sdelfin

Both covers are flawed. For the Japanese cover, I am not fond of the focus effect that has the background characters blurred. However, the layout and art style are vastly superior. The turtles look very nice.

The western cover is a mess. It's a terrible layout for a box cover. The dynamic match up between Donatello and Shark+guy+thing is tiny and not posed for a cover shot. The giant disembodied head is also a poor concept. As for the tag line, let's just say that game enthusiasts have never seen cynical marketing or pandering like this.

Japan by a mile.

Europe's is not bad, but that blue strip is too big and takes away from the cover art. I get that it helps explain what the game is about, but I think they could have and should have included that message in a less intrusive way. I don't know if I'd pick the European cover without that, but it would be a closer race. This week, the NA is the easy winner for me. The perspective is really nice, as is the concept of Max busting through the paper. Plus the pencil is funny looking.

Not to leave the third cover out, Japan's cover is also there.

I wasn't able to play Super Metroid back in the day. I had a bit of trouble getting into it. I'm not as into exploration and I was probably in the wrong mindset when I first tried to play it. I should add that the Castlevania games in that style are my favorite approach to the Metroidvania genre. But I decided to revisit Super Metroid about a year ago. I used maps and videos to help when I got lost, but I did do a lot of the exploring myself, but that help enhanced my enjoyment. It's very good, though I don't rate it quite as highly as the game's super fans who might say it's the best game ever. But it is excellent. If I had a complaint, it's that it's less combat heavy than I expected or would have liked. As far as atmosphere, it would be hard to find many 2D games that can match it in that regard.

"he looks happy enough about it, at least" Does he though? Some might say Mario's expression is that of someone in a psychotic fit of rage with the intent of beating whoever is in front of him over the head with that club.

In all seriousness, add me to the bandwagon of Japan's cover for the same reasons mentioned above. The sketch look is really nice for this one, and it shows the other players. On top of that, it benefits from more breathing room. I like the composition more for Japan's, and a lot of that is because the logo is better judged. The western cover has Mario dominating the whole lower half. The image is arguably too zoomed in as far as the composition goes. But the logo dominates the upper half and I think it's too big and just crushes everything visually.

Just to get this out of the way, the whole thing of "underrated" and "overrated" comes down to simply having somewhat of an outlier opinion. For a game to be "overrated", a lot of people have to like it, and vice versa. I think Mario 3 is one of the best games of all time, but there will always be those who just don't get it for one reason or another. On the flip side, I hate Mario 64 and Sunshine.

But a underrated goes, the first game that popped into my mind is Super Mario Land. It's a short game. It's a small game(data size). The sprites are tiny. The control feels different. But I also think it was a fantastic effort on shrinking the gameplay of the first Super Mario game while adding new ideas. I had a ton of fun with it.

And I can agree with Super Mario 2 being on there. It was a huge deal when it came out, but I think it got hugely overshadowed by the third game. For a while, it seemed there were more people who didn't like SMB2 as much as they did back in the day. I was one of them. For me, part of the issue was trying to get back into it via the GBA. I revisited SMB2 a few times because it wasn't clicking. It finally did. The SNES Mario All Stars version of that one is a really good way to play it too.

Japan is too minimal for my taste. Minimalism like that doesn't work for Mario, in my opinion. The knock against the US/Euro cover will be that there's too much going on, but it's so well done that I think it overcomes that issue. US/Euro cover gets my vote easily.

The baby versions of Mario and Luigi are weird looking with no mouths.

How unexpected. Though I was drawn to anime pretty early, I did not like Toriyama's style at first. It seemed so simple and the character designs were not what I was used to. I only include that to say that I came to appreciate it very much before too long going so far as to buy some of the original manga in Japanese just to admire it. And then it's not just about the art on a page, but also the story behind it. Looking back, it's not surprising that I heard his name so often when I asked people, Japanese and American, who some of their favorite comic book artists were. And I enjoyed his style applied to video games as well. Sad to hear this news of a legend gone.

The "ninja" thing for European releases is so funny. "Ninja" is much too violent, but if we call it "Shadow Warriors" that is somehow much less violent.....please pay no attention to the word "warrior"....no violence to see here.

