Galactic Pinball box art goes head-to-head: NA vs Japan

A weekly Box Art Brawl poll paired the North American and Japanese covers of Virtual Boy’s Galactic Pinball and invited readers to vote for their preferred design. The matchup was part of a series highlighting Virtual Boy games now available through Nintendo’s online service.

No European cover was presented for this title. The feature showed the two regional designs and asked readers to choose between them.

The North American cover was described as “colorful, it’s bright, it’s… pinball,” and the feature noted it includes pinball elements such as a bumper and a rail while the Virtual Boy logo obscures a key part of the image.

The Japanese cover was described as asking “what if Picasso painted a pinball machine.” The piece called that design more abstract and visually busy, and it pointed to a nostalgic quality in the mid-1990s 3D graphics.

The feature also noted that Virtual Boy hardware has been associated with discomfort and headaches for some players.

The Box Art Brawl series runs weekly. In the previous installment, a three-way poll for Bubsy in Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind gave the North American cover 44% of votes, Japan 37% and Europe 18%. Readers were asked to cast votes on the Galactic Pinball covers, and the series indicated another matchup will appear next week.