Whats the deal with the Suikoden 1 cover?

Sasuke · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:28 am Post subject:

When my best friend first got his PS, he wanted to get an RPG, and when he saw the box art on Suiko 1 he was so turned off that he bought Beyond the Beyond. Which he later realized was a bbbiiig mistake when he played suiko at my house :twisted:

Darko · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 2:07 pm Post subject:

When I first saw the case I laughed for 10 minutes straight. What where they thinking?! But looking at it closely it's pretty well done...the art I mean and I totally agree it look very 80's "Windy" especially...reminds me of *girls just wanna have fun!* for some weird reason. The characters are done pretty well...they just don't look like the characters they're representing...ESPECIALLY NOT LUC. Luc is blondish...not dark-haired! :evil: It's weird that they messed up all of their hair (except Leknaat's)...Ted is a brunette, Luc and Windy had sandy-colored hair and Barbarossa was a gray-haired old geezer...And Futch was not that big and did not have a red cape! I still bought the game...because I looked at the back and read the little writing that explained what the game was about.

So the painting the painter dude paints was the original cover art? I didn't know that...looks way better that the Americanized one... :x
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jjrrs · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 6:16 pm Post subject:

It just seemed that konami tried a bit too hard at that time period(sometime between 96-97 I'm guessing) to create special cover arts for NA version of their games. Vandal Hearts which cross promoted with Suikoden, has it's cover art pretty poorly drawn as well. Now I don't know for a fact that it's not an offical artwork since the offical logo did include a sword and a dragon(plus the fact I have never even once put my copy of that game into a PS of any sort to check if it even plays since I bought it), but I'm pretty certain that it is not since the sword was different and the dragon didn't have sheep horns...

Lucent · Posted: Fri Oct 28, 2005 6:22 pm Post subject:

Good lord I forgot how horrible that box art is compared to the original JP cover XDD

Though I am partial to the artwork of the villains too:

Either way, better than the terrible american cover.
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Arcana · Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 4:46 pm Post subject:

Eh, the Japanese box art isn't that great either.

I think the mistake for Suikoden's NA box art is that they made it way too 80's - if it was more like the fantasy art that (at the time) the TSR artists created (Elmore, Parkinson, Cadwell, etc.) it would have been of higher quality, and probably more suited for the theme.

Elmore, Parkinson, Cadwell, among others were responsible for the covers and calendars of the first generation of Dragonlance novels.
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Dahgaba · Posted: Sat Oct 29, 2005 5:50 pm Post subject:

the japanesse cover was defenitly better than the us cover. ours sucked alot :evil:
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Cyrano · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 9:04 pm Post subject:

the guy on the dragon is probably Futch since he's the only one with a black dragon
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Zaj I mean Mike · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 9:38 pm Post subject:

Yes they made every one fourty reguardless their age. Gave Teo a bow, Tir a wizards wond, Windy black hair, Odessa a neckless, Barrbosa looked evil and put in that nothing enemy from Necklords castle.
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Dura Sinai · Posted: Tue Nov 01, 2005 11:01 pm Post subject:

Uh I am in the boat of the Japanese art was none too hot either. Suikoden 1 art ranges from mediocre to downright ugly. And no I won't post the examples of it. Just look at a few. I recommend Krin, Juppo and Crowly portraits for some great examples of hideous art.

Of course Japanese coverart wins by the default of the characters being identifiable to the game as opposed to fantasy rejects from an 80's Hong Kong flick. I think the most consistent answer anyone has come up with is the lightning chick being Windy and the other chick being Leknaat.

Sac · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 4:30 am Post subject:

The american cover (I've seen both the NTSC and PAL covers) is pretty typical for RPG game covers, as it's only in recent times that the artwork on the game's cover really looks like the characters in game.
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Vince Muerto · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 5:02 am Post subject:

That isn't really true. Most RPG boxes in the time of the SNES had covers that reflected the actual game.
By the time that Suikoden came out it was normal for the box-art to be true to the game.
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Cyrano · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 11:41 am Post subject:

yeah well, americans tended to make cover look like more heroic , sure you could recognize the game, btu still made them look more like heroic.

as an example Breath of fire 1 and 2 cover.... the hero looks all bulky and heroic, yet in the game he seems more skinny.

cover: http://www.1stvideo.com/snes/BreathOfFire2.jpg

char's pic -in game-: http://www.vgws.com/images/font_examples/bof2char1.gif

they sure look less impressive and violent don't you all think?.. there maybe its must be becauseof the way the chars could be done at the time... yet the character and personality depicted while playing ressemble in nothing the first impression gives us when looking at the cover.

that is my opinion.
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Olorin · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 2:53 pm Post subject:

Hahaha , this cover is so ugly !
In Europe we have the original Japanese cover (or close to it) :

http://img386.imageshack.us/my.php?image=suikoi1nj.gif

US cover are always the worst , i don't know why .
But the graphic style reminds me of Monkey Island I. When you speak when someone important and there was a zoom on the character.

Like this : http://img386.imageshack.us/my.php?image=monkeyisland189bq.png
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Admiral Ackbar · Posted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 10:21 pm Post subject:

Hmmm...is the artist for the cover given credit in the manual? It may be possible to track the artist down and ask them (politely!) who the characters on the cover are.
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EZ_Rabbit · Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2005 3:32 pm Post subject:

As some folks have said,
the only reason the Japanese cover wins
is because ther chars are recognizable.

But the art in the Japanese one still sucks.

The designs in Suikoden 1 in general are pretty pathetic.
Its especially embarassing in comparison to the ultra detailed art of 2 and 3.

But I still took the crappy US version out of my box,
and used the instruction book as the cover.

I also made a proper cover myself
which you can find a bit farther down in this forum.

The cover art for Suikoden Tactics just uses crappy cut and paste of char designs
(you can actually see the jagged clipping)
and they put the pretty original cover on the manual, just like in Suikoden 1.

Probably just some dumb ass marketing exec at KoA who made the decision.
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