Turbografx covers are rubbish

[Spector]

I've just seen the US cover art of Ordyne. What a dreadful cover, and vaguely racist too. The way that they've changed the hairstyles and widened the eyes to make all trace of the Orient absent is a bit tasteless. On a simpler level, it's offensive because it's utter crap.

I realise this could be in the turbografx forum, but the first paragraph might annoy the diehards. I'd like to ask the PC Engine owners - don't they agree that if they had actually released the games with the Japanese cover art, they could have sold just as well, if not better? I think it's a bit patronising to suggest that the Americans wouldn't buy anything whiffing of Nippon. I mean, there's no excuse for something like Ordyne. A bad cover is a bad cover, and widening the eyes doesn't change a bloomin' thing.

Does anyone dare disagree with me?  Eh???

[Necromancer]

What's racist about changing the characters to more closely resemble most of the people in the intended market?  I doubt that the slight changes had any effect on sales - just as I doubt that Japanese sales would have been affected if the US cover had been used instead.  Both covers are fitting for a light hearted shmup like Ordyne.

Some of the PC Engine covers are better than the TG-16 covers.  Some of the TG-16 covers are better than the PC Engine covers.  Most of them are good enough either way and not worth thinking about.  There are a few Turbo covers that are vastly superior to their Japanese counterparts: Beyond Shadowgate, The Addams Family, Order of the Griffon, It Came From The Desert, Bonk 3 CD, John Madden Football, Camp California, and the three soft core porn discs. 

[termis]

I've just seen the US cover art of Ordyne. What a dreadful cover, and vaguely racist too. The way that they've changed the hairstyles and widened the eyes to make all trace of the Orient absent is a bit tasteless. On a simpler level, it's offensive because it's utter crap.

I realise this could be in the turbografx forum, but the first paragraph might annoy the diehards. I'd like to ask the PC Engine owners - don't they agree that if they had actually released the games with the Japanese cover art, they could have sold just as well, if not better? I think it's a bit patronising to suggest that the Americans wouldn't buy anything whiffing of Nippon. I mean, there's no excuse for something like Ordyne. A bad cover is a bad cover, and widening the eyes doesn't change a bloomin' thing.

Does anyone dare disagree with me?  Eh???

I think you're reading a bit too much into it. 

First of all, there really isn't that much difference between the TG16 cover and the PC Engine cover.  Certainly not enough to warrant me changing my mind about the first impression that I'd get from the game.  They're neither that good. 

If you wanna get nickpicky.  Look deeper into the "slightly racist" thing.  The Japanese cover is the one with the slanty-eyed Chinese guy with buck-teeth.  If that were a Japanese character with a samurai-getup, what's the chance that the Japanese guys at Namco would've given their own countryman with slanty eyes & buck-teeth?  (Not very high).  If anything, I can see the execs in the US side deciding to give that slight-makeover in order to cover their own asses from allegations of mildly racist tone on the original cover.

I agree that for the most part, changes in art covers were made for the worse, but there are definitely covers that wouldn't have been as appealing to western (not just American) markets.

[sunteam_paul]

I find most western covers of games in that period to be vastly inferior to the Japanese ones. I was very much into the import scene at the time of the PC Engine and was always very impressed by the Japanese covers and manual artwork, whereas domestic released just looked unimaginative, poorly executed and amateurish.

[Keranu]

Even though I am a biased, hardcore American cover lover, I don't think Turbo sales out here would've increased if the covers were the same as the Japanese counterparts. The reason being is that most games back then had similar cheesy artwork and still sold well, just look at Megaman's notorius bad cover   . The main thing that killed the Turbo out here was the lack of third party support because of Nintendo's wacky policy back then.

[nat]

First of all, there really isn't that much difference between the TG16 cover and the PC Engine cover. 

BUSTED!!!

[FM-77]

No hotlinking allowed. When will people learn to not hotlink?