The NA cover is decent, but it is also a rehash. The Japanese cover may not be the best layout for the purposes of cover art, but it has something else going for it. It's anime!!!! Needless to say, I'm voting for Japan.

Worth mentioning that the connection to Shadow of the Ninja for this comes from the fact that Natsume developed this one instead of Tecmo and it has elements of both. On Gamefaqs, they have an Asian title for it as well, "Ninja's Skyscraper Fight" which is somewhat amusing.

I loved that youtube video on the development of Micro Mages. It was very informative, but easy to understand. I eventually picked up the game on Steam and thought it was very good. I missed the memo at first that there was a second quest released and finally played that last year. I agree with the sentiment that Micro Mages would have stuck out and been a hit back in the early days of the system. The game likely would have had good word-of-mouth. But, as they said, the tools available now are better than back then. Also, it would have been hard to market the game's graphics with such tiny, albeit good, sprites. Games back then went with bigger sprites for more visual appeal, especially for marketing screenshots. It's impressive how nice the sprites are on the game given how tiny they are. I need to make a note to check out Morphcat's other games.

Europe is easily the best one here. It's very well executed which is not something I can say I think applies to the other two. While the Euro cover has a similar border to the NA one, it's black so it doesn't draw attention away from the art. The red side borders on the NA N64 covers tend to detract from the cover, and the corner peel is just obnoxious.

I don't know how since I check the site every day, sometimes compulsively on bad days, but I totally missed the announcement of this title. I checked and didn't comment on the original story. I was totally unaware of this game. Great story behind it and it great that it has been picked up and finished. A shame sales considerations stood in the way back in the day. Of course the original didn't sell well due to the timing of its release.

Yeah, even the standard edition is expensive. Still, I've seen a number of modern regular Game Boy and Game Boy Color releases on cartridge reach $50 or so. It's more than I'd want to pay for a cart of this sort. Perhaps the big Shantae fans will go for it. My splurge cart was Mad Stalker for the Mega Drive a few years back.

Whenever a rare game of the past finally gets a modern release, especially with digital availability so print runs are not a factor, it's a wonderful thing. This is one of the games I've specifically been hoping would be made available for people. This is one of those rare games that miraculously didn't pass me by on the GBA. I was pretty regularly checking IGN back then for news and reviews, and GBA was my primary interest, so I was aware of this one and closely read their review. It was clear it was the kind of game I'd like and I got the impression at the time that the game would be hard to get if I waited too long. I ordered a copy within a few weeks and still have it. It's a great little game and I've played through it a handful of times.

I kept a few of my GBA game boxes, but that's not one of them.

As my mother taught me, always follow the crowd no matter what, so I'm voting for the western cover. Also, I think it's a lot better. The action in the background is really well done and the concept is just well executed. The concept for the Japanese one is more interesting in theory than the execution of it with the flat reddish background and that the minis are identically posed.

I think both are good in their own way. While the Japanese one is a bit cluttered for having all those characters, it doesn't feel as cluttered as it could be and the art itself is pretty good. But I do prefer the reduction in featured characters for the Euro cover. I like how additional characters are in the upper background and I prefer the logo being above rather than below in this case. So I vote Europe, but I like the Japanese one too.

The Game & Watch collections are really good. Didn't expect to like them, but Nintendo's game design was strong enough to make most of their LCD games more interesting than the competition. I went back to Mario 64 a couple of years ago and I came away from that experience unhappy. Some people say it has not stood the test of time, and I would agree. The controls were among my complaints, so if the DS version is worse in that regard, then that sounds painful. I get why it's on the list, though. Super Mario All Stars is a good compilation, but it's also very sloppy, in my opinion. Hackers have made it a better experience. But the games themselves are super strong, so even a sloppy compilation is very good. (Doki Doki)Super Mario 2 is the best of the remakes on there, that I agree with.

@LikelySatan Ha ha. I almost tacked that onto the end of my comment via an edit.

For those who must attempt to pronounce Gynoug, and that is probably a bad idea, but if one must, it is jee-nog, with the o probably being more of a long vowel sound.

