I rented many games solely based on their covers, only to be mildly disappointed when I got home.

As someone who lived through that era, let me tell you, the gameplay graphics were never a disappointment. In your mind they looked as good as graphics today. The only thing I can remember being disappointed about was the Nintendo Powerglove. Man, what a collosal, non-working, over hyped advertising lies, piece of shit that thing was!

Nah there were definitely games that had disappointing graphics relative to what I was expecting lol
Although it's true, we generally were more forgiving about graphics back then than we are these days.
The Wizard lied to me for 2 hours about that useless piece of plastic.
- Dude, the guy who introduced it in the movie straight up said "it's so bad!"
Box art back then was more akin to book cover art: an artist’s interpretation of the content. It never disappointed me. I even miss it sometimes. I used to collect images of box art even without the games, because it really was art.
- When I give a digital game as present I go to the shop to print out the cover art on photo paper and then put it in a card. It gives them something they can immediately look at, handle, and discuss.
  Here are a few I've used recently, they are more literal than the cartridge era but they are still artworks in their own right:
But if you would have saved it until today you could resell it foe a whole $25 more (of course accounting for inflation it’s actually $105 less)
…
Wait is that true? Did a rare Nintendo product depreciate in value????
- It was a mattel product
Mario 3 was the most mind blowing leap in graphics I think I've ever experienced.
I’m gonna press X to doubt on that one.
- No, he’s right. The power glove was garbage from the get-go. Really cool cyberpunk thing on paper but … hell, we still aren’t there today!
- No X button on the controller. Just A and B.
The game in the example is Bad Street Brawler which is every bit as terrible as portrayed. I have it somewhere still. Could never get past like thr second level.

It's the same with lots of indie games now. Oh, and mobile ones too

Back in the day, deep down you knew what you were really getting. I'm a little annoyed these days when indie games use marketing visuals that look like they could be in-game for a modern title and then it's all pixel art style. I get that you don't make a pixel art poster, but in that case, go all-in on an art cover don't let it be mistaken for game graphics.
- The first game that always comes to my mind in that regard is Super Time Force Ultra. It kept showing on my steam page for weeks on end years ago, with a cartoony-looking cover and "minimalistic pixel" style for actual gameplay
Bro, that stupid game with the guys that shoot barrels to get more fighters/better weapons looked fun. The actual game is a shitty base builder with timed progression, of course you can pay to get past the time locks. Fuck that company and every "influencer" that takes their dirty money.
- I mean, from the ad it could be any of 4123984716239 shitty games on the play store. The last one ad I remember using that was Evony, which I'm surprised still fucking exists. That piece of shit has been a meme since 2010
Back when XBLA got going there were so many games with anime character art that ended up being meh side-scrolling platformers with 8-bit pixel graphics. Looking at the Nintendo eShop... not much has changed. 😄

ahem....

That's the masterpiece that helped kick off the new age of gaming!

I remember renting Phalanx just because of the box. like "why's this old man playing the banjo?" then you look at the back and it's a friggin space shooter. I had to rent it.

The agency that created the box art created it for the exact reason you picked it up.
- yeah after posting this I read the story on Destructoid about it. It worked. it was a meh game but the only reason I wanted to play it was because of that box.
- "you can't take the sky from me"

I was always so disappointed in the 90s to see 'realistic' looking graphics and then you play the game and realize it was just a point and click game

Everyone always praised Myst for its great graphics. I always thought it was cheating because it was pre-rendered.
- Even being prerendered, it was an intensely impressive game for 1993.
  And it's not like they didn't have plenty of problems to solve.
  Here's an interesting interview with founder Rand Miller about developing Myst and how they were barely able to make it work due to the limitations of CD drives.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWX5B6cD4_4
- Lots of the best games were prerendered! Donkey Kong Country, Fallout, Jagged Alliance 2, Duke 3D, the Pro Pinball games, just to name a few.
  I do have a soft spot for prerendered graphics.
- Sure it was pre-rendered, but it was still impressive to see PCs do that at the time because of the sheer amount of storage it took. Myst basically required a CD-ROM drive because the game is basically made of pictures, PCM audio and video. There's an astonishing amount of video in that game from the early 90's. It was another symptom of CDs having an astonishing amount of capacity for their era. Myst couldn't exist on floppy disk.
  It is pretty cool to see what they've recently done to Riven. They really brought it to life in Unreal Engine.
- there were engineering competitions in the late nineties for realtime rendered games. they tended to look like vetrex games.
- Speaking for myself but in 1995 or whatever I didn’t even know what the term rendered was. Game looked cool but I liked Tex Murphy Under a Killing Moon for state of the art graphics lol
- It was, though the difference was how early that game came out and the volume of images it had. It was pretty huge!
  The novelty died out quick though, as everyone else started prerendering stuff.
There was a bunch of games that had really detailed graphics in the screenshots. Then you'd play them and realize they're prerendered. A bunch of Saturn games were guilty of that.

