8 TERRIBLE Video Game Box Arts That Made You Avoid AMAZING Games
2. Ico
Ico admittedly isn't the easiest game in the world to market, but there's really no way to be polite about this - the North American box art looks like total swamp ass.
First off, Europe and Japan were blessed with a beautiful cover painted by the game's own director, Fumito Ueda, which was inspired by Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico's gorgeous piece The Nostalgia of the Infinite.
However, the U.S. version of Ico was released several months earlier, before Ueda's cover art was completed.
And so, the stateside release was instead saddled with this hideous, awkward collage of low-fi 3D renders, none of which give much impression of what Ico's story or gameplay are actually about.
Sony executive Yasuhide Kobayashi even blamed the cover art on the game's commercial failure in the U.S., and while in most instances that'd seem like a grasping-at-straws excuse, in this instance it's incredibly easy to believe.
For all the artistry and majesty implied by the international box art, the U.S. cover made it look like a cheap-o, bargain basement action-adventure joint.