Worst Video Game Covers Of All Time

When it comes to terrible box art, Mega Man is the champion. Even though Capcom pretty much revolutionized the run-and-gun genre with the series, the first game's U.S. version has one of the ugliest packages of all time: a splay-legged, oddly proportioned hero stands in a tropical wonderland, twisted gun at the ready, prepared for anything. Nothing on the cover represents anything in the game, and it gives off a distinct "8th grade art project" vibe. It may have scored bronze at the local Kreative Kidz Art Jamboree, but it has no place as a video game cover.

This Mega Man is so bad that he's actually become a running joke. "Fat" Mega Man or "Bad Box Art" Mega Man's most notable appearance is in Street Fighter x Tekken, where he's properly depicted as an overweight, middle-aged man with a crooked helmet. He almost made an appearance in Mega Man Universe, too, before the game was canceled. Either way, lopsided Mega Man is regarded as the worst mistake in Nintendo game art history, and rightfully so. That dopey dude isn't conquering any mad scientists any time soon.

Batman: Arkham City is a great game, and the folks at Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment want you to know it. They're less interested in letting you know which game you're actually buying, however. After Warner Bros plastered review scores and pull quotes all over Arkham City's "Game of the Year" edition (don't get too excited — all kinds of games get "Game of the Year" editions, whether they actually won Game of the Year awards or not), there wasn't much room left for important details — like the game's title.

On one hand, Batman's glowering mug is all that most customers really need to see to make an informed purchase. On the other, it'd be nice to know what actually comes in the Game of the Year package, especially if you bought the bare-bones Arkham City game earlier. Given just how much text is on Arkham City's cover, that's hard to figure out. But hey, G4TV (which stopped publishing reviews shortly after giving that quote in 2011) thinks it's one of the greatest games ever made. With that kind of praise, who even cares about the content, right?

Many of these covers veered too far from the games they represent. Irritating Stick is a little too literal. In the picture, a pair of hands hold a stick. It gives off an electric shock, which, yeah, probably is irritating for anyone on the other end.

But that's it. No main character. No setting or story information. Just a stick and some energy bolts. With a title like Irritating Stick, customers need a little more information to go on. For example, Irritating Stick is based on a Japanese game show. It asks players to guide a charged rod through a metal maze. Touching the edges causes a minor explosion. A talented artist could've incorporated some (or all!) of those elements into the cover image to help explain what the heck the game is about.

Maybe it wasn't worth the effort. Reviews claimed that Irritating Stick was just as strange and dull as its name — which was incidentally ranked the worst title for a video game ever.

There are many, many strange NES adaptations of R-rated films, but even stranger than Hudson Hawk or The Untouchables is Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nintendo wasn't afraid to cater to a slightly older audience with titles like Taboo: The Sixth Sense, but a film about a weird, psychic, quasi-demonic rapist went above and beyond Nintendo fare. However, for a movie about a shape-shifting monster, ancient evil, topless Victorian ladies, and even an awesome Tom Waits cameo, Nintendo chose a blurry, underexposed shot of Drac's castle for the cover. Or at least we're meant to assume it's his castle; the photo is so poor that it's impossible to make out any details. Of course, a game based on the well-known legend of Dracula probably sells itself, but this cover gets an D for effort. And for Dracula. And for "Don't bother with this Castlevania ripoff."

Nobody knows why Jaleco Entertainment decided to take a picture of a bargain basement Zoolander impersonator, Photoshop him so that he has blue hair and a mannequin's sheen, and then put him in front of a blurry pink hot rod. Nobody's quite sure what "Karnaaj" means, either, although the best guess seems to be that it's a unique and edgy take on "carnage." Either way, Karnaaj Rally's box art isn't just terrible — it actually hurt the game's review scores.

IGN, which really liked the game, leads its Karnaaj Rally review by warning players to "look past [the] game's box art and name" and enjoy the chaotic, violent racing title inside. Over at EGM, critic Seanbaby took things even further, reviewing the game based on its package alone. Fans complained. So did the publisher, which demanded a retraction. Seanbaby's reply, which wasn't printed in the magazine, pushes back: "If the creators don't like how I reviewed the box of their game, suck it." He admits, however, that he tried the game, and that "it wasn't as bad as it looked like it'd be." With box art like Karnaaj's, that's a low bar to clear.

You're a super cool boat owner who's just tripped on the world's most intense acid. Your goal is to make your way through an aquatic, psychedelic dreamscape without killing yourself or your glamorous, bikini'd passenger. Oh, and there's an occasional lake shark.

At least that's what the technicolor disaster that is the cover of Eliminator Boat Duel wants you to think, with its weird mix of photography, illustration, and bizarre rainbow filters. Instead, you're just a jerk on a boat, trying to drive your boat faster than other boat jerks, and in the end, you get the pretty, blonde girl as your trophy. It's standard racing fare, but the game's nightmarish cover is a visual abomination by any account.

