Thursday, June 07, 2012

Random blatherings about a bevy of recently revealed box art

The last two weeks have been great ones for fans of well-made box art. Case in point: The just-revealed illustration (below) that will grace the covers of Capcom's Monster Hunter-themed puzzler, Airu de Puzuruu.


Of course, I'm a complete sucker for the company's Felyne characters--especially when they're depicted in chibi form, as they are on this PSP game's cover art.

Another piece of box art that caught my attention in the last few days: The one that's been produced for the Wii version of Dragon Quest X.


I know some folks--die-hard Dragon Quest fans, especially--are upset about a number of things related to this particular entry in Square Enix's long-running RPG series, but surely its beautiful cover art isn't one of them.

Nintendo's New Super Mario Bros. 2 has been similarly divisive since it was revealed a short while ago, with some gamers calling it a cheap cash-in and others comparing it to the Second Coming. (OK, so I haven't heard such comments. Yet.)


I'm not entirely sure what I think of this 3DS release myself, but I am sure that I like its golden cover art.

Speaking of golden cover art: Check out the one below. It's for a PSP game called Super Dangan Ronpa 2, which will hit store shelves across Japan next month.


About the only thing I know about this adventure title--well, other than its name, general release date and the fact that it's a follow-up to another PSP game called Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair--is that, thanks in large part to its box art, I wish it were being prepped for North American release.

Sadly, it's not. Which means I'll just have to make repeated return trips to this post so I can ogle its oddly captivating cover imagery.

6 comments:

Viewtiful_Justin said...

I don't know what all the Super Mario hate is about...that absolutely makes my cringe. I feel like people bitch about there being too long to wait in between Mario games, and then they come out with a bunch of them and people bitch about them coming too soon and being to derivative of the last one. Personally, I'm WAY OKAY with as many Mario games as they want to put out there. More of a good thing is only a good thing.

Adam said...

DQX looks really awesome

Bryan Ochalla said...

I'm with you, Justin. Honestly, I think Nintendo used to be too stingy with its Mario platformers. Also, I think they're making each of these New SMB games different enough from one another for them to not just be derivative of the ones that came before.

That said, I think they have to be careful. Part of me wonders if one of these upcoming NSMB titles will suffer a bit in terms of sales because they're being released so close together.

Also, as much as I like the NSMB series, I do wish they would release a 2D Mario platformer in the coming years that uses a different art style. Think back to how different SMB 3 looked compared to SMB 2, which looked completely difference from the first SMB. I'd like to see that kind of creativity and differentiation again.

Bryan Ochalla said...

Adam: I agree! I think it may tie as my favorite DQ box art of all time -- along with the Famicom version of the first game.

As such, it's too bad that the Wii version of DQX likely won't be released outside of Japan, but I'm hopeful we'll get the Wii U version -- especially based on how well DQIX did in the US.

Viewtiful_Justin said...

True true. I wouldn't mind seeing something brash and or cute come across...

Bryan Ochalla said...

I don't even know what I want from them, honestly. Maybe something w/ an art style like Yoshi's Island? Or one with an art style like Kirby's Epic Yarn? Whatever ... I trust Nintendo's judgement in that area. Just something a bit different would be nice, I think.