Continued some more: >>11916628 >>11916636

"But what about Final Fantasy? Their NES and SNES boxart wasn't very telling either" you may be asking.
Yeah, true. and they weren't SMASH successes until they had a guy with a big sword looking upwards at a monolithic nightmare with a high-contrast background, is all I'm saying.
Other stuff is involved, but don't fuck yourself on the packaging for absolutely no reason. I remember vividly what it was like, to never really see advertisements for video games, but be a huge consumer of them anyway.

You NEVER wanted to waste a weekend on a bad rental choice. And the best rentals, became purchases. And the best purchases, became "the game I saw at a friend's house, that I eventually got"