I noticed these two images a while ago, and I was wondering if there was anything to know about them…
The left-hand one appears all over the net as the official US box art for Panzer Dragoon Zwei, but (being in the UK) I’ve never got around to checking out whether or not this is true. Did such an incredibly un-Lagi-like Lagi make it onto the front of the US box, or was this just someone’s pre-release mock-up?
And I’ve always assumed that the image on the right was just a joke, but it’s also wound up as “official” box art on a couple of european sites. Is there anything more to know about it?
i think i’ve seen that zwei boxart on a real game box, but it is not the boxart on the one i own. perhaps just a limited edition cover? or maybe we have the limited addition cover?
yeah, i came across that same PDO boxart when i made the ultimate PD experience thread. i don’t know if it is official for a different region, but i personally think it is a fake/mock up design. simply because lagi is breathing actual fire. i can’t believe the marketing division of sega would allow that knowing how much it would piss off the fans
I noticed that quite a few video game museum / collection sites have their own scans of it, which makes me think that it must have been available somewhere at some point. Check out the garbled version of the storyline on the back of that box, which can be reached from this page; very weird.
What I worry is that the marketing division of Sega might have almost allowed it because they didn’t know how much it would piss off the fans. After all, it’s a dragon; dragons breathe fire, right?
but i mean, sometimes sites will make mock ups of the boxarts just to make it seem like they have something to show. and that just looks like a poorly superimposed bit of lagi concept art put over a blurred picture of orta from the opening cutscene, then an even worse superimposed bit of fire put into the dragon’s mouth.
admittedly that’s more work than what went into the US boxart
Woah, that’s just awful LOL :o
Sad thing is, it’s propably official since anyone that would bother making this “hoax” would either care for PD more or atleast put more effort into it…
However perhaps it’s pre-release boxart that never made it on store shelves and just made it on web sites or even preview advertising boxes (without the actual game in), they propably went through a lot of designs until they settled on the final version…
Anyway, I’m glad that’s not the box art that appeared here cos then I propably wouldn’t have picked it up :o (PDZwei was my first game, got it along with my Saturn)
Not sure about the Zwei, but the PDO one is probably fake.
The PDO one would be nice though if Lagi wasn’t breathing actual flames… You can tell that’s sloppily photoshopped, and if it happens to be real, well, designers are getting lax in their jobs, huh?
That Zwei box art is definitely real. I own it. It’s sitting on my desk at home as we speak.
As for the Orta one… I dunno.
And yes, the back-of-the-box descriptions on the US games are godawful. Now you know what us poor bastards in the U.S. have had to deal with all these years.
By the way, anyone have a link to the European box art/game description? I’m curious to see what I’ve been missing.
Weird; I can understand the badly translated blurb, but it’s strange that they didn’t use either a real image or the official logo on the box. I wonder where that image even came from; it certainly doesn’t look like a Team Andromeda render…
Here’s what the European packaging ended up looking like, but the back-of-the-box description talks about gameplay aspects rather than storyline; shooting, action, multiple routes, dragon morphing and so on. Looking at the other translation though, that might be for the best…
Strangely enough that fake Orta box ‘art’ was used in an advertising pamphlet over here. My guess is that it was just ripped off the Internet, but maybe it was going to be the official box at one stage?
Yeah; I’d say I prefer the Japanese ones, as they got the reasonably cool Moebius PD1 box-art too. The US versions look pretty terrible, and the Euro ones look fairly dull in my eyes; it’s strange that they feel the need to change these things from region to region at all.
Yeah- the US Zwei box art is digusting- I have a couple of them- it was a large step back- PD1 used a render from Team Andromeda- don’t know why they didn’t do similar for Zwei.
Guardian Heros also had a horrible box- I guess all of this was Sega trying to get the traditional fantasy folk instead of the hardcore gamer.
maybe they (think) they know more about our subconscious than we do and they think the US would acquiesce to bad boxart more easily
i read this little essay about US versus JP marketing strategies and it brought up the feature legnth anime Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. it talked about how in japan it was marketed as a love story (between a supporting character and the “villain” of the movie); the trailers mainly showed gripping romantic tragedy scenes. whereas the US trailers marketed it as an action movie; pretty much only showing the main character (D) fighting hideous monsters and such.
can anyone tell what it is exactly lundi is shooting at? i can’t see the image clearly enough and my copy (as it turns out) has a UK box.
I’d assume the Zwei box ended up as it did because the marketing guys wanted something more action-oriented than the Japanese box (with its dragon crest); so yeah, pretty much the same strategy as that film you mentioned. Presumably that sells better, or the marketing guys think it sells better anyway; but I’m still not sure they needed to put a render on the front of the box that had nothing to do with the actual game.
I found a larger scan of it here; it looks like a battleship of some kind, and (remotely) like the Episode 2 boss. Unfortunately Lundi doesn’t look much like Lundi, either…
Heheheh…I crack up every time I read the name ‘Randy’ on the back of my old PDZ box. Too funny. Yes, I can also state that the PDZ box is real for sure. It was the box cover released by Saturn?s mentally challenge US marketing staff.
I am not sure about the PDO box…I have never seen it anywhere, at least. But it does look absurd, fire - bah. You would think they knew better by now than to put fire on a box. When will the US publishers realize that correct information sells?!
Yes, I can also state that the PDZ box is real for sure. It was the box cover released by Saturn?s mentally challenge US marketing staff.
