10 Worst Game Boy Color Box Art

Austin Powers grins in a frilly shirt and points straight at you over a green and purple swirl, under giant white letters. It is a film poster squeezed onto a cartridge box, and nothing on it hints at what kind of game is inside.

The hero's orange beak and goggle eyes are cropped so close that the box is mostly beak. You never get to see the rest of him, which may be the kindest choice the artist made.

Jim rides a red rocket in the flat style of the cartoon show, and that was the plan, since the game was meant to tie in with the series. However, it came out a good few years after the cartoon had stopped airing. Worse, none of that cartoon charm made it into the game.

The American box shouts that this is the arcade hit classic, then shows a blurry radar screen with a few streaks of light over a dark city. Europe's box, by comparison, has actual missiles and an explosion on it.

E.T. leans over a goggle-eyed green creature while a bee hovers above them, and the whole scene floats on an empty white box with a few leaves sketched around the edge. Is it finished? It looks like a colouring book page someone gave up on.

A player in camouflage crouches behind a red crosshair, and the rest of the box is splattered with every colour of paint the artist could find, title included. From more than a step away, it reads as a mess.

A giant blue face glares down over a knight, a hairy beast and a small red creature, all lit like a murky oil painting. The fighting below does its job, because players pick between the humans and the beasts. The giant face in the sky, on the other hand, explains nothing.

The live-action cast poses in front of the mansion under a stormy sky, dark and grainy. Unfortunately, the characters in the game look nothing like these actors, and Uncle Fester ends up looking like a fat friar.

The box crams the cute duck-like Mocchi and the eyeball Suezo up front, tongue out and eyes popping, with the explorer Cox squeezed in behind them. In truth, those monsters are front and centre on the cover, yet their role in the game is minimal. Japan's release is even called just Solomon, with no mention of Monster Rancher at all.

The American box shows only the tank, rendered in murky 3D and buzzing with purple lightning, under a washed-out grey logo. In Japan, where the game is called Metafight EX, the box gives you the pilot in a red and white suit posing next to the tank, drawn like a proper anime. Only one of the two regions got a real cover.