This is the game that James referred to that riffs on the 1986 World Cup handball.

And now I want to send a copy to JP for review.

ETA: James, Ogre Battle on GBA would probably look like a better version of the NeoGeo Pocket Color game if they just didn't straight port the SNES game over.

I think box art is still very important, it's just the art for the image boxes in the digital stores. With the big flood of digital releases on all platforms it's important for a game to look appealing in the big listing so people actually click on it to see the game's actual sales pitch.

Oh and count me as another victim of that Game Boy Yoshi game (called Mario & Yoshi here).

Oh man I bought so many games based on box art, tv/film licenses I enjoyed/recognised, or based on nothing but hype from games magazines.

Notable examples:
- V-Rally for original Gameboy is complete crap, but the cover is super cool.
- Rainbow Six: Lone Wolf was cheap cash-grab to follow the success of the original Rainbow Six on PS1. It's a 5 or 6 level game with 1 character instead of 9, a single piece of music that only plays during menus, and eyestraining graphics. Absolutely awful, but SOMEHOW I was convinced it must have been tense and exciting based on nothing but the cover.
- Mortal Kombat V: Deadly Alliance for GC was hyped by the mag I read for months. Stupidly I bought into this for some reason, despite being awful at fighting games and disliking the art style clearly on display in the magazine haha.

EDIT: Conversely, if games have hideous icons in download stores, I tend to pass on them. Tekken Tag Tournament 2 comes to mind in particular here.

https://www.konsolenkost.de/nintendo-gameboy/image/9031932/gameboy-vrally-championship-edition.jpg

https://media.takealot.com/takealot/covers/4164/cover-zoom.jpg

Boxart was important, but as a kid, I think the single screenshot and short description you'd read in the Sears or JCPenney Wishbook catalogs during the Christmas season, had a bigger effect on what games I wanted. Somehow, I managed not to ask for a bad game during that time. Remarkable considering how little info I had to work with.

Maybe RFN should have a RetroActive of Bases Loaded: The Second Season. :p I came to know the behavior of the CPU players so well that it became very hard to lose after awhile.

I think boxart will continue to be important (though diminished compared to the 80s and 90s) as long as games have a retail prescence. Not to mention KDR_11k's point that they are still used for digital storefronts.

I’ve put in 60+ hours in nba2k on switch. How is it still not good???!?

Weren't they talking about that WWE 2k18 game though? That one got a lot of negative press, NWR's review scored it 3/10 for example. Might have misheard of course, but I think that's the game they meant. NBA 2k18 might have caught some flack for the virtual currency maybe, but it was received muuuuch more favourably than this year's 2k wrestling game.

Ahh my bad if it was WWE. I heard 2K and i thought it was NBA. That was a great port.

Yeah WWE Sucked big time.