The 25 Most Beautiful Video Game Box Art Covers

Image via Complex Original

Video game box art is important—for casual shoppers and fickle gamers, it's often the first impression they'll get of a new game. As such, cover art is really important, which makes it super mindblowing that so many companies don't seem to give a damn about it.

Covers that are beautiful, that are well designed and efficiently communicate a game's themes and style without bashing us over the head with it like so many rolling barrels—that's what we like to see, and that's what we've compiled here. Game publishers, take note: cover art matters. Now here's 25 examples of how to do it right.

Sonic and Knuckles (1994)

Most oldschool Sonic boxes featured the little blue rascal looking as goofy as possible with his posse of furries and mad scientists crowding the space around him. Not this one, though: Sonic and Knuckles are like the yin and yang of anthropomorphic video game characters, complimentary but opposite. It's well done.

The Saboteur (2009)

Though The Saboteur may not have been a great game, it did have a great story to tell—it uses World War 2 and Nazi-Occupied Paris as a backdrop for a tale of personal revenge. The colors are used really well in this image and the way the Eiffel Tower cuts diagonally through the middle is subtle and powerful.

Resident Evil: Outbreak (2003, Japan)

RE: Outbreak (or Biohazard, as the series is known in Japan) was a great single player game, but it's really notable for its online capabilities, which are reflected on the cover—it's not gruesome, but it is scary, and there aren't even any faces. The groping hands can be seen as RE players climbing over one another online, the games industry reaching forward to new gameplay styles, or even as a bunch of zombies snatching at some brains.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss (2011, Japan)

The Japanese cover for the upcoming (in North America, at least) Uncharted: Golden Abyss on PS VIta has Nathan Drake truly in his element: pirouetting down a waterfall, strapped with firearms and without a care in the world. It's a great image.

Lagoon (1992)

We never played Lagoon (we've heard it's crap), but we'd like to just based on the cover. Granted, it's probably nothing like that, but those waves look badass, and the way it's framed—sunset, reflection, and all—is alluring.

Pikmin (2001)

Compared to the busy and cluttered North American cover, this is a beacon of good design. The eponymous Pikmin are framed in dazzling yellow and unpretentious flowers, and their biology-lab layout (they might as well have pins in them) reflects Captain Olimar's interest in them as tools, and nothing more. The dude is cold.

Kingdom Hearts (2002)

Though the series has strayed pretty far from its roots, the original Kingdom Hearts was a breathtaking game. Unlike on every other similar cover ever made, the collage of characters works really well here, and we like that Goofy and Donald aren't emphasized any more than the other (at the time unknown) characters. The heart-shaped moon is a subtle, beautiful touch.

Lost Odyssey (2007, Japan)

That right there is the face of an immortal—Kaim Argonar, a man who's lived a thousand years, though he needs your help to piece together his memories. In Lost Odyssey, those memories are revealed through short snippets of text, like little novellas, which end up being the real draw of the game. His portrait on the cover is both timeless and foreboding, which perfectly captures the feel of his character.

Batman: Arkham City (2011)

Arkham City has more class than any other comic book adaptations, and the cover art reflects that. Anything with a consistent visual theme has us sold—check out the collector's edition. It's superb.

Out of This World (1991)

Out of This World was ahead of its time in so many ways, and the cover art perfectly depicted its gorgeous, painterly visuals. Its creator, Eric Chahi, went on to develop 2011's From Dust, an equally distinct title.

Gran Turismo 4 (2005)

Gran Turismo has always been about cleanliness, crisp mechanics and realistic driving simulation. But there's also a lot under the hood, so to speak, and that's what this cover conveys so well.

Epic Mickey (2010)

It's too bad Epic Mickey was such a letdown, because the game's overall aesthetic was incredibly creative. The cover art reflected that, with Mickey's paintbrush doing the talking. To top it off, we'd be willing to bet that this is the first time Mickey's ever been on a cover with his back turned. Ballsy move, that.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent (2010)

Amnesia is one of the scariest games we've ever played, though like its cover art, it barely ever shows you anything. It's more about what you can't see. We're not sure what the rose is about, since we were too frightened to actually finish it.

