The first thing I thought of when I saw this thread was Ico. Hands down one of the worst covers ever. I wouldn't be surprised if it's part of the reason it sold so poorly. It completely undermines the games artistic brilliance to package it in something quite the opposite.

Quote Originally Posted by Mirage View Post
Other than this there's of course the often cheesy Final Fantasy boxes vs. the classy and minimalistic box arts that we get in japan and europe.
I agree with this to an extent. They weren't so bad in the SNES era, and I really liked the limited edition case art for XII.

The original Mega Man got pretty well ganked in cover art. I don't have time to track down a picture right now but I'm sure someone will oblige for those who haven't seen it.