Image: Nintendo Life
Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Box Art Brawl!
Last week we took a look at Final Fantasy VI for SNES. It was pretty clear that good people preferred the more “traditional” visual style of the series, as the Japanese box won the week with a resounding 90% of the vote. Perhaps renaming the game Final Fantasy III in the US and giving it a drastically different box art design was not the wisest decision …
This week, we return to the world of Resident Evil. We’ve already covered most of the major games on Nintendo systems, but we’ve stopped paying attention to one of the weirdest and most infamous entries in the entire franchise: Resident Evil Gaiden.
The game was first released in the PAL regions in 2001, with other regions later in early 2002. Fans of the franchise do not hold it in high esteem and, in fact, are no longer considered part of the canon. wider. As for the game, you explore a luxury passenger ship called “Starlight” in which all the inhabitants have become zombies, with the environment shown through a top-down viewpoint. When you encounter zombies and other nasty ones, the camera switches to a first-person perspective, with a lattice moving from side to side to indicate the accuracy of your attack.
Enough of the gameplay, though: you’re here for box art! We will be launching the three main regions (North America, Europe and Japan) against each other this week. Europe and Japan share a very similar design for their respective paintings, but the Japanese nickname “Biohazard” justifies its own position in the competition.
So having said all that, let’s all get on board the Starlight and take a look at some box art!
Be sure to cast your votes in the next poll; but first, let’s look at the same box art designs.
North America
Image: Capcom
North America stands as the end of this week’s fight; the box image here depicts Leon S. Kennedy in a grumpy, masculine appearance with his RPD uniform. The RPD badge is also seen on the right on a dark red background. Overall, it’s a pretty good representation of how Resident Evil might be as a franchise, but it may not serve to indicate what Resident Evil Gaiden is all about, specifically. On a more positive note, however, we love the “classic” font used for the RE logo; it’s iconic for a reason and we’re glad Capcom has been back in the last few years!
Europe
Image: Capcom
This is perhaps the most “iconic” image related to Resident Evil Gaiden. We see here a lifebuoy adorned with the title “Starlight”, which gives a good indication of the settings of the game. But there is something wrong … What could it be? Oh, yes, the blood was dripping down the ring and running down the wall – lovely.
Something random to highlight here as well. In fact, the game was released by the now defunct Virgin Interactive in the PAL regions, while Capcom itself released the game elsewhere. It was one of many Capcom games managed by Virgin, including Dino Crisis, Street Fight Alpha 3 and the PS1 Resident Evil base titles.
Japan
Image: Capcom
Thus, as we said earlier, the Japanese painting of Resident Evil Gaiden is more or less the same as its European counterpart, but with some key differences to highlight. First, the obvious: it’s called Biohazard instead of Resident Evil. The font is the same, of course, but there are many fans who just prefer the Japanese title, which is great! Other than that, there are minor color differences, such as the column on the left, as well as some additional pieces and bobs in Japanese. The overall image is also a bit more enlarged.
So that’s it! Although Resident Evil Gaiden is at the bottom of the franchise in terms of quality, there is no denying that the box arts are at least quite interesting. Be sure to make your voice heard and vote for your favorite in the next poll!
Which region has the best Resident Evil Gaiden cash art? (953 votes)
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North America 27%
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Europe 44%
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Japan 29%
Thanks for voting! See you next time for another round of Box Art Brawl.