For bad box art connoisseurs, Phoenix Games' library is the ultimate treasure trove. Every single one of its games (and there are a lot of them) sports a gloriously terrible cover. Apparently, the games themselves aren't much better. London Cab Challenge is just Crazy Taxi without a rocking soundtrack (or any other redeeming features). In White Van Racer, you drive a white van in some races. Why a white van specifically? You'll never know.

And then, there are Phoenix's fairy tale-based titles, which shamelessly rip off classic Disney films. Look at the cover for Snow White and the 7 Clever Boys, for example. It is, quite simply, Walt Disney's hand-drawn masterpiece, as seen through the eyes of someone who's never made a 3-D model before but who doesn't see that as an obstacle. Even the name makes no sense. Disney might own the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs title, but the Snow White story itself is in the public domain. Calling them dwarfs is probably okay.

Sadly, it's a moot point. As far as anyone can tell, Phoenix Games filed for bankruptcy in 2009, robbing the world of future masterpieces. Alas. At least we'll always have Dalmatians 3, Adventures of Pinocchio, and Paccie to remember them by.

If you've played golf before — and maybe even if you haven't — you might notice a few things wrong with Ninja Golf's cover. For one, it's not a game you play at night because both the ball and the hole would be very hard to see. For another, both katanas and nunchucks fall outside of the United States Golf Association's rules about what you can and can't use as a golf club. But, ya know, golf is also pretty boring. At least with ninjas, there'll be some action.

See, regulation-violating equipment aside, Ninja Golf's box art is only half as weird as the game it represents. In Ninja Golf, players hit their ball toward the hole. Then, while they're traveling to the ball to set up their next shot, they fight off the enemies they encounter along the way. Obstacles change according to the environment, too. If the ball is stuck in a sand trap, the player will battle snakes. If the ball is submerged underwater (which would usually require the player to take an extra stroke and drop a new ball), they'll encounter sharks. Ninjas, Wikipedia's entry on the game says, "are encountered in all the environments."

If you don't know Russell Grant — and boy, are you missing out — here's a quick primer. He made his public debut in 1979 and was a fixture on British television throughout the '80s, '90s, and '00s, where he presented astrologically informed advice on programs like Breakfast Time, Good Morning Britain, and Bingo Night Live. In the '00s, Grant branched out into general television hosting, presenting serialized specials like Russell Grant's Sporting Scandals and the celebrity-focused psychic showcase The Russell Grant Show. He's also appeared on Britain's editions of Celebrity Fit Club and MasterChef, as well as the celebrity dance competition Strictly Come Dancing.

In short, he's exactly the kind of celebrity you'd expect to endorse a cheaply made budget title, and by all accounts, Russell Grant's Astrology doesn't disappoint. Official reviews of the title are hard to find, but over on Amazon, customers offer glowing reviews like "I like it" and "funny and useful." Of course, Amazon also replaced the box art, featuring Grant's leering image, with a totally unrelated (we assume) picture of a frying pan, so maybe that's not the most trustworthy source of reviews.

It's not that folks at GTE Interactive Media, the company behind Street Hockey '95, are racist, exactly. It's just that if "street" makes you think of a black man with dreadlocks and bad teeth, and if you're so committed to the idea that you put the dude on your cover twice, you might be playing into stereotypes a little too hard.

Of course, it's not like the "hockey" part of Street Hockey '95 fares much better. Instead of doing something hockey-related, Street Hockey '95's mascot simply leaps in the air and unleashes a stiff kung-fu kick. He's wearing inline skates and holding a hockey stick that looks more like a staff, but that's about it.

Only his teammate, the busty blonde standing behind him, looks like she's ready to play the actual sport she signed up for. On the other hand, she's really only there to bend over and show off her cleavage. Thanks to some weird perspective issues, she appears to be 3 feet tall. Buckle up, folks. This is going to be one weird hockey game.

Remember that really hot game of pinball you played? No? There's a reason for that. Pinball is a great and addictive game but, Roger Daltrey aside, it's not exactly not known for its sex appeal.

If you only knew pinball from Pure Pinball's box art, however, you would think that it's the Baywatch of the arcades. Put in a quarter, and watch the buxom babes come running. At least the cover for Pure Pinball — which, packaging aside, turns out to be a pretty decent pinball simulator — relates to the game itself. As indicated by the "American pinball reborn" tagline, Pure Pinball features four different tables, each based on an element of American history: war, racing, trains, and space. And, sure enough, the models on Pure Pinball's cover art are dressed as a soldier, a racecar driver, a cowgirl (trains are big in Westerns), and a sexy alien warrior. See, it's not cheesecake. It's symbolism.

By most accounts, Atari's Road Runner is a pretty average game, with a weirdly grating soundtrack and uninteresting play, but somehow Tengen's home version of the arcade game managed to be extra terrible. Tengen, an offshoot of Atari, was probably the most prolific producer of unlicensed NES games, and it produced more games of higher quality than anyone else when it came to off-brand Nintendo. But when it came to Tengen's version of Road Runner, Tengen couldn't get the license to publish for the Nintendo and couldn't even use the game's legit artwork like it could for other home releases. The result looks like a $25 tattoo: a terribly traced version of the real thing, and very, very wrong.