice of terrible box art!
13 Catherine
Puzzle games seem to have a particularly difficult time depicting the in-game content. Usually, there's nothing flashy about falling blocks or bursting rainbow blobs, yet Catherine for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 takes the standard puzzle game and spins it in a different direction. Even though the cover is approp🍎riate to what the story involves, looking right at the two cover variants wouldn't have the consumer thinking this was a puzzle game but rather a dating sim🌳 or one of those strange sex games that are more common in Japan.
The game is split up between two different forms of gameplay, one type taking place during the protagonist Vincent's everyday life and the second during his nightmares. The nightmare segments are where the meat of the game takes place as Vincent must climb his way to the top of a tower while pushing and pulling different blocks the tower is made up of solving his way to the top. The two covers depict his two love interests: Vincent's long term girlfriend Katherine who wants to settle down and Catherine, a younger, seductive girl who lures Vincent int♏o an affair. During the non-puzzle segments, you are living your daily life making decisions between conversations with your friends and both Katherine and Catherine affecting the overall plot of the story. Though the box art does the story justice, it really glosses over the puzzle aspect of the game.
12 Zillion
The Sega Master System has to be home for some of the ugliest box art in gaming history, maybe only beaten by the Atari. Most Sega Master System game covers followed a similar approach with a minimalist mindset in design depicting a single image that was meant to imply the game's subject matter. While most Sega Master System covers get the job done, when it comes to Zillion, I have no idea what I'm looking at. Is💃 it a computer monitor? Or maybe a microwave? Your guess is as good as mine.
Zillion is actually a game based off an anime from 1987 of the same name, so you think that designing a cover for the game would be easy. The gameplay consists of being a side-scrolling platformer and is often said to be much like the original Metroid. The game wasn't bad by any means for the time, yet with box art like this, it might have been easy to pass by in the video game aisle of your local toy store. Its sequel Zillion II: The Triformation kept the minimalist design used in other Sega Master System games, but at least presented an ♒image that was more accurate to the source material for the game.
11 Breakout
Another example of Atari covers gone wrong, Breakout is just as misleading as many of the other Atari titles, hosting an image of two people playing tennis, or racquetball, or ping pong, or whatever on the cover. So is Breakout actually one of these sports in video game form? Only if bouncing a dot off a padꦑdle and breaking the ceiling above is your version of one of these sports, then sure.
This tennis cover would have made much more sense for Pong as similar game elements between the two exist, but it is a bit misleading for Breakout. Actually, this cover might even be better suited for the actual game Tennis for the Atari. Though you can see some missing pieces in the colored stripes on the cover, most likely resembling the ceiling that the dot breaks in the game, I probably would have just assume🔯d the stripes were a v𓃲ariation of the Bolivian flag.
10 🃏 Home Improvement ♎
Licensed games have come a long way since the nineties. Though games based off a typical franchise are usually frowned upon, it seems these days that major well-known developers are willing to take the time needed to craft a game deserving of the license its representing. Yet back in the 16-bit era, it seemed likely that if a show or movie was popular enough, it would get a game. Home Improvement, based off the popular show of the same name, fits into that category. How you make a game ꦺbased off a popular sitcom is anyone's guess, but perhaps it could work as some sort of wood shop simulator? Not quite.
Remember in the sitcom somewhere around the middle of season two when Tim "the tool man" Taylor had to battle dinosaurs 🗹with his trusty nail gun or had to raid Egyptian tombs? Didn't think so, but I'm sure there is some good fan fiction on the games subject matter. Looking at this cover, you'd assume the game had something in common with the show, yet what we are left with is a standard run of the mill platformer that was all too common in this generation. For what it's worth, the game actually wasn't too bad🍷 for its time.
9 ꦏ Home Alone 2: Lost In New York
Any kid who grew up in the early nineties knew that the Home Alone franchise was one of the best family films on the market. With the popularity of the first two films, it probably seemed natural for THQ to capitalize on the success of the film😼s by making a video game about the films. You might suspect the game would be about setting booby traps for the wet bandits, Harry and Marv, yet this only happens in one stage.
The rest of the game has pretty much absolutely nothing to do with the movie and it might as well be called Home Alone 2: Manhattan Possessed as it seems that every human being and inanimate object imaginable as been taken over by some sort of demon overlord set out to kill our protagonist Kevin McCallister. The majority of the game is spent dodging crazy ladies with umb🌃rellas, throwing killer necklaces at room service and maid staff, sliding under jumping suitcases and flying trash can lids, and pretty much just trying to survive the cruel streets of New York. Hell, the first boss is even a crazy chef that tries to kill a ten year old kid with butcher knives. Even though one portion of the game got it right, the rest of the game was typical licensed fodder that little resembled its source material and was all too common in games 🥂of the nineties.
8 Bust-A-Move 2𝓰: Arcade Edition 🎉
This is a game cover I can barely look at without getting mildly queasy. Looking like a scene straight out of Clockwork Orange, this looks more like a torture simulator than an actual puzzle game. Bust-a-Move 2: Arcade Edition for the original PlayStation and Sega Saturn is as kid friendly as it gets, yet the cover is quite misleading and the ESRB rating of "Everyone" looks just as confusing when it's hanging n𓆉ext to a picture of a man with his eyes pierced open, most likely scream൲ing in agony.
Bust-a-Move 2 is simply a puzzle game featuring a ceiling of colorful bubbles that are shot at by the player from the floor. When shooting bubbles at the ceiling, bubbles of the same color will pop. Pretty much the only part the cover of this game gets right are the bubbles on the box art, feeling slightly ironic that such a gruesome image is forever tied to a game that focuses on something as playful as bubbles. Super Bust-a-Move has just as stran🅷ge of a cover, with a close up of a freaky looking baby blowing a bubble while wearing sunglasses. At least the reflection on the sunglasses is a still image from the game, so you know what kind of game you ๊are getting.
7 Forsaken 64 🦂
Every time I'd be browsing my local Babbages as a kid, the box for Forsaken 64 (also released for the PlayStation and PC just as Forsaken) would catch my eye. Perhaps it was the attractive lady on the cover? Maybe it was the appeal of another four player multiplayer Nintendo 64 game? Or maybe it was because the game was rated mature by the E🧸SRB and I wanted to play games with more adult themes? Either way you spin it, the box did its job of enticing me, but there's absolutely no way of knowing what was actually in this mystery box🧜.
Forsaken takes place in a dystopian future where the 🐻planet Earth has been desolated. It's a first person shooter with a single player campaign and a multiplayer mode where players battle robots and mercenaries left behind on t𒉰he planet. Even though the girl on the box art never actually makes an appearance in the game, at least we know why she's crying.
6 Pac-Man
This list could have easily been composed strictly of Atari box art as the Atari's game catalogue hosts a myriad of titles with ridiculous covers. There isn't a gamer in the world who is unfamiliar with Pac-Man as he's made his way to just about every video game platform in existence, yet his appearance o♉n Atari was a bit special as the port was poorly made and has the box art made by someone who was given a bit too much creative freedom.
There's no need to explain the core gameplay of Pac-Man, but this game's core mechanic would be lost on me if I knew nothing about the titular hero. Looking at this cover, I see a man with a binge eating disorder, guilt strewn across his face. He tries to eat as much as he can, yet he is always being chased by his personal demons, Guilt, Shame, Grief, and Remorse. Also, the demons are just people wearing colored bed sheets over their bodies I'd assume as ghosts typically float an🍌d these ghosts are running. Oh, and Pac-Man lives in a castle now. Then again, maybe this has been Pac-Man's background story the whole time.