Poll: Box Art Brawl - Duel: F-Zero X

Japan and is not even close.

Who on earth is voting for North America/Europe?

This article would have been a prime opportunity to post Ant's collection of F-Zero X releases again.

I really think both of these are terrible but I opted for the NA / Europe one just because I find those faces really offputting and feel like they distract from the cars.

I remember some comic strips starring the various pilots from back in the day, shame they weren't featured more in the actual game. God bless the sequel on GC for the short but sweet story mode that highlighted some of them.

What a blowout. And the western box isn't even bad.

Love the Japanese one myself it’s more complete but still have a soft spot for the U.K. version!

@Uncle_Franklin me

"just draw every character exploding from the center" will likely never get my vote.

@Uncle_Franklin

☝️

If you can read this comment you're not playing F-Zero X.

Japan's cover is so cool. Really, this is how game covers should be.

While I feel Japan is clearly more awesome. I feel they made the right choice with the American/European box! I think people were craving the speed and serious racing of this game, and the characters would have made it seems kiddy or anime. (At a time where both of those was deemed a bad thing by your average consumer.)

if u take out the characters for japan it looks like that one trippy scene from 2001: a space odyssey

Is the Japanese box of the same size as the Western one? If so, these pictures are misleading, because the Japanese text and pictures would be quite small. I like the big logo on the Western cover!

Japan is exactly the same but more, I guess you may prefer the western one if you don't like the faces but the Japanese one is just superior in every way.

If you picked the NA/PAL variant, you are insane.

Voting for NA, the character models are very distracting.

Box Art Brawls Current Total:

Europe: 100

Japan: 94

North America: 115

Australia and New Zealand: 1

@Uncle_Franklin Maybe if the game actually did something with its characters, it would make more sense to cover over half the image with them.
Are they even relegated to at least the instruction manual like the original game? (I don't know as my copy came with only the box and cart from the local Blockbuster after it retired them from circulation.)

@Max_the_German the Japanese boxes are slightly bigger than the US EU boxes they are also vertical rather than horizontal.

@rvcolem1

Distracting from what?
You're looking at a box, not doing surgery (hopefully).

I’m very surprised more people picked the Japanese one when it looks similar to a lot of those bad movie posters from the 2000s

@Uncle_Franklin may sound weird but my eye catches only captain falcons face and nothing else. It was distracting me from my morning bowl of cereal

@Uncle_Franklin Couldn't agree more.
This feature always fascinates me as I'm often at odds with the popular choice - I regularly choose the Japanese variant as I feel they're more artistic, better laid out and more daring than their Western counterparts. I'm amazed at how boring, ugly and unimaginative some (not all!) the Western ones are compared to the Japanese releases yet they often get more votes. So I'm often in the minority, even though during this period I bought official PAL releases and so nostalgia (which seems to be a big influence?) plays no part for me.
I guess growing up reading CVG (late 80s/early 90s then Paul Davies era), Mean Machines and Super Play where Japanese artwork was liberally used (often nicked from Japanese mags!) is one of the main reasons why I have such a soft spot for that Nipponese flavour.
Shows how out of touch I am I guess!

One of my favorite games of all time, and definitely my favorite racer of all time. Not sure how this game doesn’t get more love and is overlooked because of GX but ig I’ll find out why once Switch 2 is out.

Also, they are both great but Japan’s is just more detailed so I chose that.

NA did a fantastic job of converting the art to a landscape format, but JP still got my vote.

Do you ever play as the characters? I think you simply see them in the selection screen and never again. It’s deceiving

@Galaxy2IsTheGOAT It’s a racing game what do you want them to do? Get out of their cars and start doing cartwheels midrace?

The Japanese cover is one of my all time favourite game covers. Western one isn't bad, but having the complete image in the Japanese one gives it that extra oomph!

@-wc- from various comments over the site of yours, I believe we’d be firm friends.

“We need dynamism”
“Bunch them together!”

Sorry, but the F -Zero characters have always been stupid and corny. I mean, I love them for that and hope that never changes. But you you don't need to show them on the box art. F-Zero is about the racing. So I voted NA.

I finally picked up a copy of this game at a convention this weekend, so this is perfect timing for me. What a great game!

Japan! The zoomed in view of the vehicles on the western cover is fine, but it's missing something. It's just so generic. I've said it many times, the NA N64 covers with the giant red strip and annoying corner peel are so bad and the layout detracts from the box art. A game box would have to be extremely superior in execution to overcome the layout in my eyes. This is not that.

@JumpingJackson

"I believe we’d be firm friends."

hey! what a nice thing to say!

I know you don't comment so often, and I also really appreciate your comments and replies, so I would agree with you. 😄✌️ glad you reached out.

"we need dynamism!
bunch them together!"

this has a Monty Python feel to me 😂

"Well, it's dynamic!"

"Oh, come on! he's taken all the characters, and bunched 'em together!"

I think the US is better box art but man the Japanese cover is so cool. Love to have a poster of that on my wall.

Japan wins with some mean real estate.

Maybe it’s just something wonky with the scans but I like the contrast the Western box has way better, on the Japanese box only the blue falcon stands out while the other machines get lost in all the red and orange going on.

People saying the characters don’t matter in F-Zero really don’t understand F-Zero.
Wanna guess why games like Wipeout, FAST, and Extreme G didn’t have the same IP power? And felt dull, boring and nothing like F-Zero?
That’s right, because of the characters. Each character made their own ship racer so unique that you could feel their personality on the design and the way it played. It gave variety in its designs. Backstory. Purpose. Each character had a rival and had a reason to win.
It’s the Wacky Racers and Speed Racer of video games to an extreme.
Mr. EAD never played the same as Falcon… and you were always curious to try these totally different ships…. Unlike the other futuristic racers where they only mean a stats difference.
Characters, speed and tight gameplay is what F-Zero is and the reason there’s nothing quite like it 25 years later

Box Art Brawl has really opened my eyes to how many Japan covers are just a mush of every character in the game jumping at the viewer.

Japan. So cool!

Really hope there's a poster version of the Japanese cover.

EDIT: Come to think of it, I consider Jody Summer as part of the main cast where Captain Falcon, Samurai Goroh, Pico and Dr. Stewart are the main cast of the original F-ZERO, but can the same be said about Mighty Gazelle or Mr. EAD? If anything, I'd put Blood Falcon and Black Shadow before them.

Not even a question here. Japan. It would actually make me pick up a fzero game.