If Christopher Walken were to walk in on the artists drawing the artwork for the North American or Japanese box art for BlazBlue, the first thing he would say is it "needs more Bang." Let's be real. We are all comfortable here. Bang Shishigami is the greatest man in the history of the manly world. Sure, if you like two effeminate blond girls and the vampire version of the Desu girl from Rozen Maiden to dominate your box art of BlazBlue, be my guest. I, on the other hand, would design a box with Bang in the middle performing Fu Rin Ka Zan, and every time you open the game case, his amazing theme song would play.
Unfortunately, my dream will never come true. But that's not to say it can't happen for someone in Europe. In a weird acknowledgment toward BlazBlue's fan base, ARC System Works of Europe has announced, through NeoGAF, that fans will be designing the official European cover for the game.
What makes this news so cool is that (A) Europeans now have a solid confirmation that BlazBlue will be gracing their shores, and (B) ARC System Works is throwing their complete support behind the fans in letting them design the box art. They have full character designs and source material for download, to be used either in the design or as reference. Fans are also encouraged to draw their own work, and have until the end of September to get the designs in. Choices will be whittled down to ten, with the final design being the official box art for BlazBlue. The other nine will be in the manual.
While some might find the idea of fans designing the cover to be dangerous, I'm very excited to see what can come from this. Plenty of professionally designed game cases are utter garbage, and while the US and Japanese artwork is far from bad, there's always room for improvement. Besides, the September deadline speaks all sorts of things about the potential release date. I'll let you Europeans debate that little nugget while I go back to actually playing the game.
[Update] It get's even better, as publisher PQube and Zen Interactive, which represents ARC System for the European market, have announced that the game will release in 2010 with new characters and moves, as well as support five languages. Fingers crossed that squirrel-girl Makoto shows up! I admit, I hope this stuff comes to the US as DLC, or a special edition, becuase I would shamlessly buy it. Thanks Daedhead8!
Contest:
11:00 AM on 08.14.2009
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"Kawaii desu! Oshinataka desu ne!"
The desu girl is no vampire XD;;; she's walking/talking doll.