Author Topic: Box titles versus in-game titles  (Read 26010 times)

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Offline JonLeung

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Box titles versus in-game titles
« on: January 24, 2009, 10:22:37 pm »
When there is a discrepancy, which title do you prefer; the box title or the in-game title?



Here are some examples to get the ball rolling:



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Offline Revned

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2009, 10:33:07 pm »
I just use whichever is most widely used.

Offline TerraEsperZ

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #2 on: January 24, 2009, 11:18:12 pm »
If I want to be the most accurate, then I go with the in-game title. As far as I'm concerned, the box is merely advertising.



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Current projects: Bucky O'Hare (NES), Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)
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Offline Maxim

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #3 on: January 25, 2009, 01:22:34 am »
The way I see it, the title screen was made by the game developers and the box is made by the marketing drones. The former is 100x more likely to match what the developers wanted.

Offline Will

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #4 on: January 25, 2009, 02:05:09 am »
I like both. I've never seen Mega Man, Crash Man or Quick Man as in a more mannish appearance as indicated on the cover and I've never seen Megaman wield a laser pistol.The Mega Man 2 box title looks a lot like the In-game Metal Slug title. The dragon in the Ninja Gaiden II box title looks like the dragon from Dragonball. I don't think the box titles would be widely known, but recognisable to some owners of consoles and catridges. It is a bit proposterous this kind of advertisement on the boxes, considering the features never appear in the games. There once was a screenshot from a non-existant level on the back of the PC-version box of Prince of Persia.



I think those box titles would come in handy for future April Fools projects.

Offline DarkWolf

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #5 on: January 25, 2009, 06:52:21 am »
Don't credit box art, especially for US versions. If you need any evidence look at the box art for the Genesis version of Stormlord then play the game.

Offline JonLeung

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #6 on: January 25, 2009, 07:23:02 am »
Well, Will, I'm sure we could discuss box art itself, though I was referring more to the titles themselves.



The box arts for the Mega Man games use the numbers 2-7, whereas the in-game titles say II-VII.  (8 and 9 are consistent.  Perhaps calling it "Mega Man IX" will add to the confusion that already exists since so many people still think Mega Man X means the number 10 when it really means the name X...)  You may have noticed that I typically prefer the in-game title, especially since I use in-game shots on the Atlas pages, so I call this game "Mega Man II".



I'm not really sure where the idea to use numbers for the NES games and Roman numerals for the Game Boy games came from.  Because the NES games clearly use Roman numerals in-game, you'd probably have to specifically mention "Game Boy" whenever you're talking about the Game Boy games anyway.



"Ninja Gaiden (Episode) II: The Dark Sword Of Chaos" has the apparently optional word "Episode".  I probably don't usually say "Episode" every time I refer to it, but I would think it would be weird to have a link to its maps here on VGMaps.com without it reading "Episode" since it's clearly there in the image.



As for "Snoopy('s Silly Sports Spectacular!)", it seems to suffer the same fate as "Mickey Mouse(capade)".  In Snoopy's case, since it's not about his usual adventures of lying on top of his doghouse, hanging out with Woodstock, pretending to be Joe Cool or trying to shoot down the Red Baron or anything like that which he does in the Peanuts comics, it really sounds like the box art has an accurate description of this particular game.  I also don't like using just the character's name to refer to a game if the character hasn't originated in video games.  It's fine to say "Hey, have you played Super Mario/Mega Man/etc.?" but it sounds weird to me to say "Hey, have you played Snoopy?"

Offline TerraEsperZ

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #7 on: January 25, 2009, 09:01:16 am »
In Mega Man's case, I don't think how the numbers are represented matters, just the numbers themselves. After all, you still pronounce it as a number and not a bunch of letters. And like you said, they switched to numerals by the time of 8, and I'm pretty sure that the Rockman games always used numerals themselves.



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Current projects: Bucky O'Hare (NES), Metal Storm (NES), Clock Tower (SNES), Ristar-The Shooting Star (Gen), Sonic The Hedgehog (Gen), Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)
Current project:
Mega Man: Powered Up (PSP)

Offline Ryan Ferneau

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #8 on: February 04, 2009, 02:35:04 am »
Hey, didn't I read somewhere that the old R.O.B. games just plugged the Famicom versions into a convertor so they'd work inside an NES cartridge?  In cases like that, I'd say the box or cartridge title is the one that was truly intended, and the one in the game was an older title or one that fit more easily.



As long as you're bringing up Mega Man, don't forget that the first one for Game Boy was called "Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge" on the box, but just "Mega Man" in the game.  (In turns out there were unused tiles that would have shown "Mega Man World", just in case they wanted to name it like the Rockman World series.)

Offline JonLeung

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #9 on: February 14, 2009, 09:57:05 am »
Okay, looks like I can't use either in this case...

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The box says "LeChuck's Revenge: Monkey Island 2".  The game says "LeChuck's Revenge: Monkey Island".



Everybody in the world insists on calling it "Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge".  Including myself, apparently.

Offline Ryan Ferneau

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RE: Box titles versus in-game titles
« Reply #10 on: February 15, 2009, 06:03:01 am »
Oh, yeah, that's about as confusing as "Super 3D Noah's Ark".