Hello, and welcome to another edition of Box Art Brawl!
Before we get cracking with this week’s crawl, let’s have a gander at how things went down last time. We took a look at the GBA launch title F-Zero: Maximum Velocity, pitting North America and Europe against Japan. Surprisingly, although the Japanese variant is pretty awesome in its own right, it appears the vast majority of you prefered the more straight forward approach taken for the western design. As such, North America and Europe took the gold with 67% of the vote.
This week, we’re going to be throwing the NES classic Punch-Out!! into the ring for a proper good brawl. Originally released to the public in 1987 as Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!, the game actually arrived in Japan as a special gold edition earlier the same year, available to competitors in the Famicom Disk System’s Famicom Golf: U.S. Course tournament. When the license to use Mike Tyson expired, Nintendo relaunched the game using an alternative character called Mr. Dream.
We’re going to be looking at all three versions for this edition of Box Art Brawl, so get your boxing gloves on and vote for your favourite down below!
Be sure to cast your votes in the poll below; but first, let’s check out the box art designs themselves.
Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!
The original public release of Punch-Out!! incuded Mike Tyson on the front cover after the former founder and president of NoA Minoru Arakawa attended a boxing match featuring Tyson. He was reportedly so blown away by his abilities that he became inspired to include his likeness in the game. It’s certainly a striking image, and it’s perhaps something that EA or 2K would love to have on the front cover of their sports games these days.
Punch-Out!! Featuring Mr. Dream
Swapping out the photographic image of Mike Tyson, the relaunch of Punch-Out!! featured Mr. Dream on the front cover, albeit in the same pose as the previous edition. The US and EU variants of this version are pretty much identical, however the EU version refrained from including the red ‘Nintendo Entertainment System’ strip at the top. All in all, it’s a pretty good alternative to the original design!
Punch-Out!! Gold Edition
Before the public release of Punch-Out!! competitors in a Famicom Golf tournament got their hands on one of these bad boys. There were reportedly only 10,000 produced, and obviously they make no visual reference to Mike Tyson, having occured prior to the inclusion of the sports star in the public release. It’s a great, minimal design and would make for a pretty incredible collector’s item for fans today.
Thanks for voting! We’ll see you next time for another round of the Box Art Brawl.