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  • The box illustration for Advance Wars: Days of Ruin / Dark Conflict really makes the very heroic moral pillar Captain Brenner / Lt. O'Brian look like a villain, due to a combination of the lighting, his beard and hair and his head being in a position in the illustration befitting of an Evil Overlooker.
  • The brown haired kid on the cover of Amazing Island doesn't appear in the game at all.
  • The European/Australian cover illustration for Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm, bizarrely, shows every character but the title one.
  • Auto Destruct's cover depicts the player's vehicle as a Mitsubishi 3000 GT lookalike, while in game it more resembles a futuristic concept car.
  • The Game Boy port of Avenging Spirit depicted a mobster with a tommy gun. While he is a character in the game, the real main character is a Bedsheet Ghost who possesses people, and the art style is nowhere near as realistic (in fact, it was even more cutesy than the original arcade game).
  • If you were to look at the box illustration for "BASIC Programming" on Atari 2600, you would imagine you're in for some sweet sci-fi action, like in the then-brand new Star Wars, but it's really just a BASIC IDE crammed into an Atari cartridge. For its time it was an impressive technical feat, to be sure, but it's certainly not as glamorous and exciting as the polyester-clad space programmers on the cover make it look. And lest you think you could make a game as epic as the box illustration , think again: the system couldn't handle more than eleven lines of code.
  • The cover for the Codemasters game Bigfoot shows the eponymous monster fighting off a bunch of hillbillies while grabbing a blonde girl. This has nothing to do with the game itself, in which no humans show up.
  • Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing has a cover that depicts a police car in a furious head-to-head chase with a truck, and the back of the box describes "trying to stay one step ahead of the law" and suggests you'll have to face a police roadblock at some point, implying there might be some kind of mechanic where the police chase you and try to stop you. There isn't; it's a very barebones racer where even the other drivers don't bother to impede you due to bugged AI. It also describes "racking up points" (the game doesn't have a scoring system), "1000s of miles of highway" (all the maps combined aren't even a tenth that big), and suggests that there are three levels of difficulty (there aren't; in fact, the game is generally considered unloseable). Every single screenshot on the back of the box is completely fake. Even the mere fact that it seems to depict the police car ramming the truck is wrong: Big Rigs famously lacks collision detection for anything, so even if police did exist, they wouldn't be able to do that.
  • The cover to the Commodore 64 version of Bombuzal depicts a human character with a giant chin who looks nothing like the blobby, red-nosed Cartoon Creature you play as in the actual game.
  • Bravely Default II: More of a trick than an outright lie; looking at the (JAP/USA) cover you would believe you're looking at Gloria, one of the main characters in the story. You'd be wrong, but that's understandable because you never actually see the girl on the cover in the game. That's because the girl on the cover is the Night's Nexus before she became corrupted by the Fount of Knowledge. Notice what she's holding in her hand?
  • Bubsy 3D featured a positive critic quote on the front cover from EGM. In reality, the quote came from a preview in Electronic Gaming Monthly - their review of the actual game when it came out was a 3.25 out of 10.
  • The Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout: Porky Pig pops up on the game's cover, even though he's not present at all in-game, not even as a cameo. This was presumably a holdover from the fact that Porky was planned to be in the game at one point, but was cut.
  • Castlevania has indulged in this a few times:
    • Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, features the main character: Shanoa, holding a long crimson rapier with a twisted hilt. This weapon however, is only used as a "Item Crush"; used for a single slash, screen-sized, and certainly not equipable as the cover implies. In fact the strongest rapier glyph is still a standard, earthly rapier.
    • Castlevania Legends depicted the main character Sonia with a sword at her side and in several pictures from the booklet, she never uses one in the game itself.
    • Justified in Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls; protagonist of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow Soma Cruz is depicted alongside the other playable characters on the title screen despite not being a playable character himself. This is almost certainly to mask the fact that Soma does appear... a Julius Mode Soma, to be specific.
  • The cover for Catacomb 3-D depicts a badass guy with a gun. The game itself is fantasy and all you use are fireball spells, not guns.
  • The Chrono Trigger cover is based on Akira Toriyama's early promo illustration which depicts Crono, Frog and Marle fighting a boss. The boss is in the wrong location (in fact, a location that doesn't exist in the game), is being fought with the wrong party, Crono's outfit is slightly off, Marle's outfit is not even close to her actual in-game outfit, and she's using a flame spell when she's an ice spell user. They kept it for the DS release, where there is indeed a fight with that creature in an area similar to that on the box illustration in the bonus dungeon... but doing the shown move (Frost Arc) on said monster heals it.
  • Clive Barker's Undying: In the backcover, you can see images of Patrick fighting a Monto Shonoi in Oneiros (they don't appear there in the game) and a Howler in the manor with the Skull Storm spell (which is acquired after the part of the game with the Howlers).
  • The back of the box for the original PS2 version of Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex features screenshots of a side-scrolling level involving Coco on her scooter (the only section in the game where she rides a scooter has the camera in front of her) and Crash driving a jeep away from what appears to be his hut (the jeep is in the game but only appears in a jungle).
  • The cover of Day of the Tentacle involves Purple Tentacle chasing off the protagonists with a shrink ray in his hand. In the game itself, it's Future Purple Tentacle who is the one who attacks the kids in the present and he goes after them inside the mansion after the kids have been fused into one three-headed person.
  • The cover to Deadly Premonition has a definite "ultra gory action/survival horror" theme. It's actually a standard survival horror game that, while it does have a good amount of gore, focuses more on the detective work than the action.
  • The box illustration for Demon Sword features a Barbarian Hero wielding the game's eponymous weapon. The protagonist in-game is a Wuxia-type warrior who can leap the height of the screen In a Single Bound. On the back of the box, the first screenshot description is "Battle the Old Wizard of Cedar Mountain", but said shot actually displays the Demon Warrior boss from Bamboo Forest, the preceding stage.
  • The Devil Survivor cover shows Atsuro, Yuzu, and Amane wearing black outfits when their real in-game clothes are much more colorful.
  • The South Korean version of the 1983 Hudson Soft game Dezeni Land has Disney characters on its cover that never appear in the actual game.
  • The box art and manual cover of Diablo II depict a hooded skeleton, even though there are no hooded skeletons in the game itself. The Dark Wanderer does wear a hood (usually), but he has his flesh intact until he transforms into Diablo's true form.
  • The loading screen of the freeware Edutainment Game Dinosaur World shows an Allosaurus stalking Diplodocus on the Mossy Plain with some flying reptiles overhead. In the game, only the Diplodocus appears in this area. The BBC admitted the game was released unfinished, possibly explaining this.
