Cover Art Chronicles: Platinum Sega

I guess I've been on a Sega kick lately. Might as well keep it up for the time being, right? Sure.

Sega has an odd reputation of taking a bunch of already OK Japanese covers for Japanese games and changing them for American and European audiences. That's not entirely an indefensible practice, since some covers understandably have to be changed in order to appeal to specific audiences in the region they're trying to market them in. But with these comes a few cases where they went a little too far with making it something that would appeal to the casual observer. The result of them just looks like an act of laziness.

Like this one! Here we have the cover to Yakuza 3 for Playstation 3, which Sega is releasing in America and Europe right in the same week as Final Fantasy XIII comes out. The just want to make sure it's destined to be overlooked by people who would otherwise pick up the game but will undoubtedly be tied down by a 40-hour long RPG, one of the biggest this generation. Of course, then they'll complain about poor sales and refuse to localize Yakuza 4 because of it. It's a lose-lose situation for absolutely everyone involved.

It's a rather pessimistic look at the situation, sure, but it's not at all outside of the realm of possibility with how the situation will turn out. Oh, and just wait until more people find out that the game is in Japanese. Notice how the last two trailers carefully leave out that fact?

But uh,this is about the cover, isn't it? Yeah, it's pretty bad, though the background is pretty nice. A shame said background won't be were most people's eyes will go; they'll look at the awkwardly-placed face of Kazuma on the side first. I'm sure one of the main reasons for changing the cover was the cigarette in Kazuma's mouth, but I figured Sega had people on staff skilled enough at Photoshop to simply remove the cigarette from the mouth. Guess not! And this is what we get instead. It's OK, Europe's getting the same thing.

Fortunately, the next two efforts fare a little better. Next we have Infinite Space for Nintendo DS, a new space-opera RPG from Platinum Games (MadWorld, Bayonetta). It definitely looks intriguing, and if you haven't been following, Sega's also been dubbing the anime shorts (albeit with questionable, barely OK voice acting).

The cover they've done for International audiences is definitely a step down from the Japanese one, but it still doesn't look too bad. It would have looked much better if it wasn't for the characters in the way of the background. The game releases in America and Europe in spring 2010; possibly March if Nintendo's earlier schedule was correct.

Last we have the covers for Resonance of Fate, known as End of Eternity in Japan (which couldn't be used outside of that territory for good reason) for Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. This is a Japanese RPG developed by tri-Ace (of the Star Ocean and Valkyrie Profile games) and published by Sega instead of Square Enix this time, since the latter felt it was too ambitious to take a gamble on. This is also the first tri-Ace game not published by Enix or Square Enix. It released last week in Japan.

The cover is, again, not quite as good as the Japanese version in terms of atmosphere, but like Infinite Space's, the result isn't too bad. Showing all three characters with guns sure is a good way to sell it to certain people, so I'm sure it will sell fine to the uninitiated. Well, I sure hope so, because after hearing that the game is good, I'd like tri-Ace to be rewarded for their success. The game releases in spring 2010, but some retailers have the game listed as releasing on...March 9th? But no, they wouldn't do that. They can't be that stupid.

Looking at a lineup like this, along with the recently released Bayonetta, makes me glad that Sega is finally out of the dreadful period they were in shortly after the Dreamcast was laid to rest. They're still not on the level they were during the Dreamcast's heyday, but it's still a hell of a lot better than too many Japanese companies are doing these days. They recently posted a profit as well, though it was mostly on the power of Mario & Sonic at the Winter Olympics. I hope they can keep up that streak of quality with Sonic the Hedgehog 4.