• @[email protected]
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    231 minutes ago

    I’m seeing a lot of games with awesome cover art but pretty standard gameplay for its era. You gotta pick something with truly dogshit gameplay to counter the cover. I present the NES game Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde:

    I was the kid who liked to stand in the horror section of the video rental store, look at the covers, and read the descriptions of scary movies I was way too meek to ever actually watch. This comes along, and I think it looks pretty cool! My mom paid good money to rent this and so help me I spent a good chunk of my evening trying to figure out how to do… literally anything. I wandered back and forth as Dr. Jekyll for a while before I bumped into too many pedestrians and turned into Mr. Hyde. Then I wandered back and forth as Mr. Hyde until I believe a bird killed me. Never made it past the first level.

    That is a truly horrendous game with badass-looking cover art.

  • @[email protected]
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    43 hours ago

    Cover for Obliterator on Atari ST looked so cool. Game was a weird, slow, springy platform with odd controls.

    • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️
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      4 hours ago

      I feel like that’s the opposite. The cover is weird AF and has nothing to do with the fact it’s a pretty good sci-fi SHMUP lol

      Unless you got hyped up for hillbilly banjo slappin’ action and were disappointed it was a shoot 'em up… 🤔

      • @[email protected]
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        34 hours ago

        Some banjo action was expected!

        Jk it was a fine game and had an awesome cover in a weird way.

        • @[email protected]
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          44 hours ago

          Oddly enough, I ended up buying Shadow Dancer specifically because the cover was so bizarre.

          image

          An old man with a bat protects a young woman from a plate armored man attacking both of them with a longsword, as a scared dog flees into a burning city in the distance.

  • @[email protected]
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    8 hours ago

    just about any game from the 80’s 8bit era was sold by the tape insert’s artwork… but that artwork was so fine I do miss it today.

    • I Cast Fist
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      105 hours ago

      Having the equivalent of movie posters as games’ cover art was awesome, if terrible for showing what the game was.

      It always amazes me that the European version of Mega Man has a fucking fantastic cover

  • kamenLady.
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    8 hours ago

    Defender was nice, but the cover made me expect too much

  • Björn Tantau
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    369 hours ago

    It took me years to start the Monkey Island Series because the cover for Monkey Island 2 was too scary for me.