  • The packaging for Discovery Kids: Dolphin Discovery for Nintendo DS has a blurb describing, and screenshots from, a different game. Sure, the actual game at least involves dolphins, but everything else is wrong.
  • The classic 8-bit Dizzy games of ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC fame often had game covers that, while well-drawn and visually appealing, were only vaguely related to the game's own contents. The very first game in the series is perhaps the worst offender, suggesting that Dizzy has to rescue his people from villainous farmer-miner-hillbilly types. In reality Dizzy is the only egg person ("yolkfolk" as the game calls them) to appear in the whole game and the only human villain is the Evil Wizard Zaks — though rescuing other yolkfolk would be major plot elements of subsequent games.
  • Donkey Kong:
    • Somehow, THIS became the box art for the Spanish release of Donkey Kong's Atari 2600 port. This is due to a mix-up of cartridge label designs. For some reason, they used the design meant for the Atari 2600 Mr. Do! for the Latin American version of Donkey Kong.note 
    • The box illustration of Donkey Kong Land 2, a pseudo-port of the SNES Donkey Kong Country 2, shows the Kongs swimming in an underwater shipwreck with Glimmer the angler fish following behind them. Glimmer doesn't appear anywhere in the actual game; the stage Glimmer's Galleon, where he normally appears, has him replaced with barrels that temporarily light up the screen, presumably due to hardware limitations.
  • The box art of Doom shows the Doomguy firing an assault rifle at a swarm of demons. It wasn't until DoomÂł that you could wield an assault rifle as a weapon. Supposedly, early versions of the game did have an assault rifle, but it got turned into the chaingun at some point.
  • In the Double Dragon series, it is established that Marian is Billy's girlfriend, who is the Lee brother that wears blue in the games. Yet on the cover illustration used in every version of Double Dragon II: The Revenge, she is shown embracing the one who wears red. Either Billy doesn't mind sharing his girlfriend with his brother Jimmy, or the artist switched their colors by mistake. Marian is also supposed to be dead in II ( although, she does get better in some versions of the game).
  • Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II focuses exclusively on the Android Saga, as evidenced in both the American and Japanese box arts. For some unexplained reason, the European box art has sleeveless Vegeta, Adult Gohan in his Orange Star High School outfit, and Kid Trunks, who all don't appear until the Buu Saga (which Buu's Fury covers).
  • The indie game Energy Invasion has a woman in an attractive, sci-fi-inspired one-piece on its front cover, right behind the title. The game in question is an Arkanoid clone (albeit one in 3D since it's remade in modern times). IMDb had a field day ripping this one a new hole..
  • Eastern Exorcist has posters, cover artwork, and promotional materials depicting the two main characters, Lu Yun-chuan and Xiahou-xue, ready to kick ass side-by-side. The game itself contains two different campaigns, where players can choose between either Lu or Xia, but contrary to the artwork at no point do they meet or interact with each other.
  • The cover of Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion shows The Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland and Hades from Hercules, and while they are both shown as brief cameos in the beginning of the game, you never battle them or go through any levels based on their respective movies at all in the game. In fact, on the cover, the Queen of Hearts was replaced with the Mad Hatter in the final release, and he does appear... but not as an enemy like the cover implies.
  • A Southeast Asian bootleg of Expert calls the game "Counter-Strike Ver. Expert" and straight-up pilfers the cover art of Counter-Strike, misleading players into believing they're purchasing a PlayStation port of the latter game (which doesn't have a port for the original PlayStation). The only things both games have in common are "FPS where you shoot terrorists".
  • The NES version of Fantasy Zone (the Tengen version released in the US), unlike many box arts of its era and beyond, does a good job of accurately depicting the game's Cute 'em Up styling... but draws the player character Opa-Opa as a bizarre robotic housefly creature, instead of the bean-shaped Sapient Ship you see in-game.
  • Fears, a mediocre Amiga-made FPS, have the players battling scary-looking, reptilian giant monsters on it's cover art, when in the actual game the monsters look... less than impressive. You fight some detached heads, Little Green Men-type aliens, a few tentacled creatures or otherwise humanoid-looking enemies, but monsters as scary as what the cover art suggests are located roughly a few halls away from this game.
  • Final Fantasy:
    • Many releases of Final Fantasy use concept artwork of a warrior with a horned helmet and blue armor, implying him to be the main character. The game does not have a set protagonist (the player controls a party of four largely undefined heroes), and of the six playable jobs, none of them look like the guy on the cover (the Fighter/Warrior job wears bright red armor and lacks a helmet of any kind). The character on the cover, usually named the Warrior of Light, has become something of a mascot for the game and tends to represent it in crossovers. Ironically, if there's any character in the game that the Warrior resembles, it's probably Garland. By a similar count, Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III also use concept art that doesn't really look anything like the ingame protagonists, though the Updated Re-release of II changes Firion's design to look more like the concept art as opposed to being a Fighter with nicer boots.
    • Final Fantasy VII had the back of the box showing screenshots of nothing but FMV scenes with nary a screenshot of the game itself in sight. This led many people to believe that the game would be played in the advertised graphics. Final Fantasy and other games that pulled this stunt had gotten in trouble for deceptive marketing and all game boxes are required to show at least one screenshot of the game itself instead of a cut scene.
    • The cover of Final Fantasy XIII-2 is only a picture of Lightning, similar to the previous game's cover. Unlike the previous game, however, she is not the main protagonist (who is her sister Serah this time), nor does she play a huge role in the story.
  • The Final Fight series almost always had this problem:
    • The packaging illustration for the SNES version depicts a stare-off between Haggar and Abigail, with three different images between them of a character vaguely resembling Guy beating up other punks. The original release of the SNES version did not feature Guy.
    • The American cover for Final Fight 2 features two different depictions of Damnd (traced over from different sources), Cody, Guy and other characters from the first game that don't even appear in the sequel.
    • The American cabinet for the arcade version features enemies wielding lead pipes (only the player can wield pipes in-game) and the good guys fighting multiple opponents in a wrestling ring (when only Sodom appears in such stage in the game).
    • The packaging illustration for the home computer ports by U.S. Gold depicts Cody (with dark hair instead of his usual blond) confronting a group of punks in a train with a few bystanders witnessing the action. In the game, the only people in the train besides the player are all enemies.
    • The covers for the Sega CD version of the game are fine, but in the intro: it shows Two.P wielding a knife, Axl wielding a choke wire, and Andore wielding (more like bending) a lead pipe. None of these characters pick up/carry weapons during game play, except El Gado or Hollywood. The latter that actually appears with the correct weapon in the cut-scene.
