Main

Welcome once again to Box Art Brawl, the weekly poll which places three regional box art variants before the eyes of you lovely people and awaits your "yay"s and "nay"s.

Last week we took to the streets with Axel, Blaze, Zan and Sammy (and Roo) in Streets of Rage 3. We looked at three very different covers, but Japan emerged from the street brawl largely unscathed with a whopping 78% of the vote. North America limped home with 16% while Europe would have done better not to show up at all. That's what you get when you don't include Axel on the front cover of your Streets of Rage game!

For round #37 we're heading back to a franchise we've seen brawling twice before. Box Art Brawl #3 was the series' debut bout with Resident Evil 4 and it returned for Brawl #25 when Resident Evil 2 did battle against itself. This week we're looking at the game (Jill) sandwiched numerically between the two: Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. A remake (or 'REmak3', if you will) has just released on other platforms, so rather than getting too jealous we thought we'd look back to the GameCube port of the original PlayStation game.

Got your sandwiches packed? Raccoon City's awaiting...

North America

NA

The North American version puts the titular lovable rogue John T. Nemesis front-and-centre, with his towering figure occupying most of the box against the background of Raccoon City. The 'Resident Evil' part of the logo is shattered and translucent, as is the swoop-y 3. The 'Nemesis' subtitle is scrawled in embossed blood red and set apart from the dark background with a drop highlight.

No part of the logo is necessarily bad, but the three different types look like they've been hashed together without much thought. It's big, it's bold, but it lacks coherence. Not much else to say really. The Capcom logo's dope, no?

Europe

EU

Using what appears to be the same key art of Nemmy (as we like to call him), the tone is a lot warmer here which causes the big bad to look a little less ghostly and a little more gruesome. That's not to say he was looking dapper on the North American cover, but the colder blue tones were more forgiving on his complexion.

We see slightly more of his body and the logo here feels a little more coherent, although no less generic. We do prefer the classic RE font treatment, though - a shame it has been reduced in size. A bit more of the background is visible, although there's less detail. Pluses and minuses, then, but it all feels a bit dull.

Little-known RE lore factoid: the toothy villain of this game began life as a happy-go-lucky Umbrella scientist by the name of Reginald Sisemen before an inevitable mishap led to a nasty case of the J-Virus. Probably.

Japan

JP

As you already know if you can read, the game was known as Biohazard 3: Last Escape in Japan. Once again we get a shot of Nemesis, although this time some poor S.T.A.R.S. team member has the misfortune of having his head in ol' Nemmy's clammy palm ready to be crushed. Nemesis takes up approximately half of the image with the rest being occupied by a bleached-out Raccoon City street showing a low-poly cop car at the bottom and a billboard above.

It's an odd one. You'd think that having a villain so imposing, so ghastly, would make coming up with a cool cover relatively easy, but none of these are as inspiring as they could be. We'd have probably focused on his teeth. He's grinning for the camera so obligingly, it'd be rude not to.

Three options, one pick. Click your favourite below and hit the 'Vote' button to let us know which one you find the most attractive. Or perhaps that should be the ugliest this time? The one you like the best...

Which region got the best Resident Evil 3: Nemesis box art?

We hope you're all keeping safe and sound wherever you are and enjoying a few of them vidya games. Check out our ranked list of all the Resident Evil games on Nintendo platforms according to Nintendo Life readers if you fancy another RE fix. Otherwise, take it easy and we'll see you next week. Stay lovely!