Basic Trope: In one release, a game has a cute cover, while in another localization it is given a different, tougher one.
- Straight:
- The Japanese version of The Adventure of Lanra, an Affectionate Parody of Super NES RPGs, has Lanra holding a flower while the North American version has her holding a gun.
- The Japanese box art is pretty and pastel, while the American box art goes for a grungier look.
- Exaggerated:
- The Adventure of Lanra's Japanese cover has the protagonist frolicking through a field of cherry blossoms with her pet Mon, while on the North American box, Lanra is bloodily cutting a monster in half with a chainsaw.
- The entire game is completely different depending on where the region is. Get a natural, Japanese release? It's cute and lighthearted. Get a European release? It's pretty nice, though it has its Tearjerker and Nightmare Fuel moments. Get the North American release? It's a full blown Ultra Super Death Gore Fest Chainsawer 3000.
- Downplayed:
- The only difference between the North American and Japanese covers is that Japanese Lanra has a big smile, and North American Lanra is given some angry eyebrows and a frown.
- The colors are altered to give a much more cooler look.
- Justified:
- The artist didn't know that it's a parody of RPGs, and instead gives it a North American cover which plays it straight.
- Or in order to appeal to its audience, the cover was given.
- The cover for the North American original spoiled the crapsaccharine nature of the game, so the Japanese cover went for a cutesy cover that better fit the initial stages of the game.
- Inverted:
- The Japanese cover shows Lanra wearing a skin-tight, Stripperiffic high-tech dress with blue-tinted Cyberpunk-ish backdrop, but the North American cover is a cute photo of a very large floppy disk, which turns out to be the MacGuffin of the RPG called the MacGuffin Disc.
- The original Japanese cover shows Lanra as a tough gun-toting hero in the midst of a shoot-out, while the North American cover shows her and her True Companions celebrating a party somewhere.
- The game was originally developed in America, and Lanra is made to look cuter and more Animesque for the Japanese release.
- Subverted: The North American cover for The Adventures of Lanra looks serious at first glance, but when you look closer you see certain details, such as the fact that the monster Lanra's fighting is actually a giant gummi bear, the use of a pogo stick as a melee weapon, and the ninjas watching the fight and eating popcorn, that make it obvious that it's a parody of such covers.
- The North American cover of "Lanra's Nightmare: Childhood's Terror" showed her terrified and brandishing a knife against the undead in a Nightmare Fuel Coloring Book style. The original cover of "Lanra's Nightmare" had a cutesy art style, but featured chopsticks stuck in a rice bowl, deadly Youkai in groups of four, and other idiomatic signs of horror. Thus, the North American cover was more of a Cultural Translation as the original was a type of hardcore that didn't translate as easily.
- Double Subverted: ... But the company knows that people like bad art, so they have fake bad art on the flip side of the cover.
- Parodied: Bob's favorite RPG, The Adventure of Lanra, is given a North American release. Instead of a cover that shows it's an Affectionate Parody of RPGs that runs on Rule of Cute, it makes the game look like a gory, realistic RPG with a busty, Stripperiffic protagonist.
- Zig Zagged:
- The Japanese version of The Adventure of Lanra has a cute cover, while the North American version has a tougher one. However, when the game is released as a special edition, the North American version uses the original Japanese artwork. The Japanese cover of The Remake, on the other hand, switches to the North American cover...
- Both the Japanese version and the North American version of The Adventure of Lanra features Lanra holding her BFG, with a Humongous Mecha in the background. However, the European boxart features Lanra on a generic background, holding something less violent, like flowers, or bottles.
- Averted:
- The North American and Japanese covers are identical.
- Or, if it's different, one is not more or less hardcore than the other.
- Enforced:
- "Cute doesn't sell in North America. Make the cover Darker and Edgier."
- "The style is cute and all, but don't they realize that here in the good old US of A this implies that the 'heroine' is a…?"
- Lampshaded: Lanra shows her friends the cute Japanese art, and they think it is too cutesy.
- Invoked: The executives at Zony thought the game wouldn't sell well in North America if it had a cutesy cover, so it is given a new, "hardcore" one.
- Exploited: Meanwhile in Japan: "Put angry eyebrows on it! Americans dig that!"
- Defied: The North American advertisements/cover depict Lanra refusing to "be hardcore" — "I'm cute and badass! Deal with it!"
- Discussed: "I don't remember the cover looking like this in the Japanese screenshot."
- Conversed: "Why are the covers of Lanra's game so different between the Japanese and North American versions?"
- Deconstructed: The misleading cover causes The Adventure of Lanra to sell poorly in North America.
- Reconstructed: ... But it becomes a Cult Classic amongst gamers who know the cover doesn't fit the game, or even because of the cover.
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