Go East, Young Game
November 18, 2010
We hear a lot about video games that are developed in the east localized for the west and video games developed in the west for western audiences, but what happens when a game developed in the west heads east to Japan? How does the artwork on the box change to accommodate eastern culture? Hardcore Gaming 101 has an exhaustively comparative look at a selection of western boxes and their eastern counterparts spanning the Nintendo 64 years up to present day. You'll see Ratchet's exceptionally bushy eyebrows, an emphasis on anime over realism, and an obsession with Lara's Croft's behind instead of her front. It's always interesting to see how games change as they travel the world, although in some instances I think that the Japanese ended up with better cover art than North America. For example, compare the art for Darksiders and inFamous. Both are much more colorful and expressive than what we saw here and do a better job of establishing a scene over merely displaying a character.