Video game covers have a long way to go before they catch up to album covers. From The Velvet Underground’s Andy Warhol banana to Nirvana’s underwater baby, the music industry leans into the art of creating a sound. Fleetwood Mac’s iconic cover to Rumours tells you a lot about the album – the vibe, the mood, the artist – but nothing at all about how it actually sounds. The same goes for Aladdin Sane by David Bowie, Prince’s Purple Rain, or Rage Against the Machine’s The Battle of Los Angeles.
Part of this is because music is, obviously, an audible medium. While singles get music videos, an album is created to be listened to, not watched. Album artwork is therefore an expression of the album’s mood, rather than a bar of music written out. Video games get this massively wrong.
With a few minor exceptions, video games tend to go down the Marvel route of poster-making. Slap all the characters on a poster – or, in video games’ cases, on the box – and you’re done. Call of Duty gets a soldier. Assassin’s Creed gets an assassin. A hundred and two games copy that Wanderer above the Sea of Fog painting by Caspar David Friedrich. You know the one. Mario gets, well, Mario. The few striking exceptions, like the Japanese and European cover of Ico, stand out because they’re evocative and interesting, but unfortunately we live in a time when IP sells games, so your mascot needs to be on the cover of your game.
Pokemonis one of the worst offenders for this. The original games stuck the starter Pokemon on the cover, and every title since Gen 1 has led with the Legendary mascot. The reasoning is twofold: the Legendaries are usually the coolest, most epic designs, making people walking past go “cor blimey I wanna catch that big ol’ boy”, and it details the version exclusives available.
Many players feel that version exclusives are relics of the past, but at least the Legendaries shown on main series boxes are actually in the games. Groudon and Kyogre appear in Ruby and Sapphire respectively. But why are they on the cover of Pokemon Colosseum?
Neither Kyogre nor Groudon are catchable in Pokemon Colosseum. The Legendary Dogs, whicharein the game, join them on the cover, which presents a few theories.
Firstly, it’s obvious that developer Genius Sonority wanted to make it clear that the game contains Pokemon from Gen 2 and Gen 3. So it went down the route of every Pokemon game ever (or near enough), and put the biggest, badassest Legendaries front and centre. It just didn’t think to put them in the game. It would also help both Colosseum and Ruby & Sapphire, released just a year apart, to share Pokemon – people who liked Sapphire might spot Kyogre on the Colosseum box and pick it up, for instance. It’s a decision borne of brand recognition and boosting sales, but players lost out.
I assume that there was originally some intention to include Groudon and Kyogre in Colosseum, and for some reason that didn’t happen. Maybe implementing extreme weather effects on the GameCube was too much, maybe they didn’t fit the story well enough, maybe someone decided to delete them from the game files at the last minute and they couldn’t be restored. It’s still baffling to put them on the cover when they aren’t catchable in the game.
You can obtain Groudon and Kyogre in Colosseum by trading from Ruby & Sapphire, but that’s besides the point. You can’tcatchthem in Colosseum, and nobody knows why. It’s like turning on The Last of Us to find that Ellie and Joel, the cover stars, are only available if you transfer them from Factions.
We’re due a new Colosseum game, or one of its ilk. It had a better art style than Scarlet & Violet, the ‘snagem’ catching mechanic was brilliant, and the concept of Shadow Pokemon would perfectly align with Pokemon Go’s own shadow mechanic. If we do return to Orre, maybe the developer could actually let us catch Kyogre and Groudon this time around.
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