I've been playing a lot of Tenchu recently, and the franchise has an interesting history in that Acquire developed it with Sony Music publishing in Japan and Activision in the US. As I understand it, the franchise rights went to Activision and then to From Software. Acquire went on to develop a new ninja franchise in Shinobido before developing Tenchu Shadow Assassins which unfortunately I didn't enjoy. Interesting to see how things have ended up with regard to Tenchu developers and how both Tenchu and Shinobido are under the same umbrella now.

@NintendoDad I think you may be onto something there with the fisheye effect. I think that can mess with the mind because of the inconsistency of the background. The way I describe it is it feels like a difference between what the brain expects and what it sees. I have a similar issue with excessive screen shake. A lot of modern games, including 2D indie games have a lot of screen shake. Most old games did not, or only did it a little bit. It wears me down. I also notice issues with 60fps live-action video. Not only does it look unnatural, but it makes even the tiniest camera movement feel strange to me. It took me a while t figure out a lot of these things, but noticing the difference between third-person games, and first person games was a big one. Pay attention to what works for you and what doesn't. You'll probably notice certain patterns like what I mentioned.

Good piece, Ollie. I do hope you updated your mother on the situation and you told her you misjudged the game. I had a similar experience with Castlevania Circle of the Moon. I wasn't super excited for it at first(I didn't hate it, though), and I was a bit bored at first, but it started to click after a bit. There was a necessary period of adaptation and learning required, even though I was already somewhat familiar with the type of game. But once I did adapt, I was having a great time and would play for hours. It's kind of like playing shmups. You have to expect to die a lot, which isn't very much fun, and then you suddenly realize you're not dying all the time anymore it's fun. There's an adjustment with some kinds of games.

I last revisited a bunch of Metroid games about a year ago. My opinion on the GBA games remains the same as it was, that Fusion is the better of the two. It's something about the setting and level design. But Zero Mission is also very good, and some of the technical improvements are wonderful. Samus' sprite, for example, is great.

It's always weird to hear when people say they enjoyed Metroid Prime, but Resident Evil 4 eclipsed it for them. I hate that game(though, some hate scanning in Metroid Prime, so fair play there). It starts out well enough, but devolves halfway into a narrative and QTE mess. For me, Metroid Prime was way better, and probably the best on the system, but that is, of course, subjective.

This piece highlights something important, that first impressions are often wrong, and that applies to so many things. I have revisited games I didn't get on well with at first. In quite a few cases, I ended up having a drastic shift in view with some even becoming among my favorites(sorry, not you, Resident Evil 4....go away).

@NintendoDad Yeah, the 2D games are good to get that Metroid experience if you can't play the 3D ones. I've never been especially prone to motion sickness, but I have noticed it with some games too, especially first-person. I don't recall experiencing that with Metroid Prime, but I haven't played it in a while. It may help that Prime doesn't move as fast as other first-person games. I've noticed I experience that with games and videos where there's a focal point in the foreground, but the background moves a certain way, so that describes a lot of first-person games, a lot of SNES Mode 7 like the overhead parts of Contra 3, and a lot of smarthphone selfie videos.

I find third-person games to be much more tolerable, though I have noticed that for racing games, if the camera is basically locked to the back of the car, then that's not good for me.

@Dpullam When I played the Gamecube original, I also got a bit bored or distracted toward the end my first time around. I think part of that is that the discovery part of the game is mostly over as is the building up of Samus. And maybe the game's length is a part of that. I also had distractions outside the game. I had a great time up to that point and started over some months later and did finish the game and loved it. That's how it goes sometimes and it's funny how we both had that similar experience.

I think the NA cover has pretty good art. The problem is it's so cramped due to the big logo obscuring one of the featured characters, along with the Virtual Boy logo and the border. Skeleton guy might be crouching, or he might be on the verge of getting crushed between the two logos. The Japanese cover is much simpler. I might not have picked it if the NA art wasn't obscured and crushed. But Japan's ended up working better for having more room to breathe. It just worked better. Japan it is for me.

I think the NA cover just doesn't succeed in what it's trying to do. The concept is for the cover to be a moment of action and energy. For me, it doesn't do that and is visually messy. Why? I think Rayman's lack of actual limbs makes a dynamic pose like that just not work. I get no sense of motion from his hands and feet(or gloves and shoes) just hanging in midair. They feel haphazardly placed, even though it's true to the character. The Euro cover is okay, but the concept simply works far better to me.

