The 50 Most Awful Retro Video Game Box Art Covers

As a decade, the '80s weren't all bad. A lot of us were born during it, after all. Other than that, though, it was pretty shitty. Unless you were on drugs, we're guessing. Aside from having the worst music, styles and US Presidents of the entire century, it also produced some of the most god awful video game covers of all time, and that even bled over into the early '90s.

The worst part is that these games were often so aesthetically primitive that their worlds could have been re-imagined in countless ways by talented artists and made into gorgeous box art, like, say, Out of this World was. What usually happened instead, though, was that whatever coked-up coder happened to be on cover art duty that week would whip up a generic-looking image of a shirtless barbarian with a lightning bolt behind him and some skank sprawled at his feet and call it a day.

That's what you have to look forward to over the next 50 slides. What are you waiting for?

To be fair, we have zero illusions about what this game entails after viewing the cover.

At what point in the near future are all the baddest dudes in the galaxy going to get together and unanimously decide to adopt pastel tankini combos as the official uniform of Badasses Everywhere? We can't wait.

Did you mean "Dude Buster"? No, that doesn't sound right. "Dude Cruster"? Okay, that's even worse.

You've got to hand it to these two rad dudes. If a street army that included a cave man, Goku from Dragon Ball Z, a cyborg, and a lady cop in an ill-fitting tank top came charging at us, we'd run away so fast our suspenders would snap.

This offends me as both a person who grew up in a bayou (it's quite nice there) and a fan of Crocodile Dundee.

The Bust-A-Move PS2 cover with the baby blowing a candy-red spit bubble gets a lot of shit, but I'd rather stare at that until my eyes fall out than have to look at this monstrosity. Is propping someone's eyes open with matches some kind of weird torture? Is that even a thing?

These dudes are so bad that not even the combined power of a chain, a ninja star, a low-flying helicopter, and piggybacking ninjas could stop them. His look has "YOU'RE IN FOR A REAL BEATING GUY" written all over it.

The first of many such covers on the list, Alisia Dragoon's is plagued by the lack of imagination typical of retro game art. Hopefully she wasn't planning on riding that dragon; imagine the chafeage!

According to Wikipedia, this game was the only launch title for the Atari Jaguar, which explains why anyone would buy it: it was literally the only choice. What demographic do you think they were aiming for when they blended the musical Cats with Blade Runner?

This one doesn't look so bad, it's just a little—wait a second, is that present day Mick Jagger in a blonde wig? Why is he about to stab that guy in the ass with a magic dagger?

Like Ninja Golf before it, you know exactly what you're getting with Space Pirates. Because obviously pirates aren't going to change outfits just because they're in space. Pshaw.

This is the version of Mega Man 2's cover that actually gets the gun-arm thing right, rather than simply portraying a guy in a blue motorcycle dare devil outfit holding a pistol. Was Mega Man ever silver, though?

This one toes the fine line between idiotic nonsense and surreal conceptual genius. If we were in a better mood we might consider it the latter, but right now we just can't figure out the link between spaceships and an old hillbilly with a banjo.

Right now you might be asking yourself, "Who the hell is Tommy Lasorda?" and "Why does Tommy Lasorda look like he just ate a pot cupcake?" The answers, friends, are boring. Tommy Lasorda was the manager for the Dodgers, and apparently his endorsement had to suffice when Sega couldn't get anyone else in major baseball to have anything to do with the game. So the players and teams are fictional, but at least Tommy Lasorda is on the cover. Oh, and he probably looks like that because he was just a weird guy.

When was the last time you saw a blonde ninja shit all over a tank in battle, much less a half-robotic, lycanthropic Lou Ferrigno? What? "When was the last time we saw an Italian guy eat mushrooms and murder small animals?" You obviously haven't spent much time in New York.

Robotic lightning hand? Check. Random boxing kangaroo (what does this game have to do with Australia)? Check. Dude with arms bigger than his head and lady with thighs bigger than her torso? Check and check. Total fucking lack of logic, consistency or artistic ability? Fucking check.

Wikipedia describes the protagonist of Dudes With Attitude as simply a "face-like character". This "face"'s "attitude" was determined by "color", and dictated its ability to pick up "treasure". Okay, so it's hard to make a cover for that that doesn't look terrible.

This one's almost as bad as the promotional literature that accompanied the game's release. Let's get this straight—he's not human, he's not alien, he's…"the predator!!"? While, we're off to IMDB to find out when that movie came out. Give us a sec. Yeah, it was 1987. Seriously people?

GYARGH OUR EYES

As in, there's a gun to our heads, and we have to skate or someone's going to pull the trigger? In what fucked up scenario would that ever happen? It looks like that kid ate a bad A-Ha music video and barfed it all over the cover.

Apparently the main character of Steve Bak's Dogs of War bears a striking resemblance to Rambo, though we have no way of confirming that, since the fucking name of the game is covering up the guy's face. And since Steve Bak has no Wikipedia entry, there's no way for us to ever find out just who the hell he was. …Just kidding!

Unrelated to the 2007 game of the same-ish name (no space), we're guessing Crack Down was a shooter about two violently constipated bros hunting storm troopers and bigfoot. The goat demon was what they turned into when they merged their rings of power. Actually, that sounds awesome.

