The Coolest International Video Game Box Art

Its no big secret that North America usually gets the short shrift when it comes to game box art. In Japan, gaming is both a more accepted and deeper customarily-engrained media form, leading to far more interesting artistic direction – one that seems to be dictated much less by the commercial forces that seem to dictate things a bit differently in the US. So put on your culture hat – here's 25 of the best international boxes of the past decade.

Year: 2010
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360

The difference between Lords of Shadow's Japanese and American covers aren't too major, all things considered, but this more painterly take on Gabriel Belmont is both more in keeping with the series' traditionally baroque artistic sensibilities as well as being a lot cooler than its North American rendered counterpart.

Year: 2010
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360

Resonance of Fate has the somewhat more interesting name End of Eternity in Japan, with box art depiciting its three protagonists gazing up into the upper echelons of humanity's remaining civilization, its aristocracy driven ever upward by environmental danger as well as a physical caste system. More engaging than brandishing weapons at any rate.

Year: 2004
Platform: PS2, Xbox

Silent Hill 4 may be one of the most flawed efforts from Team Silent, but it has its fair share of truly horrific imagery and this nifty cover, courtesy of the UK. While simple in concept, this washed-out cover's chained-up door – which prevented protagonist Henry Townshend from leaving his own apartment – captures the surreality that The Room in particular has in spades, and with none of the cheap photoshop feeling of the US box art.

Year: 2012
Platform: Wii

For Kirby's 20th birthday, Nintendo released a collection with a slew of his past games in a nice anthology similar to Mario's 2010 25th Anniversary collection. The Japanese box art's burned-engraving-on-wood look hearks back to the original release of the SNES' Kirby Super Star, which seems appropriate (as it was another collection) as well looking pretty sharp.

Year: 2005
Platform: PS2

Radiata Stories is arguably one of Square's lesser-known PS2 RPGs, but the Japanese cover does a good job of portraying the kind of fable-in-watercolors imagery the name itself conjures. Environmental art is always a more interesting choice.

Year: 2005
Platform: PS2

Okami is essentially a 60-hour Zelda steeped in the painterly brushstrokes of ink washed Japanese folklore, so it's altogether appropriate (and awesome) that Japan's cover actually looks like a piece of feudal-era art. The US cover does a good job, too, but it lacks the artistic cohesion of the original's. You could practically hang the Japanese box on a wall.

Year: 2013
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360

It's hard to say exactly what's so great about Lost Planet 3's Japanese cover – maybe it's that it has the texture of a retro-styled sci-fi manga. Or it could be that the lead breaking out of the ice looks like a stylized John Cusack. Whatever the case, its action makes it far more interesting than the blandly dramatic render US players got.

Year: 2011
Platform: Wii

Lost In Shadow is a strangely ethereal puzzle game that seems to wear its Ico-esque aeshetic influences on its sleeve, but the North American box art makes it look like terrible bargain fodder with no sense of what anything is other than cheap. The Japanese cover gives you an arcane tower with a cryptic bit of dialogue, which is an order of magnitude more fitting with the game's mood.

Year: 2012
Platform: PS3

Ok, so Sony's oddly compelling animals-in-the-post-apocalypse roguelike didn't actually get a boxed release in North America, but on PSN the download's cover depicts a lion fighting off a pack of wild foxes against the ruins of urban Japan. That's all well and good, but can it really come close to the unsettling simplicity and humor of a stray leashed pomeranian standing in the middle of a deserted, blood-splatted Tokyo street? No.

Year: 2010
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360

Assassin's Creed box art in the US has always more or less followed a certain aesthetic grammar, usually showing little more than the titular assassin du jour rising out of the white-gray scenery (presumably a nod to the animus "interior"). Brotherhood's visual motion breaks from that trend with flourish, not to mention the beautifully saturated reds that highlight the blood hues of Ezio's uniform. Bravo.

Year: 2013
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360

Ni No Kuni is a little bit of a cheat, since before Level-5 remade their Studio Ghibli collaboration for PS3 and 360, it first saw life as a Japan-only RPG for the DS. The Japanese console's box art isn't bad, either, but the original portable edition's idyllic cover is just so Ghibli it hurts, which makes it pretty hard to dislike.

Year: 2009
Platform: PS3

Before became something of a breakout hit, Demon's Souls terrorized a new generation of players that may not have grown up with FromSoft's King's Field series. Demon's US box art is plenty slick in its own right, but there's something about gracing the cover of your game with the bruised, battle-worn image of a knight beaten to the brink by pitiless existence to really put you in the mood. Only players who bought the North American limited edition were as lucky.

