Deceptive packaging

Culture concept

The game is sold in packaging that shows notable content that is not in the game. Likely result of the cover being commissioned by out-of-house artist who has little to no idea what the game itself is about.

10
games
8
platforms

Alternate names: Deceptive cover art, Misleading packaging

Some leeway should be allowed as we should not expect them to use screenshots for the cover, nor would anyone buying the game appreciate that for cover art. For same reason difference in quality should be ignored. Different art style should be ignored too, unless it's blatantly completely different (e.g. super-deformed cover art in a game with not even chibis in them).

This presumably happens when the cover art is commissioned from an artist who has little to no idea what the art is for.

Comic books have long been considered to be subject to this in terms of art quality (and the cover art usually being by different artist than the interior art).

This tag is not about included screenshots in the back or similar.

Games by year

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The first Deceptive packaging video game was released on December 1989.

Biart Studio and Taito published most of these games.

Related site

Platforms

Windows 2
PS2 2
X360 1
PS3 1
Linux 1
SNES 1
NES 1
MS-DOS 1

Most common companies