While everyone has their own favorite aspects of video gaming that set us apart, one thing that brings the gaming community together is that we love to gawk at truly horrible video game box art.  Be it due to low budgets, a lack of artistic talent, or over-reliance on the magic formula that the marketing department believes consumers obey, 2009 has seen its fair share of ghastly imagery.  GamesRadar has taken a look back at the madness of partying hamsters (plus one gerbil), CGI people from the uncanny valley, humping monkeys, one smug sheep, and the horrible stone cold visage belonging to the ballet of the damned.

Hey, if you can think of a way to sell ballet games that doesn’t involve creepy little girls and badly Photoshopped heads, you’re… well, you’re probably anyone else besides the people at 505 Games.

Most of the games on the list are cheap shovelware slapped together over the course of a week and shoved into stores on a hope and a prayer, but some of the artwork here sinks to new lows of disgrace.  The fact that artwork like this for My Ballet Studio for Nintendo's Wii which features a ballet child assembled from raw parts made it to the front of the box means that someone had to look at this image and decide "Yes, this is just what we need!".  Moreover, whomever created it had to like it enough to consider it ready for review.  Surely the image passed through a few extra hands as it was submitted up through the ranks.  Didn't anyone look at it and feel their sense of calm shatter?  Didn't anyone notice that the child's head is the wrong size compared to her body?  What about her neck?  Didn't they see that her left arm is too long and that her right arm has gone AWOL?  And those fingers; my god, those fingers!  If you're not horrified enough, feel free to jump into the Wayback Machine to review the worst box art abominations from 2008 and 2007, too.