Final Fantasy. Flowing dramatic artwork. 18 pixels of character (hyperbole, idk the actual pixel number.)

The character sprites were 16x24 in combat, so a whole 384 pixels to work with!
- A 386 could handle that easily and still have two pixels left.
To be fair, I’ve never seen anything come close to Amanos illustratative work.

I decided to play Crystal Warriors recently because of the awesome cover art. DUDE I WAS NOT DISAPPOINTED. That game rules!

I'm reading this game's wikipedia page and it sounds very fun. What a shame it's stuck on the game gear and the now nonexistant 3ds eshop. I hope Sega does another re-release. Not that it matters to me 🏴‍☠️.

I can't research it at the moment, but I want to say that was a common thing in the pre-NES days, and I think Nintendo required actual gameplay graphics to be shown on the box because of that.

Could be off on the specifics, but I do vaguely recall those kinds of non-representative box art having some controversy.

Mega Man would like a word.
Just look at that sexy bastard.
- Maybe they got a pass if the in-game graphics were better than the box art? 😆
- Mind you, that was only American artwork. Original Japanese:
- That's quite the banana hammock he's wearing.
- Wtf did they do to his legs??
Nintendo of America often used pixel art for their own box art early on in the NES era. It was similar to the in game graphics, but usually more detailed. See Metroid’s original artwork. If there was a requirement for third parties, perhaps it could be met by simply including screenshots on the back.

the back usually showed gameplay shots.

Yes, where they put the superior Amiga screenshots on the back of your ZX Spectrum game
- Lol how was that allowed? It's a complete different version.

Holy crap that's Bad Street Brawler. I have this game still. It's straight up the worst game I've ever played.

To think all you had to do was wait 2 more years for River City Ransom to come out. If only precognition was real.
I've just played the first level on a Spectrum emulator.
I have no real wish to play the second.
The name really does say it, it's a bad street brawler.

I had Bad Street Brawler for the NES and it's so bad, it's funny. Even back in the day.... fighting midgets, dogs, and circus strongmen, trying to get to the dumpster at the end of the level, and with 2-player coop to boot

I somehow missed Bad Street Brawler and went for Bad Dudes because I played that one at the arcade. Wasn't nearly as good as the arcade version though.
Aka. Bop'n'Rumble for Commodore 64.
It wasn't all bad. The gameplay was alright.
- It was Street Hassle as well I think.
  Only ever saw a few screenshots in a ZX Spectrum magazine, but it certainly has a memorable art style.

Uh...bad street brawler was amazing

I 💯 went through this disappointment. I used to also love looking at a game's concept art because they always looked so much cooler and atmospheric than the game. I remember the inflection point clearly. I was playing Mass Effect 3 and walking around the citadel wards/docks, with it's beautifully detailed textures, evocative colours, and painterly lightshafts, feeling absolutely enthralled, and thinking "Holy shit, they've finally done it, the gameplay looks better than the box/concept art."

I'm so glad I finally got around to playing the ME series. Such a memorable trilogy of games

Honestly graphics aren't really that important compared to the gameplay. Games such as those in the UFO 50 collection are a really good example of that. Also if you actually want a quality god vs satan game with old school graphics then I highly recommend Grimstone.

UFO 50 is so damn good

My games were all pirated. Covers had a handwritten list of all games on the cassette (and later CD). The first legit game I've ever seen was Mortal Kombat Trilogy and I remember being taken aback by the waste of using a full CD for a single game (iirc the game used just 30 MB of space on that CD).

10s of MB software with the rest of the disc as CD audio was standard for the time.
Even with those constraints PS had noticeable mid-battle lag as it loaded in animationss.

The one game I remember getting based on the cover alone was Solstice.

That game was hard as fuck. I don't think I ever saw the end.

Bangin' music tho. I still sometimes get ear worms from it.

The art vs. the game

Oh well...

but all the fun is taking the game graphics and transforming it in your head to resemble the cover art

You miss half the fun then, the imagination in your head of transforming the graphics into whatever you want. And then gameplay is the most important

The "actual game" looks like a Altered Beast that takes place in a US park.

Looks like a swell game to me!