It won't be long before you'll have to break open your piggy bank -- Rhythm Tengoku Gold will be out in Japan as soon as July 31st! If you never had a chance to play the original critically-acclaimed rhythm game for the GBA, consider it your mission to import this DS remake later this month.
Hit our gallery below for a handful of screenshots from Rhythm Tengoku Gold! They're mostly larger versions of the images shown on Nintendo's fact sheet, but they're still a good preview of how the touchscreen-enabled title will play on the system, book-style. Besides, as this upcoming release shows, the world needs more Rhythm Tengoku.
Posted Jun 26th 2008 8:00PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Finally, conclusive evidence of what the new 5th Cell game's title is going to be! It would certainly be a waste of a logo if the name were to change.
Nintendo.com's page for Lock's Quest is the first to show the game's boxart, tiny though it may be. It's definitely big enough to see what's going on: Lock, slightly Sora-like in his short pants, poses triumphantly with a big old wrench over the ruins of some Clockwork enemies, as the game's signature structures (and more enemies) loom in the background. A huge red inset advertises the Drawn to Life connection, suggesting that Drawn to Life really did well!
Even in a tiny image, we can tell that the art is excellent. 5th Cell's artists remain on top of their game. According to Nintendo.com, the game is out September 8.
Can we just say, Nintendo: loving the boxart for Pokémon Platinum. Whereas the art for Diamond and Pearl relied on darker, more subdued colors, Platinum's box employs a striking combination of red, black, and white, blasting out in beams from the center of the cover. It's almost as though cover star Giratina is leaping right out of the box at the viewer/shopper. He's coming to get you, kids! That will be under your bed tonight! Muahaha.
As well as the cover, GAME Watch also has a small pool of character art (featuring Regice, Registeel, Regirock, and Regigigas) and screens (which can be found in our gallery). It looks ... well, pretty much like the samegame you bought last year. Will that stop you buying it? Nope, thought not.
Posted Jun 18th 2008 8:45AM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns featured some fairly risque alternate boxart in Japan, where initial shipments were packaged in H-game-like boxes with art of Izuna and Shino bathing in an onsen. The American box for the game may not be modeled after erogames, but it does feature some extra pinup-style art of the title character.
In an absolutely lovely trend, the Izuna 2 boxart has been revealed as reversible, like the boxart for Victorious Boxers Revolution. However, instead of alternate boxart on the other side, the reverse of Izuna 2's cover is a mini-poster of the title character. Nice to see Atlus treating a niche game like Izuna as such a deluxe product.
Off the top of our head, here's a quick list of questions we immediately asked after noticing several odd details with this The Sims 2: Apartment Pets cover:
What are those lines on the woman's pants? We swear to Pete, those better not be some damn convertible pants. It is 2008, lady. You should know better.
Why is she walking around the building's hallways, puppy in hand, teasing kittens with toys?
Is that cat on the bottom right corner cuddling with the PEGI rating? This might be the only creature in the world who has actually taken a liking to the unsightly box.
Why didn't this guy block the door when he opened it to grab the morning paper? He could have prevented this gang of animals from spilling out of his apartment.
As ominous as the quiet subway scene in the first 50 seconds of this video might be, there's little in this new trailer to convinces us that Twilight Syndrome: Kinjiraneta Toshi Densetsu (Twilight Syndrome: The Forbidden Urban Legend) will be even half as scary as Twilight Syndrome: Search for the PlayStation.
Check out the old commercial we embedded past the post break to see what we mean! The animated skeleton and bugs are a bit goofy, but the smiling girl that pops up at the end for half of a second freaks us out every time!
Fun trivia: Did you know that famed game designer Goichi Suda worked on the original Syndrome games during his tenure at developer and publisher Human Entertainment? More fun trivia: Did you know that we have Twilight Syndrome: The Forbidden Urban Legend's boxart after the break? It's all true!
Shortly thereafter, a release date and gameplay details emerged from the primordial ooze a Newsweek interview, and an involuntary chemical reaction a Joystiq hands-on session soon produced screens. Then, for some time, nothing. Until this morning, that is, when we found that the screens had suddenly multiplied in number, and had inhabited our gallery!
The newly developed screens were joined by boxart for the Japanese version of the game, which sort of reminded us of Pokémon Trozei!'s box, and a Japanese release date: September 11th.
So goes the ongoing story of the evolution of Spore Creatures.
It's not that often that we hear about the creative process behind designing a game's box -- our own interview with Konami's contracted illustrator and packaging designer Julie Giles is a rare piece. Most people would rather read about the people who designed the actual games.
Seeing an opportunity to share his experiences with packshots, Atlus creative designer has posted an update on the publisher's informative series of Production Diaries, detailing the adjustments that were needed to adapt Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2's Japanese cover for the U.S. audience. Join us past the post break for comparison shots and a scan of the surgery sim's new print ad!
The appearance of a boxart image for Metal Slug 7 means that SNK is one step closer to putting the game in boxes and shipping it out to stores in Japan (which happens on July 17!). Then, some time in the future, it'll get shipped out to the U.S. Then, shooting stuff time!