  • The cover of Fire Emblem Gaiden depicts the character of Valbar rather prominently, suggesting him to be an important or plot-relevant character: he's given equal prominence to Celica, the game's deuteragonist. He isn't; he gets three pieces of dialogue in the game (his introduction, his recruitment, and his death quote) and has no real significance to the plot, unless you count the fact that he leads a small squad that joins with him. There's also a looming villainous-looking figure whose appearance doesn't match anyone in the game; later material has suggested him to be Duma's human form.
  • The cover of the Fist of the North Star NES game features a cel illustration from the anime series which depicts Kenshiro sparring with his brother Toki, despite the fact that this was actually based on the second series (Hokuto no Ken 2), which didn't even have Toki in it. Since the game was published years before the anime was even localized for the U.S. market, the people at Taxan just used a random illustrations from the series without any regard to the game's content, knowing that most Americans at the time would've not noticed this..
    • The Japanese cover of Sega's Hokuto no Ken side-scroller for the Sega Master System (the one that was released overseas as Black Belt) features Rei, who is not in the game at all.
  • Fake screenshots were rampant in the cover illustration of Atari 2600 and other early-era video games. Since it was almost impossible to get clean-looking screen captures back then, gameplay images would have to be redrawn by an artist, often making them far sharper and more detailed than the blocky shapes actually produced by the graphical hardware of the era. Take, for instance, these considerably retouched screenshots from the back cover of Epyx's Gateway to Apshai.
  • Ghost in the Shell has one of it's covers depicting Major Motoko Kusanagi from the anime seated inside the red Fuchikoma. In the game itself, the Fuchikoma is piloted by an unnamed Section 9 rookie - your player character - and not the Major.
  • Godzilla for Game Boy. The cover and opening monster roll call look quite intimdating and seems to be introducing a beat-em-up. Then the player starts a new game and gets...this. Toho's Japanese division was more upfront about this.
  • On the NES, Konami usually did good illustrations of their game covers that left things just ambiguous enough that it didn't matter. But when they designed the cover of The Goonies II, everything just went to crap. Assumedly unable to afford the royalties for using the movie actors' likenesses, the artist just drew them all to look like Mark Hamill.
  • The cover to The Great Giana Sisters does not show Giana and her sister Maria. It shows ordinary Giana alongside "punk Giana", who was essentially the original game's version of Super Mario. The "punk Giana" later became an at-will transformation in the sequel, but still Giana all the same.
  • The Guardian Legend has terrible box illustration for all three versions of the game: The European and Japanese illustration are slightly better than the North American illustration in that they least show a Robot Girl, even if said girl looks nothing like the protagonist. As for the unbelievably generic North American box... the only thing it gets right is the phrase "Includes Password Feature".note 
  • The cover art for Hachoo! depicts your character in a blue martial arts uniform and with dark hair, but in actuality you spend the whole game kicking ass in a white uniform with blonde hair. That said, the poster implies plenty of Camera Abuse, which does happen in-game.
  • Half-Life:
    • The original box for Half-Life featured screenshots from early builds of the game, including scenes removed from the final game, such as one where scientists are interrogated.
    • The box for Half-Life 2 has absolutely no screenshots from the actual shipped game. Some are from early E3 builds of the game, and some are simply creatures in areas they don't exist in the game (an Antlion guard on the beach, for example).
  • Harmful Park has a cover that, if you can deduce it to be a shoot-em-up based on the cover art, congratulations on being psychic. The game's Playstation release depicts the title... written in chocolate syrup, on a pancake, on a dinnerplate. It tells nothing on what the game is about and doesn't exactly scream "arcade shooter!" at a glance...
  • Hell Fighter, already an unlicensed bootleg game, comes with an equally baffling cover-art where you're depicted as a muscular, bare-chested brute in a loincloth, when in gameplay you're wearing clothes throughout. The cover also implies power-ups are collected in the form of skulls, when in gameplay it's magical crystal orbs.
  • LEGO Hero Factory: Breakout was a third person shooter based on the then-current story arc of the series, but the advertisements on the packaging of relevant LEGO sets depicted what was either a mockup or a very early prototype that looked more like some sort of MMORPG and featured enemies from previous waves of the toyline who don't appear in the game at all.
  • Human Killing Machine's cover depicts a man viewed from the neck down, wearing a black sleeveless shirt and army pants and covered in weapons (knives, boomerangs, bandoleers, cartoon dynamite...), drawing a long bayonet from its sheath. He looks nothing whatsoever like the actual main character of the game, Kwon, who is shirtless, clad in white sweatpants and sparring gloves, and uses no weapons at all.
  • Ubisoft's Imagine Master Chef (which has nothing to do with the TV show MasterChef) proudly displays a very dull housewife to appeal to grandmothers and boring people alike, coming across as a tired lump of shovelware. The game itself is a very cutesy Japanese-style visual novel complete with friendship meters and gift-giving, and the cooking games are far more well-made compared to Cooking Mama, as you actually cook three-course meals complete with sides, desserts and dressings.
  • The cover for the American Video Entertainment-published edition of the unlicensed NES port of Impossible Mission II shows the Player Character wielding a gun and protecting a Damsel in Distress, neither of which are part of the game.
  • The cover for the Sega Genesis version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade shows the title character riding a horse and pointing a gun at the camera. In the background behind him, are a plane, a tank, and two other vehicles. However, aside from Dr. Jones himself, absolutely none of those things ever appear in the game. Not even the gun in his hand, or the horse he rode in on.
  • In Pursuit of Greed is a sci-fi themed game where the player can choose between different bounty hunter characters. The hunter on it's cover art, a human male with a gigantic blaster, isn't in the game at all - the only playable human male is a Cyborg.
  • The Jump Start series:
    • The original cover for JumpStart Spanish showed Mr. Hopsalot, who was indeed the game's main character, on the cover. However, somewhere around 2001 or 2002, JumpStart arbitrarily decided that Frankie the dog should be the main character and mascot of the entire JumpStart series. As a result, in 2003, the JumpStart Spanish cover was changed to one that prominently featured Frankie and didn't feature Hopsalot at all...even though Frankie didn't appear in JumpStart Spanish.
    • Another example (again involving Frankie) can be found in the case of JumpStart Advanced 2nd Grade. All the covers of the game prominently feature Frankie in a cool spy outfit. Aforementioned cool spy outfit appears nowhere in the game, and while Frankie does appear, C.J. Frog and Edison Firefly are the true main characters. Frankie just hangs around headquarters while C.J. and Edison go on the adventures.
