13 Iconic Video Games That Were Sold With Hilariously Terrible Box Art

2. ICO

Pac Man Atari
Team ICO

Divert your eyes southward, for just a second, if you please. See that? That's the box art for ICO's Japanese and European release. Clean, minimalist, mysterious and highly-stylized; those are the sorts of themes that one would expect to see promoted for Team Ico's breathtaking precursor to Shadow of the Colossus.

Ico Pal Box Art1
Team ICO

Now compare that gorgeous cover - which was hand-painted by ICO director Fumito Ueda, no less - to the tacky North American version adorning this entry. The stark contrast swiftly reveals the latter's spectacular failure in capturing and representing the tone of Ico and Yorda's adventure.

In fact, so universally reviled is the North American version, that even Sony's Yasuhide Kobayashi has, in the past, blamed its visage for ICO's near-to non-existant sales in the region.

It doesn't get more damning than that.

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Contributor

Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.