I've never been a big fan of those original NES boxes with the pixel graphics on them, so that's my least favorite. The Japanese one is interesting, but it doesn't feel like it works as a cover with the composition it has. I can picture that one on the back of a box with screenshots filling some of the empty space. The European one is interesting. The art isn't the most detailed and it's not especially dynamic, but I like the way it all comes together. The weird action shots by Samus' legs are weird though and don't add anything good. The US Classic Series box is the same key art from the Metroid 2 cover which is kind of disappointing, but it's still what I would consider as the best box here.

This is beyond physical vs. digital. Digital distribution has had many problems in its short existence. Things are delisted without notice in many cases. There have been cases of things being removed from people's libraries despite being purchased. And I know it's not considered "owning" it, but they are happy to make it seem like it up front. For gaming, one major reason they want this subscription model is it lets them find yet more ways to monetize games with digital "items" and such. As far as distribution, I think digital makes a lot of sense for games because of how many games are incomplete, even on disc, and how many updates there are. In my experience Steam and GOG have been very good platforms for distribution and are a good example in that regard. I know DRM-free isn't appealing to big companies like Ubisoft.

I was open to the idea of digital distribution of shows and movies early on. The idea of not having to deal with the clutter was appealing. Once I saw the sudden delisting and other shenanigans, I decided to change course. I now buy more physical media than ever before, though much of it used(another reason companies love the subscription model).

Lastly, these comments by this Ubi guy is a good demonstration of what not to do when it comes to PR. Telling people what they need to be doing, which has far more benefit to the company selling them a subscription service, is tone deaf and arrogant. Reluctance on the part of consumers is likely because they have observed the downsides of digital content services and the fact that the fees often get jacked up down the road once the alternatives are gone.

When I saw the NA cover, I immediately thought I'd be voting for Japan. Then I saw the Japanese cover and was surprised by what I saw. My vote immediately swung back to NA. I'm not fond of the Japanese cover. It looks really amateurish, or like a young kind who only recently started to discover their artistic talent but has a long way to go made it. The posing, the thick black outlines, the coloring all look unprofessional. Or as @Vyacheslav333 said, it looks childish. It's not that it's the cartoon style. It's the execution.

The NA cover is a decent piece of comic-style art. I don't like it as a cover. It doesn't have good composition for that. Too messy. Raphael's placement is odd and I think drags it down. The quality of the art is good, though. It looks professional because it is. The layout, inking, and coloring look great. Easy choice this week. NA by a mile or five.

When I saw the NA cover, I was not into the 3D-rendered characters. Then I saw the Japan cover had the same thing. As such, this comes down purely to composition. NA wins that easily for me. It's dynamic, and clearly depicts golf. The other looks like a bunch of youngsters taking a group photo to remember the good times with the golf items in the shot so easy to miss.

@VoidSeraph I know I'm not the person you tagged, but I've played a lot of Strider this year, mostly arcade and PS1 Strider 2. I played the NES version a year or two ago. I tend to love that type of game on the NES(Shatterhand, Batman, Power Blade, etc.). I liked some of the ideas for NES Strider, but it's also a buggy mess, which is a shame. There was still some fun to be had there. It would be cool if, officially or unofficially, the game was fixed up so it doesn't remain forever unfinished.

Japan! Hard to beat the fun Nintendo characters. With that said, I like the western cover, mostly for the angry blocks. Not horrible considering what they had to work with.

For me, the Japanese cover is the worst. There's no background. Joe's pose is......weird. Joe and Sylvia are jumbled together and it lacks visual clarity in terms of composition. Europe's is better, but Joe's pose is....weird. For me, NA is easily the best. The background is nice. I like the composition the most. And I like the poses for both characters, especially Sylvia.

