A comparison between PAL ps1 cases and their NTSC counter part.
Not to have a dig at Americans but…….. recently I’ve been seeing a lot of NTSC cases that just left me thinking really?
There seems to be a common theme amongst them, Have every possible character in game on the cover. Now this would make sense for say a TV series like friends or Big bang theory but it doesn’t really make sense when 99.99% of games you only play as one protagonist (beat-em ups normally have 2 key characters) Well here are some comparisons of ps1 games.
This is the pal case, it’s a nice clean render, has a parental warning because of the harsh language and you have a single character with two guns. In addition to the logo and the name “Team buddies”. So you know it’s a team shooting game (Over simplification)
The NTSC case. Now what is going on? there is every character and vehicle on the screen, looks more childish, very cut and paste apposed to a simple clean render, the game logo is awful. It does give you an idea of what the game is about but there is just far too much going on at one time.
Using the trademark Resident evil font, full colour render, nice framing, everything is nice and neat and the writing for Nemesis is plain but spaced out well across the case.
And the NTSC case, the whole image is white washed, font is all over the place and the Nemesis part looks like a child has photoshopped it. The focal part should be the logo and the character but half of his head is cut of because the text is far too big fro the cover.
Like I said at the start it seems that for a game to appeal to the American audience it has to have a character on it. There isn’t anything particularly wrong with these cases I just find it’s interesting.
Not all that sure what happened on this one. Take a perfectly good 3D render and draw over it in 2D, Once again making the game look more childish and generic.
Hmmmm, Do you really need to have the main character on the cover? The game is about surviving on a dinosaur island(s). You wouldn’t know that from the 1st image if it wasn’t for the name “Dino Crisis” Plus Dinosaurs are awesome and they make a much more interesting image. Now if we look as the NTSC image of Dino Crisis 2 what were they thinking? The colour is awful the font has changed. There is a purple smiling dinosaur in the background with a very cheaply and poorly done silhouette in the foreground.
It maybe a very minor thing but font and framing are important. A font or logo can build a brand to the point where you can simply hold up a number or the logo in your font and people will know what it is. See spider man 3, batman and super man for examples of these. The tomb raider on the right isn’t all that atmospheric yes she has a touch symbolising she is in a dark place when in fact compared to the left she is in a well wit cave. Also once again no consistency with the font, the PAL versions of tomb Raider have an established font which helps build the brand.
A.Byrom: Lead Designer on the British point and click Game Go To Hell Dave
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