10 Worst PS2 Box Art

A cartoon beagle grins out of the bottom corner while a whole kennel of dogs and a man in a lab coat crowd the top, all on a white background. It is cheerful, but nothing on it tells you what you actually do in the game.

A blue-haired girl in flared jeans strikes a pose next to a swirl of flying machines and a giant curly logo. It could be an advert for almost anything, and the game itself barely gets a look in.

Three ninjas point guns straight at you from a crowded red and black collage, and the title appears twice, once in red and again in white. Did they forget they had already written it? The box certainly suggests so.

A goofy young man in a graduation cap is squeezed between two women who take up most of the box. The man is Larry Lovage, the nephew of the original Larry, and the cover is about the women rather than the game.

The American box is a cartoon mosquito with a drinking straw for a nose, flying across a flat yellow background. Japan's box, on the other hand, is a photo of a bare foot with a single mosquito on it, which is far funnier and far creepier. After all, the game is about sucking blood from a family without getting swatted.

A crowd of anime characters fills the American box, led by a red-haired girl with a long staff. However, the cover pictures her later dark side, in skimpier clothes, so it spoils part of the story before you even open the case. Japan's box, by contrast, is a soft watercolour of a winged figure in the sky.

Rough sketches of soldiers stand against a red and white backdrop of New York, under a big chunky logo. It was almost hilariously over-American, as if it was fighting to save the nation from the shelf next to it.

A woman in a red dress points a gun at the camera next to a few coins and a revolver on a white background, like a stock photo for a crime novel. The cover art of the European release is, quite simply, hideously cheap.

Two cartoon survivors stare out of a frame of hazard stripes in front of a few buildings. The funny part is that the box art shows the two main characters as they looked in the Japanese version, not the one inside. Japan's box, by comparison, is mostly white with the title in blue, quiet and far more striking.

A group of women with guns runs through an explosion, like a lost poster for a spy film. The game inside is a shoot-em-up called Shikigami no Shiro, and those women have nothing to do with it. Adding insult to injury, it is the same cover the PS1 Mobile Light Force had already used.