10 Best Wii U Box Art

Link raises his baton at the centre of a crowd of friends and foes, all washed in a warm, golden sepia like an old map. Europe and Japan, by contrast, got the same painting in full colour, with a bright blue sea at the bottom. Both are lovely, but the gold one feels like treasure.

A giant paint bucket pours a wave of red down the middle of the box while Mario dives through it with his hammer. It is loud and messy in the best way, and it fits a game where Mario carries a paint hammer and solves colouring puzzles.

A handful of tiny Pikmin stand on a mossy log in a photo-real garden, with flowers and leaves blown up to giant size around them. Nothing else. It makes the backyard look like a jungle, which is exactly the feeling of playing it.

Two pale girls float upside down in dark water, their hair drifting around them, on a box that is almost entirely black and grey. It is genuinely creepy. Europe, where the series is called Project Zero, went with a single girl in front of a ghost, which is scarier on a shelf but less strange.

A giant mech stands on a cliff over an alien valley, while tiny figures watch from the edge and clouds roll past. Those machines are the Skells, the transformable mechs you unlock later in the game, and the box makes them look as huge as they feel.

A swarm of heroes in bright costumes bursts across the box, with a giant fist of fire and a city full of monsters behind them. It is chaos, but it is the right chaos for a game about a hundred superheroes teaming up. The director was Hideki Kamiya, and the box has his energy all over it.

Kirby is moulded out of pink clay, with a little paintbrush trail of rainbow curling around him and a bright world behind. The game uses an art style resembling claymation, so the box is basically a photo of a clay toy.

A knitted green Yoshi stands on a woolly hill in front of a blue backdrop, surrounded by friends made of yarn and buttons. Every stitch is visible. The game has an art style reminiscent of yarn, like Kirby's Epic Yarn before it, and the box looks soft enough to hug.

Bayonetta twists through the air in front of a huge pale moon, her hair streaming out like a black cloak. It is elegant and dramatic, and it might never have happened at all: Nintendo stepped in with funding after Sega shelved the game.

Two Inklings blast across the box in a spray of orange and purple ink, with paint splats flying off the edges. It looks like a skate brand's poster. The game centres on squid-like characters who shoot ink and swim through it, so the box sells it in a single glance.