http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AmericanKirbyIsHardcore

American Kirby is definitely in it to win it.

"Why Japanese Boxart is Better," GamesRadar "Being happy is sometimes rather pleasant, really. Japanese developers understand this mysterious truth, but while they keep trying to export their eternally sunny characters to us, we just keep transforming them into gloomy, moody tough guys."

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When a Japanese game is released Stateside, there's a tendency to make the box art, or even the character models, a little more hardcore. Maybe it's as simple as adding Angry Eyebrows, or maybe the character's model is completely redone. This is often done to characters who were originally intended to be cute. Sometimes this trope goes the other way, too: an American character may be made cuter for the Japanese release.

This has to do with Values Dissonance and Americans Hate Tingle to a lesser extent. Japanese culture, in general, is very accepting of cuteness anyplace, and will take it in stride. American culture, to the contrary, is very accepting of manliness. In a hard contrast to the Japanese, Americans often view cuteness as a sign of childishness and immaturity, and thus have a strong aversion to it in any media that's not explicitly kid-oriented. This attitude goes so far as to color American perceptions of Japanese culture; some historians have occasionally (and controversially) attempted to link Kawaisa to the national humiliation endured by Japan in World War II and the nation's resulting 180° turn from a warrior culture to a pacifistic one. And speaking of color: in modern Japan, pink is a value-neutral color. There are even pink gas stations. In the US, bright pink tends to be associated with young or adolescent girls, so expect a toning-down of any ostentatiously pink cover images (and gas stations).

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And in an extra bonus, if ever the game is brought out to Europe, expect the artwork cover to be more artistic than usual regardless of whether or not the buyer can make sense of the artwork.

This trope is one reason why GameFAQs has a separate tag for box shots, since sometimes it just happens that the box art of the games differs.

A subtrope of Cultural Translation and related to Darker and Edgier. It's also not always a bad thing, mind you; if the game itself isn't particularly cutesy, then giving it cute box art is just weird. It can also mean that a game with cute art direction may hide a heart of blackened steel underneath that gamers might miss out on. On the other hand, if you're thinking about buying a game whose main character is an adorable pink puffball surrounded by sparkles and rainbows, then whether or not he's smiling on the cover honestly shouldn't be a deal-breaker (though it's perfectly normal if you're wondering why he isn't smiling).

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Note: Weblinks Are Not Examples! Please include a description of the cover art in your examples.

Video Game Examples

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Kirby

Action-Adventure Games

Action Games

Adventure Games

Beat 'em Ups

Driving Games

Hardware

The Japanese Super Famicom and European Super Nintendo Entertainment System had bright and colorful promotion, with a four-color logo derived from the four colors of the buttons on the controller. However, Nintendo of America, dogged by Sega's aggressive advertising that tried to paint Nintendo as "kiddie", decided to eliminate the colors from both the hardware design and the logo, changing the colors of the buttons to two tones of purple, and making the logo suitably monochrome.

In general, Japan is more likely to see consoles released in a variety of bright colors, while Europe and especially America typically get more muted colors, if they get any color variations at all.

Fighting Games

First-Person Shooter

Maze Games

The Japanese cover of Bomberman 94 just shows Bomberman riding a Louie. The European cover of Mega Bomberman adds a bunch of bombs and explosions to the same image. The American cover shows only Kamikaze Bomber (a member of the Bomber Family, sporting a Mohawk and wearing shades) making a V-Sign, though for once this wasn't something the American box artists thought up just to make a Japanese game look cool.

Pinball Games

Revenge of the Gator for the Game Boy. In Japan, the 'gators in the cover are happy and smiling, and look a bit cartoony. The ones in the Western releases are gruffy, serious and drawn more realistically. Coincidentally, it's made by HAL Laboratory, like Kirby.

Platform Games

Puzzle Games

Roguelikes

The Nintendo DS version of Shiren the Wanderer. The original Japanese cover art (by former Capcom illustrator Akiman) is very nice, the Western one, well... Shiren looks like he's going to slit your throat or something. And what they did to poor Koppa and Oryu is just wrong.

Azure Dreams for the PlayStation had 2 different covers: The Japanese version ◊ was cute and emphasized the dating-sim/harem-romance aspects of the game (featuring all the girls in the game you can eventually get, plus your kid sister and your sidekick), while the American version ◊ was scenic and emphasized the treasure-hunting/dungeon-crawling aspects of the game (the hero gazing at his hometown from a mountain cliff). The European version's manual has the Japanese cover though.

was cute and emphasized the dating-sim/harem-romance aspects of the game (featuring all the girls in the game you can eventually get, plus your kid sister and your sidekick), while the American version was scenic and emphasized the treasure-hunting/dungeon-crawling aspects of the game (the hero gazing at his hometown from a mountain cliff).

Real-Time Strategy

Pikmin has two covers. The Japanese image contains Pikmin just hanging out on a branch. The North-American and European cover image contains a battle. The same thing happened with Pikmin 2, though Canada and Europe had a different, also peaceful cover. (unless you count the Bulborb looming behind them). Pikmin 3 averts it and has the same peaceful nature-themed box art in all regions.