We'll go ahead and use this cover the next time we feel like being stared down by a hermaphrodite in a metal bikini with arms the length of which are only rivaled by its penis. We're guessing.

We're not sure what that skeleton is supposed to be wearing, but it definitely looks like a little girl's dress. We prefer to imagine we've been slaying the undead remains of evil rapists all these years, not the troubled souls of little girls.

Where in the fuck did the stereotypical white guy-with-a-headband-tanktop-and-fingerless-boxing-gloves thing start? And why? Good lord, why?

Only slightly worse than the Japanese Streets of Rage 3 cover, this begs the same questions, including "Why are all those white dudes fighting a little black kid on rollerblades?"

Like Phalanx's banjo-toting-hillbilly, Bad Cat's smoking, drinking, tagging feline is right on the border between being absolutely terrible and strangely compelling. Right now we're going with terrible. Who would want to play this game?

This is what happens when you remove the part of a robot's programming that prevents it from having yelling contests with humans! Lightning strikes New York, which then explodes! Is that what you want??

Here's another in the illustrious line of game covers that let you know exactly what you're getting, like Space Pirates and the more similar Ninja Golf before it. We shudder to think what would happen if any real life ninjas ever got their sneaky hands on some scooters. We bow to you, Ninja-scooter overlords! Sorry, we just had a flash-forward. Yeah, like on Lost.

We honestly thought this game was about the Special Olympics. We're not trying to offend anyone. We're just going by what's on the cover. And that's on them, not us.

Was this the predecessor to Mario Party? More importantly, what are they anticipating?

Ah, there it is. The other, much worse version of this cover. Naturally, it's the North American one. What in Hood's name led the artist to believe that Mega Man wielded a handgun?

Is this really the aesthetic that appealed to people in the '80s? What the fuck were you all on?

Okay, so we messed up and put one non-retro cover on the list. In our defense, look at it. We would have ballparked it at 1995, tops. What's the big mystery, anyway? What the guy is staring at? Easy.

Again, really? That is what that chick is going to wear into battle? The worst part is people are still doing this shit today.

Hurry up and eat all those floating cookies, lanky teenaged Pac-Man! The scary ghosts are going to get you! Don't forget to write from the castle you are for some reason in!

We wonder what was on the poster?

Is this even real? No seriously, is this fake? We don't think any amount of bourbon is going to scrub the image of pastel-pink "Super Man" wielding his giant, phallic revolver of pink death from our tender minds.

Now we're getting into some seriously classic territory. Rival Turf: because the baddest dudes we know are 15 and never hit the streets without their complimentary leather jackets.

Sigh, another stereotypical shirtless barbarian—wait, is that Fabio? Holy shit, it's Fabio! Wikipedia claims he wasn't actually in the game. It probably cost more than their entire development budget just to get his ugly mug on the cover.

The designers of Dice Puzzle took the opposite approach to many of the other awful covers that would follow; instead of portraying the roid-rage idiot most nerds apparently wanted to be in the '80s, it just portrays the nerd that was actually buying the game right on the cover. It must have been like looking in a mirror for the five people that bought this.

Thank goodness—the last version of Donkey Kong we bought was based on the fake arcade game, and the one before that was based on the real Mexican dice game of the same name. This one should do the trick—we can't wait to fight that vicious gorilla in 3D vector space with our glowing golden hammers of justice!

We have no idea what this game was about, and frankly, we don't care to know. There is no excuse for this.

The North American cover for Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior (the other version is number 14 on the list) was, believe it or not, even worse, although they removed that harpy at least. What could this guy be sneering at? Maybe they just put a mirror in front of him and let him stare at his own ridiculous persona for a few minutes until the rage consumed him and he really got into character.

What are you so happy about, you little punk? Don't you know you're about to get eaten? Also, you look like a tool.

Given the Atari 2600's graphical capabilities, what about the prospect of sweatily jamming this game into that plastic hunk of crap could have possibly excited anyone? The girl on the cover—from her dead, lifeless eyes to her blatantly protruding ribs—is as unappealing as getting a blow job from the toothy grin chasing after that poor sap. And what's with the scissors? Was that actually a thing? "Oh, but it's like X-Men, but the "M" looks like a woman's crotch!" SHUT UP.

Apparently The Third World War was a Risk-like game where Bill Clinton and Saddam Hussein shake hands and destroy the world, not as enemies, but as brothers. And then everyone flies away and lives on Jupiter.

Artists were apparently really difficult to hire in the '80s. Still, we think we get the gist of this game: These three brave, naked warriors gathered around the monument to eat ice cream cones and birth lemurs from their asses. Are we close? Who cares.

To be fair this is the Mexican version of the cover. We're not sure how that influenced the fact that this has absolutely fucking nothing at all to do with Donkey Kong. We see siamese twins dressed as a clown fighting what Bub and Bob from Bubble Bobble would look like if you gave them electric drills and then dropped way too much acid. We're not saying that would make a bad game, but it's certainly not Donkey Kong.

What else could be here? This is, without a doubt, the worst video game cover art we have ever seen. All it would have taken was a single cursory glance at what the game actually looks like to determine that there's no yellow on Mega Man's suit, he doesn't have a pistol, and he's not the weirdest looking guy ever with one leg a great deal larger than the other. And what the fuck are those yellow things on the ground? Goodness gracious.