  • The North American release of Kao The Kangaroo: Round 2 uses the box art of Kao in an army helmet firing rockets out of a bazooka, which never happens in the game.
  • Kendo Rage. The cover looks similar to Xena: Warrior Princess, but the game is cute, lighthearted, and anime-style. This game was actually the first of a trilogy of games known as "Makeruna! Makendou"note  The whole story and the characters' names had been rewritten for the American game market.
  • The arcade game Kick Man has a clown as the protagonist yet the cabinet art for the game depicts what looks like a track & field runner instead.
  • The box illustration of Kid Kool depicts Kool as an Elvis look-alike, completely different from his in-game appearance, where he resembles Goemon.
  • Kingdom Hearts:
    • Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days features Mickey Mouse in the Organization cloak, which leads people to believe he's a prominent figure in the actual game. Instead, he's featured for one cutscene near the game's end, and doesn't even encounter Roxas. The reason behind his inclusion is likely the fact that, ever since Kingdom Hearts II, Mickey's been featured prominently on the cover of every game, Days is just the only game where his role is minor.
    • The cover of Kingdom Hearts III shows a large amount of the cast of characters... and a Darkling, a special type of Heartless. Never does a Darkling ever appear in-game, not even as an enemy type.
  • The original PC Jr box illustration for King's Quest depicts the protagonist as a Knight in Shining Armor, which Sir Graham is anything but.
  • The cover of James Pond 2: RoboCod shows our hero armed with some sort of gun. At no point in the game can the player obtain a projectile weapon.
  • The cover of the PC version of Jurassic Park featured screenshots of a different port (either SNES or Amiga).
  • Justice League Heroes: The Flash has a small example. Underneath The Flash, it shows several heroes that can be summoned into battle alongside of you. Four of them are correct, but instead of the actual fifth hero, Black Canary, it shows Batman, who only appears in a couple of cutscenes as The Cameo. Also overlaps with Wolverine Publicity.
  • The box art for The Last of Us Part II features Ellie's face on a black background. While she serves as a main character in the game, the retail cover doesn't show Abby who is the game's Villain Protagonist and its second playable character.
  • The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie has The Grandmaster in the cover of the game. Considering she's the leader of Ouroboros, many thought she would have a major role to play in the final chapter of the Crossbell/Erebonia arc. Turns out, she only appears in one side episode of the game which, while significant in the grand scheme of things, isn't enough to warrant her being on the cover of the game itself.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
  • Legends of... are compilations of various point & click adventure games, and not only do the games have little to do with the title, their covers show scenes not in any of the games. In Legends of the Hunted, the cover scene is a snowy forest with a deer next to a woman in a long, white cape trimmed with white fur.
  • An unlicensed NES game called Little Red Hood shows the title character kicking a guy in the butt, but in the game, her kick is only good for knocking stuff out of trees and not used as an enemy attack.
  • Majyuo has a truly rad cover which looks like H. R. Giger meets Devilman or Berserk with the protagonist being a shadowy blue and black figure with red eyes doing a Ass Kicking Pose. While in the actual game, the protagonist looks like this and while he does get a demonic form at the end, it looks nothing like the figure on the cover. Likewise the Big Bad doesn’t really resemble the Evil Overlooker seen on the cover nor does he clutch any Damsel in Distress between his teeth at any point in the game.
  • The back cover blurb for the Sega CD version of Mansion of Hidden Souls plays the game up as being a fright-filled and terrifying experience. The premise is explicitly supernatural and there is some eeriness to the atmosphere, but it's not an especially scary game, nor was it really meant to be one.
  • The Japanese version cover of Mass Destruction, a game where you drive a tank, blow things up and leave smoking craters and debris behind, shows a tree which implies peacefulnessnote . The backside is accurate, and the original American version stays true, though.
  • The arcade flyer of Mechanized Attack shows what was supposed to be the two player heroes, but within the game itself, the cutscenes showing your characters doesn't even remotely resemble the two on the cover (a young, skinny blonde man somewhat resembling late-80s Michael J. Fox and a Terminator Impersonator). Player 1 is a soldier with a head of silver-white hair, much older (and more muscular) than his equivalent on the cover, while Player 2, despite being The Ahnold, has blond hair unlike the Terminator-esque character the cover shows. The alternate cover for home releases is slightly better, but at no point do you battle hostile Angry Guard Dogs like the one about to chomp your character's left arm.
  • The Meet the Robinsons tie-in game features Lewis — the main protagonist of the movie — in the background alongside some of the other Robinson family members and Lizzie, a member of the Big Bad Ensemble. He only appears briefly in one cutscene, as the game is a prequel that takes place before Wilbur (the deuteragonist of the movie and Player Character of the game) officially meets him.
  • Mega Man:
    • The American cover for Mega Man shows Mega Man as an adult with a handgun. In reality, he's designed as a young boy and uses an Arm Cannon. The color of his suit is also off, being light-blue and yellow instead of the actual dark blue and light blue scheme. This is because the artist never actually saw the game. This character even appeared in Street Fighter X Tekken as Bad Box illustration Mega Man.
    • Other countries seemed to have a major habit of this, overlapping with American Kirby Is Hardcore. The American cover for 2 depicts Mega Man as an adult man with a handgun and a clear visor on his helmet, along with a dumpy Quick Man dressed in purple. The European cover has him with an arm cannon and his ! helmet insignia, but that's about all they got right, with him wearing silver armor and having an infamously phallic extension on his arm cannon. By 3, they were illustrating Mega Man with a more cartoony look that made him actually look like he does in the games, but there were still a lot of oddities—on the American cover of 3, for instance, Top Man is green and Spark Man is silver, when they're both orange in the game.
    • Mega Man (DOS) uses a modified version of Mega Man 3's American box art which shows Rush behind Mega Man, despite Rush not appearing in the game.
    • The Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 has its box art split into four halves that depict each game featured in the Compilation Rerelease. The Mega Man 7 and Mega Man 8 quarters show Bass and Duo, two characters with a great deal of prominence in those games. The Mega Man 9 quarter features the nine Robot Masters from the game, giving a disproportionate amount of visual prominence given to Splash Woman but still getting the message across. But the Mega Man 10 portion shows the Mega Man Killers Enker, Punk, and Ballade—all Ensemble Dark Horses to be sure, but they don't play any role in the game's plot, and in fact were DLC in the original release (and are Unlockable Content here).
    • The American cover for Mega Man X7 places X front and center, with his face and upper torso taking up about 70% of the box. X7 is fairly notable (and notorious) for being a game where X is almost completely irrelevant to the plot, and isn't even playable until at least halfway into the main campaign (probably much later, if you don't bother to rescue Reploids). The actual main character, Axl, is that guy tucked into the right side of the cover with his face in shadow. The Japanese cover averts this, with Axl being front and center and X off to the side.