@Warioware I feel mostly the same as you do. I wasn't interested in bullet-hell for a while, but eventually gave it a chance, but found it wasn't for me. I was impressed with some of the design elements like the tiny hit boxes as it made things more fair than they looked. But the small hit box just messes with my mind. I didn't find it as enjoyable to be bogged down by giant bullet patterns compared to older style shooters where I'd have room to move, but the bullets would come much faster. I'm glad I tried bullet-hell, but it never landed for me as my mind is wired for the older-style games, like those Toaplan was making before it morphed into Cave.

@wrath7007 You are correct that the Switch is a little bit ahead of the pace of the PS2, so it is beating it in that regard. We'll have to see if Switch sales can be sustained as long or if they drop off as many consoles do. The flip side is that the PS2 wasn't available in as many regions as the Switch is, which was a sign of the times. It's hard to account for that, but one could argue that the PS2's numbers would still be more impressive. But there are many other variables like computers, smartphones etc, so it will never be a direct comparison. It's interesting to think about though.

NA for me simply due to the framing. The zoomed-in image has far more impact. The Euro cover has far less feeling due to the composition. The island in the background does very little as well.

"Why do you want to go back to a type of game where you're more limited or more restricted in the types of things or ways you can play?" But I do understand that desire that we have for nostalgia, and so I can also understand it from that aspect."

With all due respect, bigger and more open is not necessarily better. What you gain in freedom in open-world, you end up losing in structure and focus. I value that structure and focus far more than freedom in that context. The old Zelda formula was an exercise in good game design. In fact, it was one of the series of games where game design was figured out. It was supposed to be fun and feel grand while still being somewhat small and easy to manage. That isn't to say there isn't good game design for a large open-world 3D game, but it's very different. But that old game design made a lot of sense to people within the context of a video game. If it didn't, then Zelda wouldn't have been such a great success. In a larger sense, it's a puzzle to solve. Modern Zelda has a different feel. My point is simply that it's understandable that some would prefer that older experience, and it's not necessarily nostalgia, but an appreciation for a different approach to game design. I prefer older games not because I'm after a nostalgic feeling, but because I genuinely prefer the approach to game design of the time. Nintendo made their decision to take Zelda in a different direction, and that's understandable. As such, there was always going to be some push back from those who liked the older games more. It's a shame they don't seem to want to make both types like they did back when the GBA was current. Without hardware limitations, it seems they don't want to pursue that.

The announcement and teaser was a nice surprise. Shinobi is what appealed to me most from the batch. I enjoyed Crazy Taxi back in the day, but it didn't have staying power for me, though I'd consider a new one after seeing how it turns out. I didn't see enough of Golden Axe or Streets of Rage to feel excited and I'm not sure about the visual styles, but I'll see how things turn out. I do like that they are at least trying to revive Golden Axe again and possibly right the past wrongs there.

A single-player Phantasy Star 5 might be nice, though I'm concerned it won't have the magic the fourth game had for me. They could do a Fighters Megamix 2. More Panzer Dragoon would be nice, though that also leads to my other point that it would be nice to have modern releases of older games. It would be cool to have all the Panzer Dragoon games, in one form or another, on modern platforms especially PC. Same thing for Golden Axe: Revenge of Death Adder. And I'd love to see Daytona 2/Sega Racing Classic 2 get a standalone release.

Also, more Virtual On, please!!!

Both are terrible. Japan's cover is boring and I don't like the art style. The US one is a different, infuriating kind of terrible. The drawing itself is nice. The composition is awful with the game logo and developer logo taking all the breathing room. I have consistently pointed out that the design of US N64 boxes are among the worst. This shows why. The red logo strip is always bad, and this is one of the worst ones as it cuts off the main character, regardless of it being translucent. The stupid corner peel also interferes with the art and was always a bad idea that never should have been approved. It's so amateurish. The standard US box layout just ruins the whole thing. I voted for Japan without hesitation.

@MasterGraveheart The QTEsin Resident Evil 4 left me feeling the same. When the game, and QTEs were new, it seemed like an interesting idea. And the early QTEs were okay enough at first. But, as is often the case, it all went downhill very quickly. The QTEs got so tiresome. Of course, the pinnacle was an entire QTE boss fight that's one of the most maddening parts of the game. I don't even know why I bothered to finish the game, though that was a lesson I had to learn to hard way a couple of times on the Gamecube. I once tried to replay RE4 and then realized only the first half of the game was any fun for me. And even that has diminished as I grew tired of QTEs.

