Cover Art Chronicles: Nostalgia

So hey! It looks like we have a new feature here. Oh boy. With this feature, I'd like to examine the differences in box arts from different regions. But that won't be all; I'll be sure to merely examine certain box arts and point out anything that's particularly interesting about them, or any inconsistencies. For this, I'm starting with cover art for the recently announced Nostalgia, which is actually your boring ol' region comparison. Yeah, bummer.

You can pretty much guess what a game called Nostalgia is going for. These days, a good portion of the Japanese RPG genre is seeking to capture an audience that was lost because of its "evolution" not being something most fans in Japan could adapt to. That's the reason why so many publishers are embracing the past, eras where the genre was in its supposedly greatest form. Well that, and current generation JRPG development is pretty darn expensive.

The Japanese cover certainly represents this. I think it has a little homage to a lot of epic anime series and movies, mainly some of the classic Miyazaki movies. It manages to fuse that with the feeling of a classic RPG from either the SNES era or the PSX/DC era, most particularly Skies of Arcadia, which itself is fitting for what the actual game is going for. With that, there's no need to change this for America given the audience it's targeting, right? Well, uh....

Yeah, I don't know what they were thinking with this. It eschews the feeling the Japanese cover in favor of something that looks like....well, a video game cover. And that's just boring. If they were going for Nostalgia, they could go for the look of a classic 90s cover; you know, the covers that told you virtually nothing about the game and even went as far as to use a different character designer solely for the cover. This particular one kind of misses the point if it wants to send a message about the scope of the game.

(Or maybe it is sending a message! Nah, probably not.)

Though there's still time to fix the cover, I doubt they'll actually go through with it. And that's a shame, because I'd love to see something that differs from the norm and stands out within the customers' view as something unique. And when you have a niche property in a semi-niche genre, isn't that the point? It's disappointing for a company that put together such a great site and trailer for the game.