Poll: Box Art Travel: Duel # 67 – F-Zero

Welcome to the Box Art Tour, a weekly poll to find out which of the two or more regional box art genres should win your hearts and minds.

Finally the three of us boarded the Halloween train Citizen Evil0 Covers. Although Japan and North America were eager to bout themselves at the WC when Ticket Man arrived, the simple European card proudly showed its 52% and was allowed to go on to win. At the end of the trip, North America overcame Just Fell to Japan and took second place.

This week we will see a Super Famicom launch title (and we’ll check out some more throughout the month of this year) – Powerful Mode 7 monster, F-Zero. Not necessarily though Favorite-zero, Which is an incredible introduction to the series, which helped show what the new 16-bit console can do. Nintendo Switch online subscribers can catch this on Nintendo’s current console – it’s still a winner.

But which of our two racers this week will make it through the manual of the box art prowl? Start those machines …

Japan

The SFC cover features a comic book-style main figure with the heads of several racers floating above the Blue Falcon on the bottom left. Valiant, the comic book publisher, was listed by Nintendo as providing not only a comic book that came with the game, but also this front cover (thanks, Equivalent to box art).

We are big fans of the big red ‘boom’ snacking between the craft and the overall sense of speed and action captured here, and those hovering heads didn’t bother us until we started thinking about them. We like to see them sneak into the cockpit at the expressions of the racers, but they will work well if they have concentrated anger or some fire bells dripping on their foreheads.

The logo is nice, though – red-blue-purple engraved against the brushed steel in the background, with a black stripe designed on the top and bottom. We want to.

Europe & North America

The North American and European cover (which went with a black or blue border depending on the country) used completely different arts. Samurai Goro’s Fire Stingray can be seen starting a curve again, however this time he only volunteered to worry about Captain Balkan. The same basic logo is used from the SFC card, although here its perspective has been changed to trigger speed (or vertigo) in the mute city’s pleasant weather during the golden hour.

It’s very different from the Japanese card, but we still like it. The rounded edges of the Blue Balkans – bearing its original ‘111’ post – give it a beautiful, CB feel, and it’s nice to see the hat tied during the race. The shadow of the fire stingray, not sure what to keep in mind.

So, you’ve seen both options, but which is better? Select our favorites and tap ‘Vote’:

We hope you all have an exceptionally beautiful week, and we hope to see you next time for another round of civilized scraping, better natured than video game box art. Xiao!