Collector's delight: Recto-verso

Halfway between reversible clothing and drawings hidden under manga jackets, two-sided cover foils are the new en vogue gaming Easter Egg. I discovered the existence of that trend as I was checking my newly received copy of Trillion God of Destruction: my sharp eyes spotted unaccountable patches of colours through the box' interstices, and a keener examination revealed the unthinkable: the cover fold was illustrated on both sides! I was so elated by that unexpected discovery that I immediatly started inspecting the rest of my Vita collection; and to my utter delight, I uncovered more of these recto-verso covers. Here are the most memorable ones in all their colourful glory!

In addition to these exclusive covers, I also found some interesting variations on other games. Illustrations devoid of text are featured behind the cover folds of several Hyperdimension games, Trails of Cold Steel's cover fold sports both the European and North-American art for the game (Trillion does the same with the Japanese and Western art) and the Asian version of Moe Chronicles has a reversible English/Chinese cover. But what about 3DS games, you may ask? Well, although they are not as keen on that trend as Vita games, I managed to extract two gorgeous examples from my collection:

These alternative covers are often strikingly more beautiful than the official ones—so much so that I decided to leave a couple of them in place. They also tend to be starker and more sober, evacuating text and logos to focus on a more unified and stylish overall look, and they don't hesitate to wallow in kawaisa and moe-inducing designs. (This culminates in the cover of Stranger of Sword City, whose sole gimmick and purpose is to offer a kawaii version of the original character designs to moe-hungry players.) It's fascinating to see how the simple act of shifting a game cover can give a totally new vibe to said game; this is the kind of exquisite detail that makes physical games valuable and provides excellent incentive to purchase them, on top of adding a nice element of surprise to the discovery of new games. Now that I'm aware of the existence of that lovely feature, I'll keep my eyes peeled and check every new Vita game for a hidden cover design. Thanks for reading, and be my guest anytime!