  • The box of Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty shows nothing but pictures of Solid Snake, and the tagline brags about "Snake stopping terrorists". The cover's only true for all of about ten minutes of game play, then Raiden comes out in all his Taylor Hanson-ish femininity and takes center stage for the remainder of the game. Fans were not amused, and that might have been the point.
  • The covers of Metal Head claims it's a game available for 1 or 2 players, but in actuality it's a single player game, through and through. Sega later admits they goofed up the translation, and it's a mistake on their part.
  • Mobile Light Force and Mobile Light Force 2 (better known as Macekred versions of Gunbird and the first Castle Shikigami game, two unrelated series) have identical Angels Pose covers that have nothing to do with either of the games in question.
  • Monkey Island:
    • The cover of The Secret of Monkey Island shows Guybrush leading an expedition through the jungle with a group that appears to include Elaine Marley. In game Guybrush does go through a jungle, but he's alone and he's searching for Elaine.
    • The cover of Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge shows LeChuck and Guybrush on a pirate ship, with LeChuck torturing Guybrush with a voodoo doll. In the game LeChuck does torture Guybrush with a voodoo doll, but it's not on a pirate ship, it's in some oddly modern looking tunnels.
    • On the cover of The Curse of Monkey Island, Guybrush is confronting LeChuck on a crow's nest with the gold statue Elaine, wielding a big diamond ring like a weapon. That never happens in the game. In the game Guybrush and LeChuck never fight in a crow's nest, and the big diamond ring is never seen by LeChuck. Nor is Elaine, while she's in gold statue form. The cover also wrongly depicts her as standing at attention. In the actual game, she turns into gold while getting ready to punch Guybrush, for giving her a cursed ring, and stays in that pose until he changes her back.
  • Home versions of Mortal Kombat 3 proudly proclaimed on the back that you can move up and down between stages "for the ultimate bi-level battlefield!" Except you can't actually go down; no attack by any character in any version of the game, not even the arcade, can cause you to return to a stage you just uppercutted your way out of. If you ascend from the Bank to the Rooftop or from the Subway to the Street, you're stuck up there for the rest of the fight, even if it's not yet the last round.
  • Nexus Clash was originally created on a shoestring as a Fan Sequel to continue a series that most fans feared was permanently dead. Because it was what was on hand, the original developer populated the Clash game and wiki with stock illustration that suggested a generic low-fantasy setting with little in common with the Nexus lore. When the current development team was formed, one of the first things that they did was to hire an artist to create better illustrations that reflect what the game is actually about.
  • The Dutch box art of Oh Shit! has a scary demonic face on it, which would be fine... if it wasn't just a straightforward Pac-Man clone whose gimmick is that it swears at you when you lose a life. The cover art in other regions made the fact it was a Pac-Man clone more apparent.note 
  • US Gold advertised the ZX Spectrum version of OutRun and the Atari ST version of 1943 with screenshots that could well have come from early builds but look much better than what was actually released.
  • The cover art of Pac-Kong, a European knockoff of Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600 with a giant octopus in place of the big ape, displays a Gundam-esque Humongous Mecha that has absolutely nothing to do with the game.
  • The Japanese box art for Perfect Dark makes the game look more like a Silent Hill-esq psychological horror game than the James Bond inspired action game it is.
  • The blurb on the back of Persona's box says "In the near future, mankind has conquered dimensional travel, but the opened door swings both ways. Demons have invaded...". Although it's actually a game about depression, the blurb does make some sense. It either implies that its about a team of devoted scientists or a demon invasion in the style of the main series; you see the scientists who made dimensional travel possible for all of a few minutes, and shortly after you see them, the demon invasion angle is dropped too. But it does feature travel between two dimensions and demons entering the normal dimension, despite the fact that the other dimension was created by the scientists.
  • Phalanx: From the cover, one expects some sort of Space Western. In reality, Phalanx is just another sci-fi Shoot 'Em Up game, only known today for its unusual North American SNES cover art.note  This was a deliberate decision made by the marketers who knew that the game would need something to stand out against the large amount of space shooters being released at the time, with Mr. Banjo Man being their method of doing so.
  • The North American box art for the Sega Genesis titles of the Phantasy Star series have a tendency to misrepresent the games as generic Medieval European Fantasy games, rather than Science Fantasy RPGs, but Phantasy Star II is particularly egregious, depicting the protagonist as a square-jawed Hunk with a rifle rather than a handsome young swordsman, and his companion Nei as a mature woman with horns instead of a cute young Space Elf.
  • Phoenix Games have some "games" that are really just Mockbusters of Disney movies with a few simple minigames thrown in to justify selling them as games rather than movies. Said games' box art go as far as to display Disney characters (in the form of poorly-done 3D models), while the characters in the actual movies look completely different.
  • PokĂ©mon:
    • The cover of PokĂ©mon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time depicts Arbok, Drapion, and Weavile looming over the heroes from behind in a very villainous looking fashion. In the game, however, they're just one of the exploration teams that randomly shows up in the guild from time to time and the only thing they do is give you some friendly advice. This is in contrast to the boxarts of the first games, which depicted other Pokemon in a similar fashion, only they did end up being antagonists at some point.
    • The cover of PokĂ©mon Colosseum depicts the legendary Kyogre and Groudon prominently. Not only can these PokĂ©mon not legitimately be acquired in the game without trading from the mainline entries, but they also don't appear in the story whatsoever.
    • The cover of Detective Pikachu shows the titular Pikachu wearing a Sherlock Holmes-styled hat and cloak. In the actual game he wears only the hat most of the time, and the cloak appears only in an optional cutscene towards the end.
    • The bootlegs PokĂ©mon Diamond (no, not that one) and PokĂ©mon Jade not only weren’t actual PokĂ©mon games but were fan translations of games from another series, and the box art featured creatures that never even appeared in the games.
  • The box illustration for Power Quest shows five humans all standing side by side. These are supposed to be the game's five playable models, MAX, AXE, LON, SPEED and GONG. They look nothing like that in the game.
  • Power Rangers: Super Legends depicts the Red Mighty Morphin' Ranger, the Blue Overdrive Ranger, and the Crimson Thunder and Yellow Wind Rangers on the front cover and has the back cover depict the Red Mighty Morphin' Ranger, the Navy Thunder Ranger, and the Black Overdrive Ranger. While all of the depicted Rangers are playable characters in the game, not all of them are available in both versions. The Red Mighty Morphin' Ranger and the Black Overdrive Ranger are the only Power Rangers who are playable in both the console version and the Nintendo DS version, with the Navy Thunder Ranger, the Blue Overdrive Ranger, and the Crimson Thunder Ranger's playability being exclusive to the console version and the Yellow Wind Ranger only being a playable character in the DS version.
