Why was the artwork so crappy for American releases of Super Famicom RPG'S?

The Core Video Games Forum
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i always noticed that the artwork for the American releases of Super Famicom games was bad- an example is Breath of Fire - compare the box artwork on the Snes BOF to this Japanese Strategy Guide for the game-

2

Because anime scared people back then.

3

Heh, Capcom America had some of the crappiest art ever back then (Megaman is the best example). I have a lot of BoF I & II art from the Jap artbooks and I love it, I wish I knew who did it.

4

It would be nice to have the American version to compare to.

5

Well, I don’t know if it was actually a concern or not, but the US version of Breath of Fire was published by Squaresoft, not Capcom, so perhaps they didn’t have the rights to the artwork. For the most part, Squaresoft gave us similar artwork (such as Secret of Mana), or put the artwork in the manual for us (like FFIII/VIj).

6

The North American artwork isn’t bad. You’re just opinionated.

7

If it aint anime, I dont like it!

…

jk

8

Obviously they stole it from somewhere else. There is no other explanation. :no2:

9

Still no example… :frowning:

10

Sat has it, probably; licensing issues.

11

For soldieroffortune- here are the boxes to both american and Japanese Breath Of Fire- sorry the bottom box is sideways but i haven’t been able to figure out using my paint program how to split a pic then rotate part of it so both pics are vertically matched-

12

Its different…and there’s more detail. I don’t think the US artwork sucks though. Its just not anime.

13

Fine, so BoF1 Ryu looks like He-Man (Which is fucked up since he was a teenager) but that’s not nearly as bad as it gets, and the second pic looks just like the original art. Check it: Left (Original Art), Right (That Pic you showed)

14

Why is Karn’s skin blue?

15

You do know that the first image is BoF1 and the second is BoF2, right?

16

Has nobody mentioned Suikoden yet? Sure, it’s a Playstation game, but WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING?

<img src=“http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00002STPG.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg”>

17

Remember this was still in the time of Japanese art was still seen as a risk and therefore bad by most major companies. They did go wy, way too far a lot (megaman) but looking back it’s not really surprising.

18

I’ve had that game for several years, and I still have little idea what characters the people on the box art represent in the game

19

I assume the first dude must be Barbarosa… and the lady on the bottom left must be Windy

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