Even without the portent of Metal Slug on the way, we'd be happy with this boxart, which can only be described as classic SNK -- detailed, colorful hand-painted art that would be right at home adorning the box for a $300 game. Hopefully SNK realizes it would be cheaper to keep the same awesome art for the American box, rather than replacing it with something boring.
Along with the launch of its official Band Brothers DX site yesterday, Nintendo has released a set of screenshots showing off the rhythm game's new features, such as its downloadable songs and acoustic guitar.
One addition that we've been hoping to see more of is the Karaoke Bar (pictured right), a mode in which you can practice your singing abilities with the Nintendo DS's mic. We bet you can't wait to sing Ashley's Theme Song while other people on the bus/train whisper and giggle about your off-key performance.
Of course, following the lyrics might prove to be difficult considering that most the words will be written in Japanese, but there's no need to worry about that, as Nintendo will likely localize Band Brothers DX, just like it localized the original game, Jam With The Band ... on opposite day.
When you're done feeling bitter about all that, jump into our gallery below for more screenshots. There's some great looking boxart to be found there!
It's appropriate that a game about drawing should have some nice art on its cover, in order to get players in an art mood right away. We happen to enjoy Pictoimage's boxart, which was also used in Japan, a lot. The little characters are somewhere between Miis and MySims, and the literal nature of the art (which basically depicts eight friends playing Pictoimage instead of anything that happens in Pictoimage) gives the cover a sort of "board game" feeling. As if Pictoimage were something you brought out during gatherings to help break the ice. We're also fond of the spectating pets, who just seem happy that their human friends are having such a good time drawing.
While researching, we found something else about Pictoimage that makes us happy: the game was developed by Skonec, creators of the wacky horror puzzle game Joshikousei Nigeru! When you play Pictoimage, be sure to draw some gaping-mouthed dudes as a tribute.
Posted May 22nd 2008 11:00AM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
Square Enix released an image of the box for the North American release of the Dragon Quest IV remake, and it looks pretty nice! It suffers from Akira Toriyama "every character looks exactly the same" syndrome, but there's not really much that can be done about that! It's the same art as the Japanese version, with a more traditional layout, highlighting the hero.
Dragon Quest IV has been sold a bunch of times over the years, on three different systems, so it's naturally had a few different box designs. We thought it might be interesting to show you the boxarts for each iteration of the game. Well, not all of them -- we've omitted stuff like the budget rereleases of the PlayStation version, because they're exactly the same art with a different border.
Out of all the variations, we like the art on the Famicom release the best. It seems the most dynamic and exciting. We think we like the NES version's art the least, because there isn't any.
Wow, they're pretty much the same! We were sure that after years of waiting, the new European version of Shaberu! Cooking Navi, or at least its marketing, would be the subject of a significant facelift. But if the boxart is any indication, Nintendo is presenting Cooking Guide in exactly the same way they did Cooking Navi.
The title fonts are similar, the layouts are similar, and even the food photographs are similarly lit and focused. The only differences, really, are that the European box has more food photographs on it, and lacks the playful "Shaberu!" ("Talk!") that bounces out from the title in the Japanese box. Really, it looks even more like a training game. After the break, we've prepared a heartier, lumberjack-style serving of Cooking Navi boxart.
This comes as little surprise, since AQ Interactive announced that Blue Dragon Plus would release in the U.S. by the end of the fiscal year, but we're still glad to see a firm Japanese release date for Mistwalker/feelplus's strategy-RPG sequel. It's scheduled to be out September 4, for 5,229 yen ($50).
We're slightly less enthused by what AQ Interactive decided to do with the box. It's less "grand adventure" (which is the feeling that most Blue Dragon artwork evokes for us) and more "horrific See 'N Say." The giant, blue, snake-tailed, winged horse says "Neigh! See you in your nightmares!"
Posted May 15th 2008 4:00PM by JC Fletcher Filed under: News
We happened across the American boxart for Air Traffic Chaos, and we couldn't help but notice the speech bubble. "I am an air traffic controller!" the character (who looks a lot like one of those "premium" (pay) emoticons, whose pop-up ads we see occasionally) exclaims, confirming the theory that a game called Air Traffic Chaos is about air traffic control. What we thought at first to be simply a banal explanation of the game is a little more: we remembered that the Japanese name of the same game was Boku wa Kuukou Kanseikan DS, which translates to ... "I Am an Air Traffic Controller DS." We don't understand why the Japanese title had to be plastered across the box like that, but at least it seems slightly less random.
Speaking of that Japanese boxart, it's interesting to see the differences in marketing strategy evident from the contrast between the two. Majesco's box is very kid-friendly and cartoony, suggesting a casual, simplistic experience. But the Japanese box is all business: stock photos of airplanes and air traffic controllers hard at work, with a text bar at the bottom stating "You also become an air traffic controller on the DS!" It looks more like a training game than anything.
Taxi past the post break for larger images of both boxarts, as well as a couple of examples of what other boxes would look like with the Air Traffic Chaos exposition.
It won't be long before you'll have to break open your piggy bank -- Rhythm Tengoku Gold will be out in Japan as soon as July 31st! If you never had a chance to play the original critically-acclaimed rhythm game for the GBA, consider it your mission to import this DS remake later this month.
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