OneUp Studios co-founder and
OC ReMixer Dale North has a new post up at
Destructoid on
America's history of crappy video game art and animation. Clearly the Mega Man series is in there. The video accompanying the post is tough in some cases (EarthBound? It's different, but what's wrong with that one?), but the gist of it is that Japanese art that's much more relevant to games is passed up for oftentimes non-sequitor art, usually resulting in cases of "fail."
Best moment of the video for me:
An iconic picture of Pac-Man is shown midway through the video: "Oh
man! How are they gonna fuck
that up???"
Seconds later, the Atari box art: "Dear
LORD!"
Oof. I also don't believe I've ever seen anything as comparatively anti-septic and bland as the American box art for Breath of Fire III after the vibrant Japanese art.
And say what you will about the US-based cartoons being poor. You still watched them. Never ever heard of that DarkStalkers cartoon until now. Don't forget though that the Super Mario Bros. Super Show cartoon segments and Mario 3/Mario World cartoons by DiC were really strong all things considered.
One thing that could be noted for the present is that, with the foothold that manga and anime have on pop culture nowadays, a lot of the showcased art deemed unpalatable to American consumers back then is significantly more permissible. It remains to be seen what that'll translate to for future releases, but hopefully the days of Mega Man I's American box art are basically behind us.
A long-time gamer, Dale's been
really active at Destructoid, so be sure to check out his regular updates.