  • Prince of Persia: Warrior Within has the Prince Dual Wielding two Cool Swords. In the game itself, the secondary weapon can only be a much smaller knife, and in fact the two swords featured in the cover (Eagle and Lion Sword) are both broken as the story progresses (the first after the prologue, the second halfway through the game). Albeit Dummied Out data and beta screenshots show
  • An unused enemy from Rayman Origins, back when it was Rayman's Origins Episode, was a bug-like being simply called "Soldier". A blue Soldier can be seen on the cover of the game. Likewise, an early version of the golem boss is shown on the cover. They were both likely left in because you can't see them fully.
  • Resident Evil:
    • The iconic box art for Resident Evil features a veiny Chris brandishing some kind of shotgun or machine gun with a mad look on his face. No such weapon appears in the game, Chris doesn’t become musclebound till much later and he doesn’t go nuts with fear at any point in the story.
    • The PAL and PlayStation cover of Resident Evil 4 while both awesome, suggests the game has an extremely dark, scary and grim tone with Chainsaw Man standing among the blood red woods. Anyone who’s played RE4 will tell you it’s really the lightest and most campy of the mainline RE titles with an abundance of tongue-in-cheek humour.
    • The gold edition cover of Resident Evil 5 features Jill alongside Chris like she’s the other protagonist, in actuality she’s only partnered up with Chris for the “Lost in Nightmares” side story and Sheva is the actual deuteragonist of the main game.
    • The box art of Resident Evil 2 (Remake) getting away from the “Zombie around the Corner” cover of the original has Leon and Claire posing over Raccoon City suggesting you’ll be exploring and fighting through the streets. In the actual game you spend barely a minute in the city itself and everything else is localised to a single location: the Police Station and its underground.
    • The box art for Resident Evil Village features long time character Chris Redfield as he looks downward, with his face shrouded in shadow. Not only that, half the face of a snarling wolf with a glowing eye is placed over half of Chris' face. It's quite ominous. Many are aware of the new enemies called lycans in the game. Couple that with how his alignment was put into question due to promotional material prior to release and it makes one wonder... Chris never becomes a lycan himself. Poor Communication Kills come into play on Chris' part, but he is still very much a hero all throughout the game. As an aversion, the wolf image on the box art is likely a reference to his personal military unit, the Hound Wolf Squad.
  • Rival Turf tries to represent the 2 players you are playing with, but it ends up representing characters you do not play with in-game.
  • On the first Road Rash game, the title card for the track, "Pacific Coast", makes you think you're going to ride along the beach, but the actual track looks more like its out in an open field surrounded by mountains like its somewhere in Scotland or something.
  • Sands of Destruction's American box illustration makes it seem like Kyrie is the one out to destroy the world and Morte is some sort of pensive Apocalypse Maiden. The reality is quite the opposite: he's a gentle boy who happens to be capable of ending the world, but really doesn't want to; she's a Genki Girl Omnicidal Maniac who wants to use his power to destroy the world. He does end up being very protective of her, at least. The original Japanese box illustration just had the six playable characters standing in a line, giving no hints as to personality or intentions.
  • Both the N64 and Dreamcast covers of San Francisco Rush 2049 depict a futuristic police car pursuing a racer, but there are no cops in the game, or any game of the series for that matter.
  • Shantae and the Pirate's Curse: The cover art and most promotional artwork depict Shantae wearing a skull bandana on her head and a belt around one leg, implying this is some kind of new look for her. In-game, she wears this outfit for all of one cutscene before Risky Boots makes her take it off. In what may or may not be an oversight, her sprites for using Risky's Hat, Boots, and Cannon do show her with the belt and bandana, but they're still not in most of them.
  • Shenmue: Shenhua features prominently in the boxart alongside Lan Di and Ryo. However, she wouldn't physically appear in the story until the very end of Shenmue 2. Her presence in the first game boils down to the prologue and occasional appearances in Ryo's dreams (and strangely, in food labels), but all of this with very little plot importance. For example, Nozomi, another female character with a significantly more prominent role in Shenmue's narrative than Shenhua, is conspicuously absent from the box art.
  • Silent Hill:
    • The box for Silent Hill 2 features Angela's face, and nothing else, on the cover. Angela is a character that you encounter a couple times throughout the game... but the much more important female character who you encounter far more often and who plays a major role in the story, is Maria, who is nowhere to be found.
    • The cover of the HD collection does feature a very stylish and creepy image of Maria - but unfortunately, it has nothing from Silent Hill 3 except for the original box illustration , downsized and included (next to the downsized original cover for 2).
  • SimCity plays mind screws with their covers, usually showing buildings that could never exist in the game. Best example of this is Sim City 4's cover, which shows many of the Asian buildings from Sim City 3000 Unlimited that cannot be built in that game.
  • The covers for every game in the Sniper Elite series feature the protagonist using a Karabiner 98k rifle, presenting it as his favored weapon, yet it isn't even available in the first game and can only be used in the next two through DLC.
  • The cover for the NES game 'Solstice: The Quest for the Staff of Demnos'' depicts the hero Shadax, shirtless and muscled, as he's casting magic. There is no point in the game where he removes his wizard hat and robe.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog:
    • The 8-bit version of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 has each act introduction showing what hijinks Sonic and Tails will get into...except that Tails isn't a playable character at all and the whole game is about saving him from Eggman.
    • One of the LeapFrog games based on the series features Sonic Adventure's Sonic on the cover. The actual game is based on Sonic the Hedgehog 2.
    • Covers that featured Robotnik throughout the 1990s tended to use variants of his design from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, despite that design looking very different from the one in the actual games.
  • Sorcerer's Maze shows an old wizard casting spells with two children standing behind him. If you were expecting to play as the wizard or one of the children, then you're in for a surprise, none of the characters on the front cover show up at any point in the game, and what seemed likely to be an action adventure game with wizards and spells turns out to be a breakout style game for two players, (a fairy and some kind of cat thing). As breakout games go, this is one of the better ones. with good illustrations, some kind of story and interesting power-ups and different levels. But at no point are is there anything related to the cover illustration , or for that matter the title of the game.
  • Space Quest I: The Sarien Encounter's original cover depicts a '50s Chevy-esque space car, which none of the game's vehicles remotely resemble.
