North American boxart for Hard Rain follows tradition (by sucking)

I wouldn’t usually post about videogame boxart here, but this Hard Rain cover (right) for the North American market got my goat, and made me want to rant. About what, exactly? Simple: about how North America all too often gets sucky art on its games compared to Europe and Japan.

Yeah, okay, I know its “only” boxart for some game, but that’s not the point. This kind of thing says a lot about how game publishers regard the North American audience. In short, they (wrongly) regard the NA market as dumb. They don’t trust you with anything too subtle, in case you missed the point and thought Hard Rain was an origami simulator.

So while Europe gets a mysterious, interesting, and imaginative cover for the game, the North American game has to show people on the front to MAKE IT EXTRA OBVIOUS THAT THERE ARE PEOPLE IN HARD RAIN. See what I mean? Just a bit patronising, I thought.

Anyway, it’s certainly nothing new. A bunch of other games with dumbed-down boxart for the North American market:

And last but not least, there is the famous boxart for Ico. Europe and Japan got a cover that looked like a piece of art, North America got a cheesy-as-hell CGI still:

Uuuuuuuuugh. Thankfully, the game itself will look awesome wherever it’s released – see the latest trailer here.

[Via Kotaku]