Anyway, I believe the Turbo Grafx must feature the worst selection of game covers for any console. At least along with the Master System.

[sunteam_paul]

I don't think Turbo sales out here would've increased if the covers were the same as the Japanese counterparts.

As the PCE wasn't released in the UK I'll talk from a Mega Drive perspective. Given the choice, I would always purchase the Japanese over the UK versions because the Japanese games were uncensored, not renamed badly and had better artwork. And I'm certainly not the only one who felt like that. So from that point of view, domestic sales would have been better if the covers were, albeit marginally
In those days, the Japanese style of art was not that widespread, I even bought some games purely because of the anime style in them (Schbibin Man being an example) and the cover art did play a part in influencing my purchases.

[termis]

First of all, there really isn't that much difference between the TG16 cover and the PC Engine cover. 

BUSTED!!!

 :oops:  At the time I though that was just for embedding the actual image in the post, but now that I think about it, I suppose from the other sites perspective, that doesn't really matter! 

[offsidewing]

What's racist about changing the characters to more closely resemble most of the people in the intended market? 

Holy cow, can you imagine the blow back circa 1990 to leaving the original Ordyne cover on the US release?!?!  That was a time when every mascot, trademark, and logo was getting away from anything that could possibly be misconstrued as socially insensitive to any ethnic group.  Have we forgotten the Political correctness craze of the early 90's? 

Geeze, maybe the negative press would have been the one good piece of marketing the Rocket Surgeons at NEC ever did.

[2X4]

What you are referring to is localization.  Every video game company does it.  While the small grouping of folks on this forum have a broader palett for Japanese culture, you have to remember that they were trying to get every kid in the U.S. to buy games.  Unfortunately, the Japanese did not see the need for a big marketing budget stateside, hence the crappy, slapdash artwork  (not to mention the demise of the TurboGrafx), although in most cases I prefer them because I didn't grow up in Japan and I really don't give a crap about anime, which is what every japanese cover looks like and it all looks the same.  There, I've baited the hook, but it's true!

[Necromancer]

Holy cow, can you imagine the blow back circa 1990 to leaving the original Ordyne cover on the US release?!?!  That was a time when every mascot, trademark, and logo was getting away from anything that could possibly be misconstrued as socially insensitive to any ethnic group.  Have we forgotten the Political correctness craze of the early 90's?

Umm, yeah..... so how do you explain those greasy 'stache wearing plumber brothers?  I don't see how it is racist for the characters to look Caucasian rather than Asian.  They're just characters and no derogatory statements are made about them.  Like 2x4 said - it's just localization.

[Joe Redifer]

Somebody post the covers.  I want to see them, but I can't since thumpin_thermous pulled a "Keranu".

[Black Tiger]

I've just seen the US cover art of Ordyne. What a dreadful cover, and vaguely racist too. The way that they've changed the hairstyles and widened the eyes to make all trace of the Orient absent is a bit tasteless. On a simpler level, it's offensive because it's utter crap.

Sounds almost as racist as all those japanese games, manga and anime that draw all races as looking 'asian' and darker skinned people like minstrel performers who are almost always portrayed as violent thugs.

[SignOfZeta]

Yeah, back then marketing idiots loved to mask the Japanese aspects of games thinking that it would turn people off. Of course time has proven them to be incredibly wrong with just about anything even slightly Japanese selling like crazy nowadays, and with tons of American stuff being designed in a Japanese style ala: Teen Titans, Totally Spies, whatever.

Many people would say "that was then, this is now" or whatever but I really think it was just a bunch of xenophoboc white guys in marketing that gave us crap like that in the 90s...like, I don't know, the US cover to Street Fighter Alpha 1 because as far back as I can remember anime has been popular with American kids. My friends and I loved Battle of the Planets as kids (this was about 1979), and later Voltron, Kinnikuman, and Mysterious Cities of Gold, and kids older than me loved Speed Racer and Marine Boy, and whatever.