To hopefully calm my never-ending fascination with regional box art changes, I’m going to start highlighting some of the more interesting swaps I come across.

I’m not going to try to fully explain or investigate why the changes might have been made — since it could be anything from territory-specific focus groups to licensing woes — but I may offer a few theories depending on the game. In all honesty, by showcasing them I just hope to hook one or two of you on my strange, strange obsession for comparing box art from around the world. 

Today’s examples are the US and Japanese versions of Uncharted: Golden Abyss for PS Vita.

This one might actually have a fairly simple explanation: the Japanese and domestic releases took place months apart. Lots of things can change over a time period like that, and for all we know the artist’s contract ran out at the end of 2011 and Sony couldn’t use the same image for the US version released in 2012.

Still, the change is quite drastic, and I’d be happy to hear your theories. Enjoy!