TimeSplitters Box Art

By JxFlipside

Originally hosted on TimeSplitters Resource. Hosted with permission

The TimeSplitters series though has had numerous different covers for each game, some good, some bad and some obscure. Chances are you have already seen some of the boxes and thought "Hey, why did they get a better cover than us?", but chances are that you have not seen half of them. This first TimeSplitters Resource article takes a look at both released and unreleased boxart for each game, to give you a more in depth look. The re-release cover art has been left out, as it's just a shrunk version of the same regions cover with a large border around it. To view a larger version of each box, just click on it.

TimeSplitters

Prototype box

American box

European box

Only 1 cover for the entire Europe region here, and no Japanese release. The prototype cover following the same idea as the final American box, but it is of a noticeably lower quality. Gretel for a start looks very off, she is in a different post and looks chubby around the waist with far more red, a red ponytail and red staring evil eyes. The background is more of a flat blue colour, and both the crosshair and timeline is at a slightly different angle with plainer colours.

The American box is a more advanced version of the prototype one, but opinion of it is usually split, probably due to it's reliance on a large chested robot wielding two guns, which seems to be targeting the teenage boys market.

The European box featured a large amount of cast members, with camera film in the background, for some odd reasons. The box isn't very well balanced, with far too much going on, and a mishmash of colours, and as such it also has not been too popular. The manual is also a pain at times, with it's reliance on a hard to read font and bad layout.

TimeSplitters 2

Prototype box	Japanese box	American box
European box	French box	Korean box

TimeSplitters 2 featured the largest number of different covers, with the original TS doing so well and TS2 being eagerly anticipated, the boxart was optimised for different regions. It usually followed along the same lines as a similar region, but featuring some small changes. All the boxes were plastered with quotes from magazines giving it acclaim.

The prototype box is largely similar to the Korean, German and American box, but it has a background that feels more like the mapmaker VR Tileset, than the flat white of the final box. It also features far more blue and has less motion blur around Cortez. It's strange why this box was dropped in favour of the more tedious final US box, it's still not very appealing to they eye, but it looks far better.

The American box is pretty much widely criticised, especially when you show the European box, it's extremely plain with a badly drawn Cortez image in the middle holding a terrible looking gun does even feature in the game. Not to mention the logo slapped over his crotch, with so much motion blur that it looks like he has unzipped his trousers and let the logo explode out. If all this was bad enough, the background is just a white room with a ton of bad shadows and motion blur, with all the superb looking levels in the game, even slapping a stock press release image in the background would have looked better. TS2 basically had an uphill struggle in the shops, trying to lure people to buy it with that terrible cover, but luckily the quality shone through.

The UK and part of Europe box features really exaggerated drawings on Harry Tipper, Ilsa Nadir and Gretel Mk.II in different poses. It was certainly unique and didn't want to make you put it down instantly, but it didn't show what the game was, just the fact it featured freaks with guns. Most people probably turned to the back to see what the game actually was, which is where things got better. The back had 6 images of the game, all showing off some nice special effects such as the Notre Dame boss one or the 4 player split screen image. Along the bottom was the phrase OUTNUMBERED BUT NEVER OUTGUNNED along with small exaggerated drawings of every Story mode playable character.

Part of Europe and the rest of the world got mutated versions of the US and UK box. France got it's own specific box, and it changed one of the problems with the UK box on the front. The UK box featured Ilsa Nadir and Gretel Mk.II on the front, not particularly well known characters, even if you had heard of TS the chances are you wouldn't know who they were. The French box replaced Ilsa Nadir with Cortez and Gretel Mk.II with Kitten Celeste. Although rather oddly, Kitten wore a dark red leather top and skirt instead of black.

Germany and possibly some other EU countries got things different again, instead of using the European box, they instead adapted the Korean box by removing the text under TimeSplitters 2. Korea as you can see had a modified version of the American box, with a darker background and Cortez and some writing under TimeSplitters 2.

Last, but certainly not least is the famous Japanese box art. Until Free Radical added the Japanese cover in their IAQ section, very few people even knew TS2 was released in Japan, much less that it was renamed Time Splitter: Invaders of the History. FPS games rarely sell in Japan, which is odd to see it had been released there. To meet with rules though, you were unable to shoot Monkeys unless they shot you first, due to being a protected species in Japan, and it's likely it was removed as a playable character in Arcade mode. The box itself is done like all traditional Japanese covers, featuring some beautiful hand drawn art of Cortez, Corp Hart with light effects and numbers. Since this beautiful box has come to people's attention, it's unsurprising to hear that most people find it the best cover of the lot.

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect

Worldwide box

Demo

Promo

TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, rather disappointingly had the same art for every region, featuring Cortez blasting out of a Time Portal. EA probably used one cover to cut costs, as reproducing different covers for every region is costly, but still, it's rather disappointing. The Xbox demo and PS2 promo version (which is in a small CD sized case) have a large image on the front of Cortez instead, but still a standard image.