do you have games that are CD/cartridge only, or do they make you cringe?
Yeah, I have games in my collection that are cartridge- and disc-only. I don't mind the former as much as I do the latter, though. Most of the disc-based games I have that are incomplete, which aren't really that many, are mainly due to sellers on eBay not being honest about what they were selling or I got from GameStop.com.
Do you have game cases that you can't stand looking at, because of a tear or so on?
The cases for my games look clean and spiffy, and if any were to look below my standards I would simply replace them. Unfortunately, buying games from GameStop.com is a hit or miss deal most of the time, so sometimes I'm sent games with crappy cases while being short of any extras for replacement purposes, which tends to mess things up.
Have you ever bought a game, just for the cover art? Is it important to you?
Brutal: Paws of Fury for the SNES, which I got in a BOGO sale at Toys"R"US solely because I was awestruck by the cover. This was when I was a kid, but that was enough for me to never getting games based on their box art; I didn't own too many games back then, though, so I mostly would rent instead.
Quite recently I wanted to get NieR: Automata - Game of the YoRHa Edition for the cover since I like Akihiko Yoshida's art, but I ended up getting the original, non-GameSpot rating copy for cheap. As someone who at one point in time used to collect comicbooks solely for their cover art and variants, I'm certain had I continued to do this with video games, things would've spiraled out of control and my collection would've been unmanageable, so I'm glad I made and managed to correct that mistake early.
Overall, the cover art isn't that important to me, but it does help complement the whole package.
[...] Don't get me even started on the poorer quality of modern cases which encourages loose discs in sealed games... happens far too often these days
Most PS4 cases are worth scat. Some are thicker than the rest and actually feel well-made, but the rest are just as flimsy and unreliable as you're describing, especially with the loose disc thing.
Box art is a dying art form, you can see it's the same way with movie posters. But in the age of hyperrealistic 3D modeling I guess there's not a reason to hirer an artist to design something cool most of the time.
Yeah, pretty much. I'd say that hardly any video game box art or movie poster captures my attention the same way they used to. With movie posters, for example, most tend to just be a hodgepodge of ideas lazily strewn together turning the end product into the most generic POS you could ever get, a good example of this being the poster for "Spider-Man: Homecoming", or more recently, "Morbius".
I miss the good old days where movie posters were beauteous pieces of art: Drew Struzan, Roger Kastel, Tom Jung, Richard Amsel, Barry E. Jackson, Enzo Sciotti, Robert Peak, Steven Chorney, Alex Ebel, Carl Ramsey, Bill Gold, Renato Casaro—all masters of their craft.