Year: 2011
Platform: PS3

Fans have long known about the artful differences in the box art for Fumito Ueda's dual lonely and desolate adventures, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, but that doesn't make them any less powerful visual pieces. In the bluray packaging that came with the PS3 HD re-releases, the original Japanese PS2 art looks even better. The US Collection isn't near as attractive, but at least the cover is reversible.

Year: 2010
Platform: PS3

Heavy Rain's US box art plays up the typified Hollywood thriller packaging you'd expect from this kind of (admittedly cliche-ridden) crime drama – Japan's simple, disturbing takes a visual route that's actually more artful than the game's direction itself. Narrative flaws aside, this is a gorgeous cover.

Year: 2011
Platform: 3DS

Cave Story 3D's Japanese cover is much closer to the stylized spirit of the original game's sprite graphics, but apart from that it's just light years more attractive – channeling a look somewhere between Osamu Tezuka and old '30s Disney cartoons – than the disappointingly "off" box art the US dealt with.

Year: 2008
Platform: PS3

Any cover that uses illustrations from longtime KojiPro character/mech designer Yoji Shinkawa needs no introduction, and as cool as the simple use of a close-up of Old Snake may be rendered, by Shinkawa's hand it's infinitely cooler.

Year: 2010
Platform: Wii

For the Japanese release of Metroid: Other M, Nintendo went all out with a special slipcase that shows Samus in her power suit...and then out of it. It's a cool, ballsy cover that echoes what Team Ninja was trying to do with the character at the time, which speaks more to the spirit of the game (as narratively suspect as it may have been, in some ways) than the space opera movie poster that made up the US box art.

Year: 2013
Platform: PS3, PS4

Much like Metal Gear's incomparable Yoji Shinkawa, any cover handled by longtime Square collaborator Akihiko Yoshida is not to be trifled with. For FFXIV's relaunch as A Realm Reborn, Yoshida contributed a sumptuously arresting menagerie of all manner of mages, warriors and knights that, despite the change of realm, seemingly bridge the visual gap between previous works Final Fantasies XII and Tactics.

Year: 2010
Platform: PS3

Yakuza 3's Japanese box art seems to be such a culturally classic take on Japanese commercial visual design that you could almost picture protagonist Kazuma Kiryu brandishing a Boss coffee or a transit-friendly Suica card. "Try Yakuza 3...Breezy!"

Year: 2011
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360

Shadow of the Damned art is deliciously, cheesily Japanese in the best way possible: grossly steeped in anime gravitas. Garcia's damsel girlfriend Paula adds a sexually honest layer of cultural expectation on top of the machismo – which makes sense given that Suda51 loves those tropes – all of which is comparatively much more engaging than the Western cover. (Also, fantastic use of color.)

Year: 2007
Platform: DS

Hotel Dusk is, for a DS game, a pretty aesthetically engrossing noir-esque mystery game. Set in the eponymous hotel somewhere the Southwestern US, the Japanese box art does a fantastic job conveying the sense of the remote and the isolation of protagonist Kyle Hyde (while now also retroactively resembling a scene from Breaking Bad, which seems just as fitting). If only more American box art was like this.

Year: 2011
Platform: PS3, Xbox 360

For all the terror and stress that comes with playing Dark Souls, there's a peaceful, almost plaintive feeling that comes from resting at a bonfire. These havens from death are the only moments a player may feel respite throughout his journey through the cursed realm of Lordran. What better (and more Japanese) way to invite that sense than a warrior at rest in front of a crackling blaze, for the moment shielded from the ruin of the world? Amazing.

Year: 2005
Platform: Gamecube, PS2

Suda51's US debut may have had some pretty standard box art in North America, but its provocative Japanese counterpart for the Gamecube was anything but. How often do you see games do anything as bold as focusing exclusively on huge, reckless typography? Killer 7's box looked as though it had been ripped off an industrial assembly line, giving you absolutely no idea what the game actually was – as if your attention wasn't already grabbed by that rich black lettering. (The tactic is just as well, because Killer 7 also happens to be f%#*ing insane.)

Year: 2009
Platform: PS3

Even before Sony Japan got Harrison Ford to play Uncharted 3 on camera, the country already knew precisely how to approach the cultural presence surrounding Nate Drake's globe-trotting adventures. Uncharted 2's Japanese box art is without a doubt a work of art, expertly echoing Drew Struzan's Indiana Jones theatrical posters in a way that feels like a great little nod to Indy while still managing to stay culturally original. Looking at this cover feels like you're about to go on a legendary, swashbuckling yarn – and for as classically pulpy asAmong Thievesis, you couldn't ask for a better homage.