The Settlers European cover shows a cartoonish RTS city builder while the American Cover shows a rather stern looking lord in managing his kingdom/army Comparisons here ◊ . Upon further inspection, the American cover of the settler usually just features the armor clad knight on the cover while the other shows the other professions being as prominent. The subsequent one features a slightly more colorful boxart seen here ◊

. Upon further inspection, the American cover of the settler usually just features the armor clad knight on the cover while the other shows the other professions being as prominent. The subsequent one features a slightly more colorful boxart seen here The PSP version of Lemmings exhibits this trope. The Japanese box art depicts a bunch of happy Lemmings in a happy, bright environment. The European box art shows a crowd of Lemmings smiling at you. The American box art depicts a more active scene, and has a slightly duller color scheme compared to the other boxes.

Role-Playing Games

Shoot 'em Ups

Castle of Shikigami, a bullet-hell game for the PS2 in Japan, is a game about various people teaming up to defeat the villain and save the day by flying through the air and shooting things with various types of laser-like projectiles, and featured cute anime characters on the box art. In America, the game is called Mobile Light Force and the cover features three leather-clad, gun-toting, large-breasted Charlie's-Angels-esque babes running around and outright lying about the content of the game. Castle of Shikigami 2 did not suffer this treatment, however, it DID suffer from being completely un-localized despite being translated and voice-acted, with some scenes not being translated or voice-acted in English at all and left with Japanese text and/or dialogue. Despite this, they're not bad games.

Insector X is normally a Cute 'em Up where you play as a boy or girl killing giant cartoonish bugs. The American and European versions of the Genesis port have a more realistic style and made the cyborg bugs even more mechanical..

Contra: The Japanese boxart of Contra 4 has Bill and Lance preparing for the fights when the American boxart shows them firing their guns instead. Inverted by Neo Contra, surprisingly. The American boxart has Bill and Jaguar deploying for the missions, in a style drawn by Jim Lee. The Japanese boxart instead shows Bill aiming his gun, and Jaguar crossing his arms, in an explosive background done in CGI.



Simulation Games

Sports Games

Baseball games in general. While the most notable Western ones are realistic simulators, the most traditional Japanese Baseball videogame franchises such as Famista and Power Pros go for an arcade angle and have a cartoony aesthetic, going as far as to disregard having characters look like their real-life counterparts for much of their history. It took 20 years since Pawapuro '94 for Konami to start a realistic Baseball series, Professional Baseball Spirits. An interesting subversion is Super Mega Baseball, a Western release with a more cartoony look. The most recent release, 3, is a major graphic upgrade, but still retains the basic cartoon look.

The original RBI Baseball game was a localization of Namco's Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium (aka Famista) franchise of Baseball games. When RBI sequels with their own engines started being developed for 16-bit consoles, they acquired realistic-oriented graphics, with the Sega 32X entry having large digitized sprites as tall as the screen. Famista, however, never stopped being cartoony even when giving their stickmen ballplayers more detail in the 3D installments.

Downplayed by MLB Bobblehead Pros. While still cartoony, instead of the chibi Power Pro-kun Baseball puppets it uses bobblehead toy-like characters whose faces are modeled after the ballplayers they represent. They still have no legs, though.

Stealth-Based Games

Survival Horror

Third-Person Shooter

Turn-Based Strategy

Visual Novels

Non-Video Game Examples:

Anime

Comic Books

The American edition of Graphic Novel Marzi looks like this , while the original looks like this .

Film

Literature

Music

The original cover art for Japanese Doom Metal band Boris' album Smile is cute ◊ . The American release's cover is edgy ◊ .

. The American release's cover is edgy . An inversion occurred when Within Temptation's album The Unforgiving made it to Japan...and the gothed-up Sharon DenAdel cover was replaced by one with a busty, Moe Meganekko schoolgirl waggling her finger at the buyer.

A non-Japanese example. British star Billy Idol 's self-titled album cover originally had him looking like a suggestive, but harmless idol ◊ for teens. When the album was released in the US however, they wanted to market Billy as a rebel, so gave it this ◊ much cooler cover with him wearing a leather jacket and frowning instead. This cover has since become the canon cover having appeared on CD releases worldwide, and is probably the defining image of Idol.

for teens. When the album was released in the US however, they wanted to market Billy as a rebel, so gave it this much cooler cover with him wearing a leather jacket and frowning instead. This cover has since become the canon cover having appeared on CD releases worldwide, and is probably the defining image of Idol. The Final Fantasy VI soundtrack in Japan features the FFVI logo, and Amano artwork. The US version is titled Kefka's Domain, and features the SNES cover art, with Mog leaning on a dagger while facing a threatening monster.

Pinball

For the international release of Indianapolis 500, some European games had the playfield and cabinet colors changed to use more primary colors to make the game more manly and appealing in certain distributors' countries.

Webcomics

Web Original

Most paintings by the infamous Handre de Jager from Something Awful mercilessly parody this trope. The artist himself stated that his initial inspiration was the aforementioned original American boxart for Mega Man. Handre's works can be found on his website (Not safe for work). Be warned, they're disgusting and scary.

(Not safe for work). Be warned, they're disgusting and scary. The Game Grumps fan animation SUPER GREP SIMULATOR has a slightly NSFW take on this trope (at 0:53) with the fictional AO-Rated video game Kirby's Fucking Pissed.

Western Animation

Other