10 Best Game Boy Advance Box Art

The heroes crowd the box in a swirl of gold and brown, swords raised, with monsters snarling around the edges. It is busy, but it is the good kind of busy, and it promises a big adventure on a very small cartridge.

The American box has Klonoa leaping across a pale sky with his long ears flapping behind him. Europe and Japan, on the other hand, got a bold yellow box with a giant Klonoa grinning and pointing his ring straight at you. It looks like a sticker you would want on your lunchbox.

In America, Link swings his sword in front of a golden emblem, with a bird-headed cap on his head. Japan's box, meanwhile, drops him into a green forest crowded with tiny Minish peeking out from the leaves. Both are lovely.

Haggar, Cody and Guy glare out of a red fireball, painted in the bold style of a Neo Geo poster. The artwork is by Shinkiro, in the same style as his SNK work. Inside the game, sadly, the dialogue scenes use terrible-looking portraits that are nowhere near as good.

A giant fist punches out of the American box while Astro flies at you over a blue sky. It is simple and it is loud. Japan's box, by contrast, surrounds Astro with a gang of dark robots and a burst of green light. Either way, the game inside was co-developed by Treasure, so the punch is earned.

Racing machines scream down a neon track toward you, while the pilots line up in a strip of portraits along the bottom. This one never left Japan. Even so, the box is a fitting send-off, since this was the last full F-Zero game Nintendo released.

The American box shows Samus crouching in her new blue and yellow suit while the creatures of the station creep up behind her. Japan, however, got a darker and stranger painting, with Samus standing over a pile of purple slime monsters. Both covers make the new suit look alive, which is unsettling in exactly the right way.

A little girl in a red dress dances in the corner of a bright yellow box covered in stars, and that is it. The game never left Japan, which is a shame, because the box is pure joy. It even calls itself a "norikan" game, a "groove sensation", rather than a plain rhythm game.

The whole box is plain red, with a chrome logo across the middle. Nothing else. It was a confident choice for a game so long awaited that it set pre-order records in Japan. It never came out anywhere else, so English-speaking fans translated it themselves.

Soma Cruz stands in a white coat with a sword raised in front of his face, painted in silver and black against a storm of white feathers. The characters were designed by Ayami Kojima, who had already drawn Symphony of the Night. As a result, it looks less like a game box and more like a gallery print.