Once more I am going to have to question those. Going through them in order
Zhadnost
"Welcome to Zhadnost, the "most popular game on Bizzarnian state run television"! Bizzarnia, a small communist nation has kidnapped contestants for this its favourite game show and is playing them against each other to compete for their freedom."
Seems pretty fitting then.
Winning Post.
They might have only seen the intro video and made that but a bit of stylised art that is clearly about horse racing.
Way of the Warrior.
Assuming that you are not trying to make a comment about how that is a Japanese style sword/dagger and the yin yang is a symbol in various Chinese philosophies I am not sure what needs to be said.
Has a guy playing golf for a golf game... seems OK to me.
Game show game has game show art... while I am always up for more it is hardly bad.
Space Pirates. I am not a fan of photo boxart so much but mean looking guy in a sci fi helmet... seems within reason.
Space Hulk. That is not the best Warhammer 40K art I have ever seen but definitely a 40K space marine there.
Slam Jam. Bit basic but motion blur for action and clearly indicating a basketball game.
Sewer Shark. Not terribly indicative of the gameplay but don't know if I would call it bad.
Road Rash. By this point it had lost some of its humour and charm from the other efforts but it is a game about motorbike racing with some combat options.
Seal of the Pharaoh. I would have probably lost the 4 enemies from the main panel, maybe put the door as a faded out thing in the sky but works.
Scramble Cobra is a bit dark in that scan but the Cobra at the time was well identified as an attack helicopter.
Return Fire. Text work is not great and we can have a debate about the nature of abstract art like that and its suitability here. If you wanted to put the PS1 logo on the 3do artwork then that would be the superior version of both.
Quarterback Attack. That is some aggressively 90s font and text styling but serviceable overall.
Psychic Detective. Colours are fine, the split head thing for psychics and the like I covered last time and one is wearing a pulp detective novel type hat to indicate as such, so maybe a touch cliche but still works.
PO'ed. "It features a cook of a destroyed spaceship marooned on an alien world." offers so many options so yeah that is lazy as you like, and I am not entirely sure what slime has to do with this. So yeah I think we have our first bad one.
Plumbers Don't Wear Ties. A somewhat infamous game but if you wanted to nail that 90s porn VHS look then they have it. By itself though then yeah nothing to write home about.
The Perfect General. What is wrong with that? Tells you what it is about, evokes any number of propaganda posters or war iconography and is generally pretty pleasing to the eye (almost has a bit of golden spiral going on even). If I was making a modernish military strategy game I would be delighted to get back cover art like that.
Olympic Summer games and Olympic Soccer. By the numbers sports game covers and I am not sure about the graphics for the Summer Games one but not a complete turn off either.
Night Trap. You mean the game where you spy on pretty ladies in a house via CCTV (said game also being a full motion video game, which was still a novel concept) and try to protect them from invaders? The game is lacklustre at best and mostly only remembered for the controversy surrounding it at the time but boxart wise I have seen far far worse.
Mazer. Font is a bit hard to read and CGI pretty sub par but at least gives you an idea of what it is about. Not great by any means.
Bazookatone. The game is a mediocre slow platformer with the donkey kong prerendered sprites approach to the world (albeit a bit after they made it notable) and that boxart conveys more speed than that guy ever really moves with but I can't get to bad really.
Jammit. I know some want to go back to edgy sports games and to be fair fifa street probably came as close to not making me fall asleep as a football game has ever got since sensible soccer but it is a street focused basketball game.
Immercenary. That is probably the last time EA would allow their logo to not be front and centre and they probably ought to have kept it hidden as I am sure the owners of Battlestar Gallactica will be on their case. Still if they did not have the "combat in a digital world" line in that it would have been my among my first guesses about the contents of the game.
Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. In this game you ride skateboards downhill. By no means a good game but boxart wise that does what it has to do.
The Horde. It does prominently feature a king and a squire/esteemed subject, and you are under attack by hungry red monsters. I reckon the title screen for the game would have been better in some ways and I would have no clue as to the mechanics of the game (though action strategy was new at the time), nor does it particularly please my eye but I am having a hard time arriving at bad.
Fun'N'Games. Nightmare fuel really but broadly in keeping with the art style of the game and cartoons of the time.
Escape from Monster Manor. I would have blown up that image to the whole boxart (or nearly so with a black background if necessary) but that with the escape from Monster Manor title tells me most of what I need to know here.
Doctor Hauzer. The swinging blade thing is classic trap iconography, and the gears speak to puzzles and whatnot (better yet they also don't appear to be 3 gears that will lock themselves up if someone tried to turn them which is what I normally see). Another by no means good but speaks to something of a mystery/trap dodging affair with the wormhole thing being a mysterious forces theme as well. I imagine far better could be done but I would also let that go out to the world.
Journeyman Project. Victim of bad, or at least badly aged, CGI. Does not tell me too much about the game really so there is that, and does not make me want to play it. As as complete turn off though I can't get there.
Corpse Killer. Bad? That is great. Game has you dropped on a tropical island to fight zombies and that tells me just that. Another I would be delighted to have for such a game. Font wise Killer is perhaps not the best font choice and Corpse maybe leans too much for old school horror poster but those are both fairly minor things.
Battlesport. Future sports game where you fight in spaceships of a sort in an arena for a sport (think Rocket League but a fraction as good). Saw it in action as part of this and I think i would rather play Speedball, and I really don't like speedball (don't know why, just never clicked for me). Don't know how you are going to work the sport angle into graphics without getting cheesy but it is a game featuring a space ship that looks somewhat like that one depicted. Could be worse.
Ballz. Victim of the extreme naming trends of the time I guess and I will probably have to cover things here as far as history of graphics (short version being 3d balls are easy to render so there was a bit of a fad for making things from them for a while, see also Vectorman, and even traditional 2d made use of it -- megaman,
Icebreaker. Yeah don't need to say too much about that one.
Castlevania Down of Sorrow. Grey label/player's choice/second issue version. Actually took me a second there to realise what you meant. The base boxart twisted to a jaunty angle is the absolute laziest method out there (as in black background times new roman text is less lazy) and the original was nothing special to begin with (character display with main character up front was probably old when the hills were young, that doing less than most here). That said it I would sooner have that on my shelf than a lot of grey label/player's choice/second issue versions I have seen/obtained over the years.
As you frequently seem to want things then one of the games I was thinking of last time for the bad region changes was Knight's Contract.
Now when comparing US to EU approaches to graphics design then most people will tell you the US goes in for massively oversaturated and if they can stimulate you more visually then they will. This is basically the perfect example in boxart form.
