Hideo Kojima Designed METAL GEAR SOLID’s Box Art to Confuse Shoppers, but Stores Ruined His Plan
Hideo Kojima had a pretty clever plan for the Japanese box art of Metal Gear Solid as he wanted to make it look strange enough that people couldn’t help but pick it up. The problem? Some retailers apparently thought the package needed fixing and accidentally killed the whole idea.
The Metal Gear Solid series has some of the coolest box art in gaming, thanks largely to artist Yoji Shinkawa, whose distinctive illustrations appeared on many of the Japanese and European releases. American players weren’t always so lucky, with several entries getting 3D-rendered covers instead.
The original Metal Gear Solid was an interesting case. Europe received Shinkawa artwork, while the Japanese and American PlayStation releases went with extremely simple white covers dominated by the game’s title.
There was one important difference. The American version displayed the Metal Gear Solid logo in red, while the Japanese release positioned its title vertically, making the package look a little odd when sitting normally on a store shelf.
That was exactly what Kojima wanted. Explaining the decision on X, Kojima revealed that the unusual placement was essentially a marketing trick designed to make shoppers stop and investigate:
"When you placed [it] on a shelf, I intentionally designed the package to make customers wonder, 'Why is it vertical?!' and pick it up to see what it is, leading them to the game information from there!"
Instead of cramming the cover with characters, explosions, or screenshots, he wanted the physical package itself to mess with people just enough to earn a second look.
Unfortunately, some stores decided to lend a hand. Kojima explained: "Some stores, perhaps trying to be helpful, turned the package sideways and displayed it horizontally instead of the way I intended."
In trying to make the box look right, they storiesremoved the visual trick Kojima had intentionally built into it. Using weird box art to get somebody’s attention certainly isn’t exclusive to Metal Gear Solid. One of gaming’s greatest examples is Phalanx for the SNES.
The Japanese and European Phalanx covers featured exactly the sort of imagery you’d expect from a space shooter, complete with a spaceship and explosions. The American release went in a completely different direction and slapped an older man playing a banjo on the front, with a tiny spaceship cruising through the background.
It barely tells you anything about the game, but decades later, people still remember that ridiculous cover. Mission accomplished.
Kojima was aiming for something far more restrained with Metal Gear Solid, but the thinking was similar. It was a smart little piece of PlayStation-era marketing.
