Among the unfortunate box illustrations in gaming history, some are confusing and bizarre. Some are inadvertently disturbing. Some are just ugly. And some, though not aesthetically horrid, have absolutely no relation to the games that, in theory, they represent.
Consider The Guardian Legend. An NES sleeper hit from Compile, the game sends an android girl, nameless in the North American version, off to save the Earth by destroying a massive unmanned starship that's swarming with alien parasites. It's a unique piece of programming, interspersing vertical shooting stages (reminiscent of Compile's own Aleste games) with labyrinths that seem fusions of The Legend of Zelda and Metroid.
But you'd never guess any of this by looking at the game's cover art.
Here we find no mazes, female robots, looming artificial asteroids, or even images of outer space. Instead we're greeted by the furrowed brows of a demon-alien who appears to be wearing too much eye makeup. This creature doesn't resemble any of the game's cast at all, as the only humanoid character in The Guardian Legend is the heroine, and she's a swimsuit-clad, normal-looking lass who just happens to periodically transform into a starfighter.
With the jet-droid heroine lies the potential for a fitting box cover, but Broderbund, a company more often associated with ‘80s computer software than NES releases, opted for an illustration that only makes the game's vague title more confusing. With a name like “The Guardian Legend” and a cover featuring a furious reptile-person glaring across an arid wasteland, this would seem to be some sort of RPG, and not a particularly interesting one at that.
Thus the artwork would have failed in its most immediate duty: getting kids to take a second look at the game. Upon The Guardian Legend's release, store shelves were thick with NES games, and though older customers might check out the back of a box, younger brats would seldom waste time investigating something with a dull and unfamiliar cover, for there were Batman, Duck Tales, and Mega Man games to be found. It's hard to imagine many children bounding up to their parents with The Guardian Legend boxes in hand, shrieking “Mom! Dad! You've gotta buy this game! It's about an angry alien's forehead!”
On the other hand, the European release of The Guardian Legend (mit paBwort funktion!) put the heroine front and center, albeit in a form that would seem more at home in Fritz Lang's Metropolis than in Compile's shooter.
It's not quite what you'll see in the game, but studies have shown that, most of the time, consumers both young and old prefer robot women to the fretful stares of androgynous lizard folk.
The cover of The Guardian Legend's Japanese edition (known as Guardic Gaiden and loosely translated as "The Legend of Goardic" on the box) steps further into mechanical-fetish territory, as artist Naoyuki Kato envisions the main character (known as “Miria” in Japan) as a melancholic, gray-blue heroine surrounded by a collection of wires that H.R. Giger might have draw on his milder days.
Artistically speaking, it's the best of the three covers. Then again, Miria's the cheerful type, not some brooding waif from an old issue of Heavy Metal.
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