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Strange Parodies of Atari 2600 Video Game Box Cover Art (2008)

56 points · 33 comments · peter_d_sherman

  1. Panzerschrek · · focus · HN ↗
    Was it allowed to use such cover art having nothing to do with in-game (pretty-limited) graphics?
    1. krapp · · focus · HN ↗
      Yes. And it's actually part of the reason the video game market crashed in the 80s, because of how misleading the artwork was.

      This is why the first Nintendo games released in the US had explicit images of the game graphics on the cartridges.

      1. musicale · · focus · HN ↗
        > the first Nintendo games released in the US had explicit images of the game graphics on the cartridges

        This is why the ESRB was created.

        1. mikestew · · focus · HN ↗
          All those titties on the Nintendo cartridge box put U. S. Congress into a tizzie, I’m sure.
      2. Lerc · · focus · HN ↗
        It's strange, I learned Forth on the Atari and found that the cover was a surprisingly accurate depiction of how I turned out.
      3. vunderba · · focus · HN ↗
        Yeah I think the first-party early titles (Excitebike, etc) were definitely more representative of the game play.

        But third parties definitely didn't respect this. I'm sure everyone who grew up in this era remembers the infamous Megaman cart by Capcom [1].

        One of the things that Nintendo learned from Atari was that massive amounts of shovelware did not help their cause.

        As a third party company, you were actually limited to a certain number of games you were allowed to release per year in North America (five I believe). There were ways around that, like Konami forming the subsidiary Ultra.

        Additionally they locked the system behind the 10NES chip that made unauthorized game production difficult (unless you pulled the classic Taiwan voltage snap trick or just blatantly copied the source from the US Copyright Office like Tengen).

        [1] - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;5hUUDnM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;5hUUDnM

      4. LocalH · · focus · HN ↗
        The Nintendo black boxes were still mock-ups to a significant degree. They often depicted situations nearly impossible (or actually impossible) to achieve in-game, the graphics often exceeded NES color limits, and often the pixel art itself was completely wrong (check out Mario on the Donkey Kong or Mario Bros boxes).
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