The NA one is super boring in its composition. The EU one is slightly more interesting in the pose, but having Batman on a wire looks silly. And he looks more plastic like. After thinking about it, the boring NA cover is slightly better executed to me for what it is and the villains in the background is a decent touch and a enough to make it my pick, ever so slightly.

The Nintendo black boxes are iconic, but iconic does not make it better. I'm glad the black boxes ran their course and were phased out after they served their purpose. The Japanese cover is okay. Mario looks like a creep, and like he's the bad guy. The "Bonus" one doesn't belong on this informal poll that's just for fun and not binding. Also, I voted for "Bonus" so I'm part of the problem and I'm okay with that.

Always amusing when consecutive comments end up having such different opinions. As I write this at least, the above commenter seems to love both covers. I think neither cover is good from the standpoint of art design for a cover. The US/JP art itself is fine. The concept and composition are not interesting. Full profile layouts tend to be the most boring layouts, and this is something I noticed even when I did my own drawing. The Euro cover is similarly bland. So this comes down to a simple matter of taste for me. I choose the Euro cover simply due to the animal in the animal costume. It's easily the most interesting thing about any of this.

While it's not my favorite style of box art, these are well done. Both of them are pretty good. I had to think about this one for a bit. I was leaning toward NA/JP at first, but switched my vote to Europe. The NA/JP one is very busy. While that's often a negative, I think it works well and perhaps depicts the feeling of the game in some way(I am not familiar with this series.) Europe is also a bit chaotic, but less so. It's probably framed in a way better suited to be a game cover in terms of the overall composition.

@Ristar24 Yeah, I heard from a few people how good Double Dragon Advance was. I finally had a chance to try it a couple of years ago and it was really good and compares well against many of the best beat-em-up games. I'm so glad it's been made available this way.

I'm not fond of modern filmmaking in general these days, so I'm not optimistic, but I'm also not the target audience. It being live action is no surprise. I think animation(which I prefer, especially older anime) just has limits in terms of how they can market it, especially in certain regions. All the big 3D animated hits seem to be zany comedies. I do find it odd that some people insist on Link being silent in a film. That would be extremely limiting in a narrative. Even more if they pull it off and then want a sequel. It's not workable. Link is not a character in the games. He is an avatar for the player. Besides, at least in the older games, the other characters talk to link like he can and does reply, even if the player doesn't see or hear those replies. While that is a strength of the games, it's also a weakness in that it doesn't really allow any deeper storytelling. It just seems like a weird thing to insist be incorporated into a film.

It's literally election day here, though it's an off off-year election in my area. How funny to turn 18 on election day. Anyway, thank you, NintendoLife. I have enjoyed the site for more than half its run, I believe.

Unskippable text can be a major pain. When it has to be repeated in relation to a difficult boss fight, it can make some games insufferable.

North America gets my vote. The Euro/Japan cover is fine, but the concept of the ring of Kirbys doesn't do much for me, even if it is not bad. It's a bit bland. The NA one is well executed. And this is a case where the cover being more dynamic ends up being the better way to go in my view.

It looks better in motion, I'll give it that. And it says "work in progress" during the video, so it will likely change some, but the graphics do look off. I think it looks too clean and crisp. The backgrounds especially look too clean and bright. It doesn't give off the right horror vibe. The shading on the characters is very simple and there isn't much light and shadow which is a signature of horror stuff. It reminds me of when other old games got the HD treatment. It's harder to maintain the aesthetic. But I will say that it doesn't look bad in terms of the animation and they seem to be trying to stick close to the source material, so that's good. I'll try to keep an eye on how this progresses.

@gamerswereamistake It did have a Japanese release, but it used the same art as the NA cover. There are a bunch of European releases for other platforms that have the same cover you like with better framing with regards to the various borders. So if that's the kind of thing someone would want on a shelf, all the other versions are better choices.

My opinion is that the European cover is bad. Very bad. It's a terrible concept. It has awful framing. It's lazy(which is a synonym for classy, it seems). And to specifically address something mentioned here, that it looks "handsome" on a shelf, that notion is harmed by the gigantic border.