Limbo (2010)

Limbo's fuzzy black and white aesthetic is one of the most recognizable in gaming history, and its cover art is perfectly in keeping with it. That poor kid is always reaching toward the light, but whether or not he ever reaches it may well be irrelevant.

Final Fantasy IV (2007, Nintendo DS, Japan)

Japanese artist Yoshitaka Amano has been creating imagery and logos for the Final Fantasy series for decades, and each is wonderful in its own right. We only wish the games were still of such high quality.

The FF4 DS art in particular has a lovely simplicity to it—Dark Knight Cecil's brooding countenance mimes that of The Thinker, a great image for the game's cover.

Borderlands (2009)

At first glance the Borderlands cover looks like a dude shooting himself in the head, much like the game looks like your average cel-shaded first person shooter. But upon closer inspection, both reveal a lot more detail than you'd initially expect.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne (2003)

Max Payne's pulpy romance stylings are perfectly matched by the cover's starkly contrasting imagery, and the title—The Fall of Max Payne—combined with the image of two lovers holding guns to one another's heads is ominous, to say the least. You'd be right if you guessed that things don't end well in this love story.

Katamari Damacy (2004)

One of the quirkiest games of all time deserves a cover to match, and Katamari Damacy's is fantastic. Are the poor cows concerned about the giant ball of entropic magnetism rolling inevitably toward them, or are they truly as oblivious as they appear? The rainbow really ties it all together.

Alan Wake (2010)

Alan Wake's mechanics and themes—light vs. darkness, good and evil—are perfectly portrayed here. Wake's name and the game's logo are the light shining into the blackness, and the character himself is represented by a silhouette, telling of the darkness inside him. It's simple, consistent and effective.

Dark Souls (2011)

Dark Souls is an endless cycle of constant rebirth and a for personal ascendance—to rise above the struggle and emerge as something more, something the central character, a hollow shell of a human, can never achieve.

The figure is surrounded by the souls of those he (or she) encounters; enemies, friends, sometimes both; NPCs and other player characters alike. Each is alone, but not. It grabs you and pulls you in, just like the game.

Left 4 Dead (2008)

The Left 4 Dead series has made for a great distraction while Valve remains mum on Half-Life 3's status, and its covers have become instantly recognizable. The green and red, the grisly, maimed hand, and the four fingers—starkly frozen as if extended in the final throes of violent death—are consistent with the aesthetic and title of the game.

The sequel's art is similar (possibly too similar), though rumor has it the two curled fingers were intended to be missing like the thumb—until someone's whistle blew and they toned it down. Oh well.

Most of the covers from the SNES era and before aren't even worth mentioning (unless the topic at hand is golfing ninjas or space hillbillies), but this one is a clear exception. Where other boxes were goofy, Secret of Mana's was minimalist, serious and expressive.

Its consistency with the game's tone—the wonder of the natural world, its size and majesty, with your party representing specks in one corner—is laudable as well. No wonder this one's such a classic.

Heavy Rain (2010)

Heavy Rain's cover is perfect for a game this serious in tone, regardless of what you think of its execution. Murder and misery make the perfect storm, and that's captured here without all the fluff and clutter of most covers.

Although the Japanese art is definitely the best, the European one is great as well, while the North American cover completely misses the mark (as usual). Why do industry big wigs think Americans love floating head collages so much? To be fair, we sort of do.

Resistance 3 (2011)

The artist behind this gorgeous piece of art is none other than Olly Moss, whose previous work includes his video games reimagined as classic book covers, which are absolutely fantastic.

This cover features the Statue of Liberty not once, but twice‚ though you'd never know it at a glance. The New York City skyline is nestled within the iconic Resistance skull's teeth, and the entire thing is done in only two colors. Brilliant.

ICO (2001)

This is the perfect cover art; it lets you know exactly what this game's about (two people's struggle against towering odds) without having to jam every character and weapon into the image. Framing, color, scale—it gets everything right.

The best part is it was painted by the game's creator, Fumito Ueda, who went on to make Shadow of the Colossus and the upcoming The Last Guardian. He was inspired by surrealist Italian painter Giorgio de Chirico's "The Nostalgia of the Infinite." Why Sony of America chose to go with the other version (it's god awful, don't even click that) over this is proof of what little they think of American consumers.