Zelda: Twilight Princess - Box Art Brawl: Duel
Image: Nintendo Life

Welcome back to another edition of Box Art Brawl!

For the past two weeks, we have been focused on games from the world of the GBA. After judging the box art of Metroid Fusion, last time we took a look at the differences between the North American/European and the Japanese box art for Golden Sun and the results were expectedly distanced. The Japanese cover took home a respectable 30% of the vote, but NA/EU was the clear winner with a 70% victory.

All this is to say that we feel it's time to update things. "Get with the now, Grandad!" you're probably saying. So we will. This time, we're leaping ahead to the new-fangled world of the... pause for effect... GameCube!

Subscribe to Nintendo Life on YouTube764k
Watch on YouTube

Ok, so this might not quite be the jump into the modern world that we promised, but for many the game that we are considering holds up just as well today. That game is, of course, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, a Zelda title that hasn't made the jump to the Switch yet, though our fingers are always crossed.

Despite the 'SD' version releasing across two consoles, there are actually only two cover variants for this one — NA and EU once again have the same cover and all variants are the same on GameCube and Wii editions (we've removed the Twilight Princess HD cover from the running, although we may do that another time as that presents a third variation). This means that we've got a good old-fashioned duel on our hands!

Be sure to cast your votes in the poll below; but first, let's check out the box art designs themselves.

Europe / North America

Zelda: Twilight Princess EU / NA
Image: Nintendo

One look at the EU/NA cover tells you everything that you need to know about Twilight Princess: it's the dog one. The red logo still takes pride of place in the upper half of the box, but the rest of the cover is surprisingly subdued for a Zelda game, awash with greys and browns.

As anyone who has played Twilight Princess will be able to tell you, that colour palette is surprisingly accurate — this is a much darker Zelda game and the cover accurately conveys that. You whack on the central image of Link in human and wolf form (two sides of the same coin style) and this cover is a neat summary.

Japan

Zelda: Twilight Princess Japan
Image: Nintendo

The Japan cover, on the other hand, went for something completely different. "Nobody is going to want the dog game," they must have thought, "just show me the sexy emo Link." And that's exactly what we got.

Link stands front and centre on this one in his new armoured redesign. There is a similar diagonal split going on here as we see in the EU/NA cover, but instead of showing ol' wolfie on the other side we instead get a fade into the black and orange pixels of the Twilight Realm. It's certainly more obviously a Zelda game in its increased vibrancy and Link image, but is it all that Twilight Princess-y?

Which region got the best Zelda: Twilight Princess box art?

Thanks for voting! We'll see you next time for another round of the Box Art Brawl.