Poll: Box Art Brawl: Duel #93 – Kirby’s Dreamland

Hello everyone, welcome to another installment of Box Art Brawl *stadium-sized cheers*!

Last week we looked at the classic, the incomparable, that reddish good Video game that is The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. When you juxtapose the US box art with the Japanese box art, folks, you were very clear in your preference for the more classic, understated design of the US version. With its gold background and iconic logo design, it garnered 65% of the votes – well done golden boy!

This week we’re taking a look at Kirby’s Dream Land for the Game Boy. The franchise is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary, so it’s officially old enough to sneeze at modern culture and long for the “good old days.” We’ll be pitting European boxing against Japan this week, so buckle up for the clash of the century Week!

Be sure to cast your vote in the poll below; But first, let’s look at the box art designs themselves.

Europe

The European box art for Kirby’s Dream Land features our main character doing his floating thing with Whispy Woods in the background. There’s a lot of color at play here, but you might notice that Kirby looks a bit pale himself. According to the story, Kirby’s final coloration could not be determined at the time western localization began. In the end, Kirby’s color on the box matched the character’s appearance on screen because that was really all they had to do! To us, he looks more like Kirby the Friendly Ghost.

Japan

Japan’s box art depicts Kirby as we know and love him: round, pink and soggy. Like many of Japan’s box art designs from the ’90s, the artwork here is much more understated and abstract than the Western design, with watercolors popping out of the picture. In terms of what it actually represents, there’s not much to go on here; After 30 years, we know what Kirby is and what the games are about, but if we’d seen that in 1992, we’d probably just be like, “ah??“.

To be honest, we are a bit torn about which box type we should choose here. The European design is much clearer and more marketable, but the Japanese looks simple Cool, Man. Yeah, we can’t decide… You do it for us. Poll!

Thanks for voting! See you next time for another round of Box Art Brawl.