  • Space Station Silicon Valley has a picture of the fire fox on the game cart and instruction manual (he's the only animal in the picture). Although he's one of the most fun animals to control, you only encounter him twice and NEVER play as him, unless you use a cheat code.
  • The box art for SpongeBob SquarePants: Battle for Bikini Bottom features nothing except SpongeBob in an army helmet (which he never wears in-game) saluting the viewer. The other playable characters, Patrick and Sandy, are not pictured, nor are any of Plankton's robots. It really tells you nothing about the game except that SpongeBob is in it, which is kind of a given.
  • The cover of Spore Creature Creator shows two creatures with embossed, segmented plates running down their torso. These creatures cannot be built, and after the release of the full game there is still no texture that even vaguely resembles an exoskeleton.
  • The cover for Star Fox Adventures seems to suggest that Peppy, Slippy, and Krystal are on the ground with Fox and Tricky. The reality is that Peppy and Slippy are on the Great Fox dispensing information, while Krystal is never playable at the same time Fox is; after the first part of the game, she's a Damsel in Distress.
  • Space maps in Star Wars: Battlefront II. Usually, the Loading Screen shows an image of a battle on the map being loaded along with hints in the upper right. Space maps, unlike most ground-based maps, only allow the player to battle in one era (Clone Wars from the prequels or Galactic Civil War from the originals) depending on the map. In the console versions of the game, Clone War-era space maps only show Galactic Civil War-era ships in the loading screens, and vice versa.
  • Story of Seasons:
    • The cover to Harvest Moon: Magical Melody has a yellow Sighthound looking dog that never appears in the game.
    • The cover for the European/Australian version of Harvest Moon shows Pete wearing a straw hat instead of his trademark baseball cap.
  • The iconic American cover for Street Fighter II shows Ryu and Chun-Li facing Blanka, even though the game is a 1 on 1 fighter, not 2 on 1 like some sort of Beat 'em Up. Secondly, Blanka is portrayed as a scary monster with leering Slasher Smile to Chun-Li having just defeated Ryu. In the actual games Blanka is a cuddly Kindhearted Simpleton Beast Man who isn’t nearly powerful to brutally K.O Ryu like that. Capcom themselves poked fun at this cover with the arcade edition of Street Fighter V.
  • The cover illustration for all 3 entries of the Streets of Rage series have many kinds of errors in the North American/European versions while the Japanese versions are spot on for the source material.
    • For the first game, it shows Axel and Blaze fighting some punks and one of them has a gun (another mook in the background also has a sniper rifle), yet no mook has a gun except for the Final Boss. Axel and Blaze's outfits are also wrong; Axel is wearing a yellow shirt instead of his white one and Blaze has an all white outfit with long pants instead of her traditional red with a short skirt.
    • The cover for the 2nd game is more or less correct in terms of what the player would be facing, but the appearance of Blaze and Max are vastly different compared to how they look in the actual game; Max is shown as bald when he really has hair and Blaze's hair looks like '80s Hair instead of her usual shoulder length flowing hair, along with wearing blue shorts instead of her red attire.
    • The 3rd game finally got the character designs on the box illustration correct, but they strangely omitted Skate and replaced him with Roo and while Roo is technically in the game, he is not a playable character at the start and you need to unlock him without any hints as to how to unlock him.
  • The US cover for Konami's Suikoden featured what were supposed to be scenes of various characters from the game; however, only one or two are even recognizable as being certain characters from the game. Not exactly deceptive, but inaccurate nonetheless, and earns the US version of the game a position among the most awful game cover illustrations of all time. They get some points for the inexplicable Bruce Campbell lookalike...
  • Super Mario Bros.:
    • Super Mario Bros. 2's cover depicts Mario with a blue shirt and red overalls, an Early Installment Character-Design Difference that was pretty common at the time. In the game, though, Mario's sprite has the now-standard red shirt and blue overalls. This even carried over into the art for the later Japanese rerelease.
    • Super Mario Bros. 3's box has a screenshot of a grassy hill level with Parabeetles, which in the final game only appear in one level in the sky portion of World 5.
    • The box of Super Mario World claims that the game contains 96 levels. While there are 96 exits, the actual level count is a bit smaller; there are 69 "real" levels, plus an alternate version of one, four switch palaces, and two one-screen "bonus" areas.
    • The cover of Super Mario 64 DS features all four of the playable characters running a great distance away from Princess Peach's castle, but it is not possible to travel that far from it in the game. On the left is a red question mark block and a warp pipe, both of which do not appear in that specific area in-game (although a warp pipe briefly appears in the opening cutscene in a similar location). There is a giant floating power star to the right that neither appears in-game, nor looks like the power stars that are actually in the game.
    • The cover for the Super NES rail shooter Yoshi's Safari prominently features Yoshi, yet Mario is nowhere to be seen despite his own in-game prominence outside the actual gameplay. But then Yoshi is depicted looking back at the viewer as if it's Mario.
    • Mario Golf on the Nintendo 64 showcases Mario, Luigi, Peach, Bowser, Wario, Yoshi, Baby Mario, and Donkey Kong on the box art as well as the title screen. Only Peach, Yoshi, and Baby Mario (along with a human character) are playable from the start. Everyone else are hidden characters. This includes Mario and Luigi, which is very silly considering that they're Nintendo's mascots.
    • The boxart for Mario Is Missing! shows Bowser ambushing Mario from behind in a castle and takes him away while Luigi is trying to find him. The front of the box even says it's up to Luigi to save Mario and the world from Bowser. The back of the box continues with the lie by playing up to the world saving theme where Luigi can do things like "interrogate not so innocent bystanders," "thwart thieving Koopas", and "exploring cities". While you actually do get to save Mario and the world from Bowser and explore many cities, what you're not told is your adventure is Luigi running around in the real world looking for famous landmarks and objects that were taken by Bowser's minions and are answering geographical and history questions based on your location. In short, it was an educational game rather than a traditional Mario title, and it likely led to a lot of disappointed children that were gifted the game thinking it was another Mario game.
  • Surprise Surprise for the Amstrad CPC has a generic Medieval European Fantasy cover with an armored knight carrying a sword. The game is actually set in the Present Day, and as Stuart Ashen has pointed out, the weaponless protagonist looks more like Eminem.
  • The cover art for Tales of Phantasia for Super Famicom and Game Boy Advance shows Cress and Mint riding on the eight-legged Sleipnir with company of Arche on her Flying Broomstick. There is a High-Altitude Battle in which Cress and Arche participate with help from a flying horse, but Mint is absent in that battle, and the horse in question is the four-legged Pegasus (though Cress does borrow that Pegasus from a valkyrie, servant of Odin).
