17 Hilariously Bad Video Game Box Covers

Ugly characters, outrageous costumes, and the worst artwork ever printed!

The idiom "don't judge a book by its cover" can apply just as much to video games as it does anything else. While video game box art has, at times, led to some brilliant pieces of work, there have been more than a few disasters. The video game industry is incredibly competitive, and publishers often feel they must do whatever it takes to generate sales on the market. Sometimes this has resulted in ambitious failures that consumers just found too weird. Other times (and far more commonly,) publishers stick with the current trend in promotional material, resulting in box art that looks remarkably similar from game to game. Today, the quality control for box art has upped its game somewhat, compared to the early days of gaming. The dodgy hand-drawn illustrations and live-action photography of yore has been almost completely lost to history. There's always a few that slip through the cracks though, and the last few years have seen disastrous promotional material from even the highest-profile releases. This list takes a look at 17 of the most hilariously awful video game box art designs of all time. From dodgy 3D graphics work, to bizarre, overly abstract imagery, each of these video game box covers are the pinnacle of bad design.
 
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Tom Butler hasn't written a bio just yet, but if they had... it would appear here.