Box Art Brawl – Duel: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales - BAB — *Image: Nintendo Life*

Is everybody ready for another edition of Box Art Brawl? Oh, go on then!

With The Mysterious Book on our minds, we took a look at Yoshi’s Universal Gravitation last time, and it was another pretty close-run competition at the top. North America crashed out of the race with 14% of the vote, leaving Japan and Europe to fight over the remainder. It was ultimately the horizontal Japanese design that took it, though, claiming 46% of the vote while Europe received 41%.

This week, with all the recent talk of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth on Switch 2, we’ve been thinking an awful lot about those adorable little Chocobo. So yes, it felt only right that we matched up a pair of covers from the DS’ Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales.

This delightful little release launched in 2007 and saw us navigating a magical book to take down Darkmaster Bebuzzu. There’s card-based combat, there’s an adorable art style, there’s microgames — come on, what’s not to like?

With Europe and Japan opting for the same design, we have just two covers to choose between this week. Let’s see them, shall we?

North America

Image: Square Enix / Launchbox

The North American design sells Chocobo Tales as the Paper Mario game time forgot. It’s all really rather sweet, with its picture-book aesthetic, bright colours and impressive number of sprites. There’s perhaps a little too much going on at an initial glance, but it sure does feel like one of those covers that grows on you the more you look at it.

If only that central Chocobo was a little bigger, eh?

Europe / Japan

Image: Square Enix / Launchbox

Oh, now that’s bigger! The European and Japanese designs throw all of North America’s detail out the window and opt for a big, eye-catching Chocobo instead. It’s certainly more simplistic, and the bright yellow backdrop stands out from the crowd, but is it actually a case of ‘less is more’?