  • The European box illustration for the Taz-Mania Licensed Game for the SNES features Taz doing such things in a 2D sidescroller like dodging enemies and traps, and riding a mine cart, all of which can be done in the Sega Genesis gamenote . The SNES game is not a 2D sidescroller like the box illustration implies, rather, it's a racing game where Taz spends the entirety of it running down the road eating Kiwi birds.
  • The NES game Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Manhattan Project has the four Ninja Turtles fighting Foot Soldiers and Mousers as one might expect on the cover. Somewhat prominently, Triceraton is featured fighting the Ninja Turtles, but he does not appear in the game.
  • Tempest was an early vector graphics game, with a claw-shaped blaster firing down a true-perspective playfield. Superior Software's box and ads for the BBC Micro version of this game had screenshots of this, but the main painted artwork was of a dark and stormy night, with church tower in the background and an ominous figure in top hat and red-lined opera cape in the foreground... suggesting a possible breakdown in communications with the artist.
  • Tempo for the Sega 32X depicts a mutant with insect antennas protruding from his head, wearing sunglasses and a headset, and holding a musical note in one hand while kicking a red tentacled alien in the face. Not only is this inaccurate, it's a blatant case of American Kirby Is Hardcore — the character designs in-game are cute and cartoony, which the Japanese box art reflects.
  • Terminator Rampage depicts what was supposedly Meta-Node's final form on the cover art. Except on the cover the version of Meta-Node as depicted still retains organic parts and partial human features, when in the game when fought as a boss the Meta-Node is 100% mechanical and robotic.
  • The arcade promo flyer for ThunderJaws has a poster that imitates the cover art of Jaws, with your characters caught in the mouth of a gigantic shark. No such thing happens in the game.
  • The American and European box illustration for Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose! depict Buster wearing yellow boxer shorts with carrots on them. He does not wear them at all in any point in the game. In fact, the only time he wears something other than his his red shirt in the game is in the "Acme Looniversity Football" level, wherein he is dressed in his football uniform.
  • Tomb Raider Chronicles shows Lara Croft in a cat spy suit jumping out of a building shooting at someone with her signature dual pistols. Lara does infiltrate a building in the advertised outfit and the cut scene for the first level even shows her shooting a vent grate off with a pistol, but in the actual game, she doesn't have her pistols, but a limited ammo based machine gun.
  • Top Banana: In the boxart, KT looks like a cute chibi with a green cap, in the actual game, however, she looks more like a Creepy Doll.
  • In Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines, Lesbian Vampire Jeanette Voerman is a minor character who only shows up for about a third of the game as part of a major subplot. Apparently, that was enough to land her a spot as the sole character on the box cover. The developers noted their dislike of it, saying it was because the cover illustration was done by a marketing firm that hadn't played the game and had only various pieces of concept illustration to go with.
  • An urban legend had it that Atari 2600's Video Chess was the end result of a false-advertising lawsuit. The original box illustration for the Atari 2600 game system included a picture of a chess piece. Supposedly, someone sued Atari because there was no chess game available for the 2600. However, according to Bob Whitehead, the programmer of the game, there was no lawsuit.
  • The back cover for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos shows buildings a lot taller than the units themselves, as well as units that weren't even in the final game (although most were added later in the expansion pack or through modding).
  • The cover of the Atari 2600 version of Warlords is dominated by the figure of a knight in armor swinging a sword, which doesn't remotely resemble anything seen in the game.
  • Waxworks (1992)'s box shows a melting candle comprised of creepy faces, when nothing that even resembles it makes an appearance in the game.
  • For A Witch's Tale, the shading on the American box illustration makes Liddell look like she has brown hair. She's a blonde.
  • The covers of all four games in the Wizards & Warriors series featured designs depicting main character Kuros as a barbarian warrior in the style of Conan the Barbarian, complete with flowing locks and obvious huge muscles. In all four games, Kuros always wears platemail and almost always has a helmet. Even when he's not wearing a helmet, either all you can see are his eyes (in Ironsword) or he is seen with short hair, a mustache, and a beard (in Wizards & Warriors III).
    • The second game, Ironsword: Wizards & Warriors II even oddly featured featured male model Fabio Lanzoni (known for appearing on romance novel covers) as he brandishes the title Ironsword.
  • World Series Baseball 2K1 for the Sega Dreamcast came on the heels of the ultra-successful NBA and NFL 2K (the latter being a system mover in its own right), both developed by Visual Concepts, and WSB was presented as a sim-like entry along the other Sega Sports entries. However, the gameplay was actually a port of a Sega arcade game, and left the box in blatant lies. It boasted things like hot zones, scouting reports, and weather changes, neither of which were in the game. Also neither in the game were sim-like gameplay and user-controlled fielding, which among other flaws made the game universally panned, and the series was properly handed off to Visual Concepts the next year.
  • The PSP version of WWE SmackDown vs RAW 2007 feature screenshots of the console versions; while the PSP version looks solid enough on its own, it in no way compared to the console versions visually, esp. when it came to the player models.
  • The cover for the original XCOM game, UFO - Enemy Unknown, features a huge bug-eyed monstrosity which does not appear in the game in any way, shape, or form—though something that did would be a subversion of the title.
  • The cover of the TurboGrafx16 CD version of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys displays a Viking-type Barbarian Hero with a winged helmet instead of the series' redheaded hero Adol, who has never worn helmets.
  • In Yu-Gi-Oh! Reshef of Destruction, Yugi/Yami Yugi isn't the playable character, though he does tag along for the majority of the game.
  • Zoo Tycoon:
    • The inner box illustration shows an exhibit with hippos and flamingos and another exhibit with various African animals. Technically, you can do this in game, but most of the animal species shown together would be unhappy because of different exhibit requirements and other issues, such as the hippo and flamingo exhibit being way too overcrowded and too close to a guest hot spot for the shy flamingos, so it's clearly just a deceptive way to make the box illustration look good without being intended to be possible in game. If you try running a zoo like that, it will fail quickly. They had to actually go though the trouble to remove or disable the unhappy faces that float above animals' heads when exhibit requirements aren't met to get the box illustration to look like that, and the box illustration is suspiciously cropped so that the message box thing that tells you whether your zoo is successful or not is hidden.
    • That same box illustration shows an exhibit for polar bears that is too small for them.
    • The double expansion pack for Marine Mania and Dinosaur Digs does the exact same thing by showing the completely incompatible African elephants and woolly mammoths together. One wants snow and the other African savanna, for Pete's sake! The box illustration is even cropped again to hide the message box.

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