[Article] Curiosities on video game covers

This is my first article on the web, and because of this I have been thinking long and hard about what topic to write. In the end I thought that the best thing would be to start with a visual article, that anyone could understand right away, without needing to understand much about video games.

For this reason I have discarded other more profound and opinion articles to talk about curiosities on the covers of video games. I am aware that there is a lot written on this topic, especially in some games that underwent changes to their covers (we all remember what the western covers of Megaman were like, right?).

In any case, in this article I will focus on curiosities of various kinds, showing the covers and commenting a little on each case, I hope you like it.

The hidden fighter of Street Fighter II Turbo

In the past, most covers were modified when they arrived in the West, normally the drawing was changed for one that was more Western and in line with “the mentality” of America and Europe. All 16-bit Street Fighter covers suffered this fate (except for Street Fighter Alpha 2 of SNES).

The Western covers are quite recognizable, in Street Fighter II from SNES we had Blanka beating up Ryu and Chun-li, in Champion Edition Mega Drive/Genesis, we had a bruised Ryu and M.Bison in the background and in Super Street Fighter II, a brick wall with the game logo.

Perhaps the strangest and most curious cover was that of Street Fighter II Turbo, in which we saw Honda and Sagat fighting. The decision to put these two characters is very debatable, and the situation of the fight in the Honda phase (some public bathrooms) as well. However, this cover hides a curiosity that many people have never seen, and this has merit since the game was very popular in its day.

The curiosity itself is that there is a third fighter, if you look closely, between Honda and Sagat you can see Dhalsim teleporting, but he is covered by Honda's blows and the game logo. If we look for the original drawing, it can be seen much better. How many of you saw Dhalsim the first time?

Strange coincidences in barival rivers

Another famous Capcom saga was Final Fight, which had games on various platforms, although everyone usually remembers the first game and the SNES trilogy.

Although at that time there were many games of the beat em up genre of excellent quality, the saga that most rivaled Final Fight was Streets of Rage, I guess because it was exclusive to Mega Drive/Genesis while the Final Fight that made up the original trilogy were exclusive to the SNES, with the exception of the first.

Although it is logical that both games have similarities in gameplay and types of enemies (there are many clichés among the beat em ups of the time) it is quite curious when these go from the game to the cover. Look closely at the covers of Streets of Rage and Final Fight 2. 

They are the protagonists hitting the enemies but is there something else? Well yes, there are some curiosities that coincide on both covers, some may be coincidental such as the fact that there are buildings on fire, others become quite disturbing such as the guy who looks out of the window (located in the upper right part of both covers), although my favorite and the most notable is the green bug that comes out of the sewer, it is exactly identical and shows that the similarities are not coincidental. Years ago I heard that the artist of both covers was the same, but I have not been able to verify it, although the truth is, that would explain everything.

Mario's repeated covers

If we look back a lot of years and try to remember the first Western NES covers, a lot of illustrations with pixelated characters and a black background will come to mind, which in later versions were replaced by higher quality drawings (which sometimes used to be the Japanese cover as is).

In the case of Mario there are some curiosities, for example that there are several covers that copy themselves, I imagine to look for similarity and for children to relate one game to another. Here we have a comparison between Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros., the similarity is so high that there is no need to comment on it. Other covers had a similar style (such as that of Wrecking Crew) but these two were almost clones.

The thing does not end there, since when leaving Super Mario Bros 2 In Japan (which was very similar to the first but with a devilish difficulty) it was decided that this version was not suitable for Western players, so they modified a game called Doki Doki Panic until it became a western version of Super Mario Bros 2.

The curiosity comes when we verify that for copying, they even copied the cover of the game, since they recycled the original drawing of Super Mario Bros.  changing the Mushroom that Mario is carrying in his hand for a vegetable. Additionally, this made Mario wear different clothes on the cover and in the game, since on the cover he keeps Mario's clothes. Super Mario Bros. (red pants and blue shirt) while in the game he wears the clothes we know today (blue pants and red shirt)

But it doesn't end there, since that version of Super Mario Bros 2 It was also released in Japan, under the name Super Mario USA, even though they already had the original game there (Doki Doki Panic). The Japanese made a similar move to their American colleagues, as they recycled the drawing of Doki Doki Panic to make it the cover of Super Mario 2 USA.

Kirby, too soft for the West

As you all know, Kirby is a pink character with a childish and innocent design. In the United States they didn't really like this concept, so they tried to make it more "in line with Western ideals" with a series of changes.

El primero de todos fue el cambio del color, ya que se tomaron la licencia de volverlo blanco, evitando así su color original rosa. Debido a que el primer juego de Kirby es de Game Boy la jugada les podía haber salido bien, pero claro, habría que ignorar la portada y anuncios japoneses donde el personaje era rosa.

En los siguientes juegos de Kirby, se respetó el rosa en las portadas (no tenía sentido ir modificando las ilustraciones y juegos para ponerlo de color blanco) sin embargo, en las portadas occidentales seguían habiendo cambios con respecto a las japonesas, como se puede apreciar en esta comparativa.

Puede que el dibujo sea el mismo pero no es igual, ya que si os fijáis, Kirby está enfadado en la versión occidental, al parecer intentaron hacer que Kirby fuera más “duro” cambiándole la expresión de su cara. Obviamente, es un cambio estúpido que tuvimos que soportar en varias portadas del personaje.

Lo curioso es que no fue un caso aislado, ya que otros personajes como Ristar y Whirlo también sufrieron cambios en sus caras para darles un aspecto más agresivo, aunque en este caso la modificación esta en los propios sprites del juego.

The mutation of Doctor Robotnik

Sonic tuvo muchos juegos en los 90 para las diversas consolas de Sega de la época. Algunos juegos salían para todas ellas con diversas modificaciones, debido a la diferencia de potencia entre las consolas de 8 bits (Master System y Game Gear) y la de Mega Drive/Genesis que era de 16 Bits.

Sin embargo, los cambios no se quedaban solo dentro del juego, ya que, por algún motivo, a alguien se le ocurrió modificar algunas portadas, dando un caso extremadamente raro con el Sonic Spinball. El dibujo es idéntico pero el archienemigo de Sonic tiene la cabeza totalmente cambiada y algunos detalles nuevos, como los guantes.

Aunque desconozco los motivos de este cambio, supongo que tiene que ver con la serie de animación de Sonic, donde Robotnik tenía un aspecto muy similar al de la portada de Game Gear.

And with this the article ends, I hope you liked it and have discovered some curiosity that you didn't know about.