Who has best cover arts? Japan or US?

[marvelvscapcom2]

Hello everyone . 


I know this varies by game, but as a whole. If you had to choose either Japan cover arts or US cover arts for the rest of infinity, which would you choose as having better covers?    

I have made a thread before comparing Japan versus American consoles like Famicom vs NES. And the art styles of the boxes and controllers.  So I thought this would be interesting too as their is so much variances.


I personally think Japan almost always has way better covers imo and I always love how they look. But I think this might be because I am from the United States so I have become accustomed to our covers.  This is why Americans love Japanese culture so much and vice versa. Because it's different and new. And the covers seem to be so colorful and fun to me.


Here are some examples of comparisons.  First i'll start with one rare occurance that I think US did way better than the Japanese version.



I love the US design of Okami. It really pops and is beautiful.





Here is the JP version of N64 Smash Bros. It is awesome looking.  It looks like a comic book almost and has nice artistry.









It almost seems like the devs in Japan might try to alter covers to be more rustic and simplistic thinking things as eccentric and fun as Japan has might not attract an American consumer.  But I could be overthinking










Using our Super Mario world as comparison, it doesn't have the popping backgrounds, colors.  Just a blue wallpaper PNG from google images and the basic Mario and Yoshi.  Much worst imo.  Although I love it because it's my childhood .


One of the biggest comparisons is Rockman vs Megaman.  A huge debate of namesake and even design.






The American covers on Mega Man are notoriously EBOLA.  And JP does better imo.  . 





FFX is another that I think US won by default. I love the US cover for this one. 







Out of all examples you can think of.  Who do you think has more consistently better covers?  JP or US? 


I know PAL sometimes has exclusives covers too.  But I wanted to keep this simple between the two biggest comparisons as many of the time UK adopts US's cover. 


Thanks for sharing everyone

[kypherion]

Japanese. Their cases are better too:

[ferraroso]

Japanese. Their cases are better too

I think the Japanese covers tend to look better than their Western (mainly US) counterparts too.

However, in the case of the GameCube especifically, I couldn't disagree more!
I like the size of the Japanese boxes, but that's all. Their decision to use this damn carton sleeve above the plastic case makes it EXTREMELY difficult to find games in good conditions in the wild. Besides, the price discrepancy between games that lost their carton sleeve and CIB is often absurd.
At least in Japan, Nintendo only got their casing right by the time the Wii hit the market...

[Agozer]

US cover art can be bafflingly poor, and it was especially so during the PSX/PS2 era.

[mark1982]

Yeah I have to agree that Japanese Cover arts look better and have a higher creative flair than the western releases.

Some of my favorites:



               


                 



The US/EU Covers for Panzer Dragoon on the Saturn is a thing of nightmares... "shudders"

And basically the entire library of the Japan PC Engine & PC Engine CD has better cover arts than their US TurboGrafx counterpart. The US TurboGrafx covers are horrendous imo, what were they thinking?

[bikingjahuty]

My vote goes to Japan; in cases where their cover art is different than North America, their art is better 90% of the time.

[oxymoronclaws]

I'd also like to make a strong case in support of PAL covers. I think the original Silent Hill on PS1 is a prime example. While I'm UK-based and therefore a bit biased, I find the PAL cover to be far more stylish and mysterious than either of the US or Japanese covers (frankly, I'm not a fan of the US cover at all).

Overall, I'd give the edge to Japanese covers, if only for the generally more varied and vibrant art styles. It's always great to hear other people's opinions on this kind of thing, so I'll be keeping an eye on this thread as it develops 

[telly]

I agree that Japan usually has the better cover arts, though I think it would be interesting to find the examples for that. FFX is definitely one where I prefer the US cover, another one is Silent Hill 2.



I dunno what that grid-looking thing on the Japanese cover is supposed to be. The US version is far better

[stealthrush]

For the most part I prefer Japanese covers with a few exceptions like others have mentioned. Best example for me was the Nintendo 64 cover art differences, I would have bought the system if the original box-arts existed in the west!

[pzeke]

The age-old answer: depends.

[kashell]

Japan.

[azure]

Varies depending on the game for me. Could go either way depending on the game in question.

[98dgreen]

I would say they are about even with maybe a slight edge to Japan.  Pal on the other hand is significantly worse.

[sworddude]

Pal box art is superior following the japanese box art in more cases unlike the USA versions look at castlevania symphony of the night, marvel vs capcom 2 dreamcast castlevania vampire kiss also known as dracula x in the US etc etc as examples. And in europe we rarely have super ugly box art such as phalanx or rival turf on the snes wich are prime examples of bad box art. The us has some pretty bad art work.

In some occasions such as the case as arrow flash american box art is better but that's rarely the case also in for example the genesis cases. I always find those red cases to look pretty bad and in terms of cardboard boxes. all ntc boxes are just boring black while pal boxes are very nice and colourfull. In terms of especially retro the presentation for them boxes is allot better in europe. Not to mention that american box art has way more examples of box art being small and being filled with large borders such as with burning force and air buster on them sega consoles as examples.

Also some examples of early ps1 games with full cover box art withouth even a ps1 logo on the front as far as european games go.

As far as japanese box art goes wich did not make it over to the western countries. Most of them are a bit to animated and in my opinion worse looking than them western counter parts.

Alisia dragoon is a nice example of one being better or ofcourse trouble shooter. But I can't say that I really would give japanese box art the edge manu superior examples of western box art such as wild guns, phantasy star III, sunset riders

heck if i would pull out some pretty well known games such as mario 64, mario kart 64 mario kart double dash the japanese box art is allot worse in comparison I can see why allot of japanese box art did not make it over to the west or needed some altering to fit the crowd.

European box art for me

[pzeke]

Sorry, but that is the best cover ever. Period.