10 Truly Terrible Video Game Covers

By Shaun Munro /

For all of the complaints we could readily make about any given game - be it the graphics, the crappy voice acting, the clunky controls, or the dodgy camera - rubbish box art isn't one we come across too much these days. Put that down to studios having a vague sliver of quality control for even their most tawdry titles, but still, a few do manage to slip through the cracks. Keep in mind that the majority of these games are generations, even decades old, but a few contemporary exceptions do exist, such as our first entry...

10. Okami

I know what you're thinking; not only is Okami a wonderful game, but this is a gorgeous bit of box art that perfectly reflects the tone and style of the game. It absolutely is, but it also features one of the worst gaffes in modern box art history, a lazy move so unprofessional that we can't imagine the guy responsible ever got work in the industry again. It didn't take long for the net-nerds to realise that something wasn't quite right with this cover; take a closer look below... Look familiar? That's the IGN logo, faded into the background but not entirely disappeared; presumably some hack artist had a deadline to quickly rush the art out, so took an image of the game from IGN - rather than, you know, their own data banks - and quickly faded out the IGN logo in Photoshop, but didn't dial the slider down all the way, resulting in this scarcely-visible remnant. It's not so much a big mistake as it is just an extremely stupid one given the esteem of the game and the implicit professionalism one would expect. Capcom did respond, however, by offering replacement covers, without actually mentioning that it was because of this absurd screw up.