Back in the days before YouTube playthroughs and downloadable demos, every video game was
just an expensive mystery wrapped in an attractive cover.
Unless you had a copy of the latest Nintendo Power, gamers had nothing to base a potential
purchase on other than a couple of tiny screenshots and some box art.
Even then, there was still a chance you'd return home with an incredibly disappointing
hunk of plastic hidden behind truly misleading cover art.
Get ready to relive the trauma of childhood disappointment with some of the most deceptive
video game covers of all time.
Odama
One glance at the the giant samurai face in the clouds and that army of warriors bursting
through the shattered wooden gate, and it's pretty clear that Odama is a game about warring
villages in feudal Japan.
What you'd never suspect is that Odama is actually a pinball game.
Aside from the enormous boulder crashing through a castle wall, nothing about this cover art
really screams "pinball."
Unless, of course, that giant bald-headed spider demon off to the left is shouting "tilt!"
But we can't hear him over how loud the rest of this busy — and misleading — artwork
is.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Arguably one of the finest stealth games of all time, Sons of Liberty helped made the
PS2 a must-have console.
At first glance, the game's cover isn't anything particularly out of the ordinary.
Like many of the other games in the series, it depicts the series' protagonist, Solid
Snake, in a Japanese art style.
So far, so Solid.
What players weren't expecting, however, was to find themselves at the mercy of gaming
history's most audacious bait-and-switch.
Despite a marketing campaign filled with trailers, and even a demo in which Snake was portrayed
as the game's protagonist, Snake wasn't the lead character after all — it was an entirely
new character named Raiden.
Hideo Kojima had lied.
The trailers had lied.
And the cover had most certainly lied.
People took it about as well as you'd expect.
"Snake?
Respond!
Snake?
SNAAAKE!"
The Orange Box
As far as good games wrapped in boring covers go, The Orange Box is the all-time champ.
The compilation actually contains some of the most popular and successful Valve titles
ever released — Half-life 2, Team Fortress 2, and Portal.
But you wouldn't know any of those gems were worth playing just by looking at the box.
To the uninitiated, the game's cover depicts some random nerd, instructions about how to
avoid going into the wrong bathroom, and a berserk garbageman.
It's like a Greatest Hits album from a band you've never heard of.
In other words, if you weren't already familiar with the Valve hits compiled in this collection,
chances are you'd have skipped over it faster than you could say "the cake is a lie."
Dragon's Lair
The legendary Dragon's Lair arcade game gave players a unique, animated gaming experience
backed by LaserDisc, mastered only by those with lightning-fast reflexes and a wicked
memory.
"No! No! No! No! No!
I hate this overpriced bulls---! Son of a b----! Piece of s---!"
By all accounts, Dragon's Lair was the darling of the arcade scene in 1983 and for many years
beyond.
When the Nintendo Entertainment System version came out in 1990, using the same cover art
as the beautiful arcade version, one would naturally expect a similar experience.
Unfortunately, the port of the game was abysmal, with absolutely none of the animated sequences
or gameplay that made the original great.
It was virtually an altogether different game, and console gamers had no warning that they
were getting an unremarkable sidescroller that couldn't even touch an Intellivision
game on its worst day.
More like Dragon's "Liar," if you ask us.
Adventure
Adventure is the very first action-adventure console game… if you can call it that.
It also contains gaming's first hidden Easter egg, so there are some very good reasons to
remember it.
On the other hand, it's only about one step above Pong in terms of visuals.
Adventure's box art depicts an psychedelic dragon twisting through a hedge maze while
dwarven adventurers approach from a castle in the background.
But in the actual game, your hero is... a giant square pixel, stuck in a maze of bland
nothingness, running from dragons that look like pregnant seahorses.
Charming?
Sure.
Impressive for its time?
Maybe.
What we thought we were in store for?
Not a chance.
Ballz
The cover of Ballz tells us nothing — except that it includes "3D Fighting At Its Ballziest,"
which isn't even a real word.
Fighting, however, was an incredibly hot genre in the mid '90s, so publisher Accolade ran
with it.
Well, from the weird, suggestive theme music …
… to the near total lack of 3D graphics, Ballz is only barely a game, let alone a fighting
game.
Each fighter is composed of a series of colored spheres, and they fight on a slightly 3D plane,
but that's about it.
It's not so much that the cover is misleading, because it leads nowhere — but it's the
fact that someone would try to pass off this pile of wet trash as a game that's truly ballsy.
Pirates of the Caribbean
Back in 2003, Bethesda released a PC tie-in to one of the year's most popular films, Pirates
of the Caribbean.
The cover was basically what you'd expect from a Pirates game — the movie's logo and
title splayed over an image of pirates raiding and pillaging which could easily have come
from a screenshot of one of the film's many action scenes.
But that's ultimately where any resemblance to the franchise ends.
Pirates of the Caribbean didn't start off as a Pirates of the Caribbean game.
It was actually a sequel to the 2000 RPG Sea Dogs, repackaged and repurposed as a tie-in
to boost sales.
Save for a brief appearance by a ship called the Black Pearl, there was nothing within
the game to actually connect it with its silver screen sibling.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
Take one quick glance at the original U.S. cover to Amnesia: The Dark Descent and we
wouldn't blame you for thinking it's a comedy game.
A man holds up a lantern as Donald Duck, injected with Resident Evil's t-virus, leaps out at
him.
It's not exactly terrifying.
In fact, it's chuckle-inducing as best and cringeworthy at worst.
Amnesia itself, on the other hand, is terrifying.
In fact, it's so utterly, downright, fist-in-mouth unpleasant that Eurogamer made a case for
it being one of the most influential horror games of the decade.
Amnesia is a game that many people in their right minds are probably incapable of playing
for more than 10 minutes.
The game this cover was made for, one the other hand, would probably have most gamers
laughing themselves to an early grave.
Phalanx
Despite what the cover of Phalanx might imply, it is in no way about an elderly hillbilly
playing banjo songs about outer space battles — even though that premise sounds like the
best genre-bending shooter of all time.
One day, someone will make that game, call it Grandpa Banjo's Tenth Dimension Tales,
and the circle will be complete.
For now, Phalanx remains a fairly standard side-scrolling space shooter.
The game's developers intentionally chose a nonsensical photo for its cover in order
to separate themselves from other similar titles in the genre.
Ultimately, though, this bizarre box art backfired — it ended up driving potential players
away.
Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit
Most of us can agree that unless Tim Allen is playing Buzz Lightyear, we don't care about
what he's doing.
So whoever decided to slap a generic Home Improvement stock photo on the cover of its
tie-in video game wasn't exactly reading the room.
Would kids would see a picture of Tim Allen and get excited?
No, but it's staggering to think that was a real thought in someone's head.
Turns out that Power Tool Pursuit involves Tim Taylor fighting dinosaurs and robots with
a nail gun, which is actually pretty amazing.
It even feels a bit like a LucasArts game.
But the fact that some executive tried to sell this underrated gem with with Tim Allen's
boring mug is a historic tragedy.
Thanks for watching!
Click the Grunge icon to subscribe to our YouTube channel.
Plus check out all this cool stuff we know you'll love, too!