Hello folks, welcome to another edition of Box Art Brawl!
For last week’s brawl, we looked at one of a handful of Virtual Boy games (and one that many of you even forgot existed): Panic Bomber. It wasn’t a particularly close race for this one, with Japan winning comfortably with 71% of the vote. Well done, Japan!
This week we’re going back to the GameCube era to take a look at one of Hideki Kamiya’s best games: Viewtiful Joe! We have different cover designs across all three major regions this time, so it’s going to be a proper three-way battle. Nice.
Launched in 2003, Viewtiful Joe was released exclusively for the GameCube as part of the ‘Capcom Five’; five (well, technically four) games that Capcom promised to create specifically for the GameCube to boost hardware sales and demonstrate strong third-party support, including the legendary Resident Evil 4. Of course, by now most of us know how everything finally happened: three of the four games came to other platforms, with only PN03 remaining exclusive to the GameCube.
Nevertheless, Viewtiful Joe was a critical success, albeit not particularly a commercial one. It spawned a direct sequel and a few spin-off games, and honestly, we’re just itching for Capcom to get it ported to the Switch!
Be sure to cast your votes in the poll below; but first let’s look at the box art designs themselves.
North America
North America’s design for Viewtiful Joe is probably the most “traditional” of all the variants, in that it simply features the titular protagonist against a fairly busy background, filled to the brim with the game’s various enemies. It’s absolutely gorgeous, full of color from corner to side, with the logo itself nice and bold at the top. Lovely!
Europe
Huh? Twooooo?!
Yip. Europe got two box art variants for Viewtiful Joe, although the only difference between them is the color: one is yellow and the other pink – ta-ta! Otherwise, we have the protagonist himself in the same pose as the North American variant, and both designs have the same background as each other. Why were there two variants? There was just! This writer remembers struggling with the pink one and being quite disappointed, but looking back now..? Yes, they are both very cute.
Japan
Japan’s design is quite interesting, as it’s the only one of the bunch that features the game’s signature film reel visual at the top. Our protagonist is striking a different (though arguably more iconic) pose than the western design, and we’ve got a really nice pink gradient going on with the background, including some nice petals around Joe. This is a great design overall!
Thank you for voting! We’ll see you next time for another round of the Box Art Brawl.
