I recently bought a Dragon Quest VIII game merely for what appeared to be a unique front cover (as shown in the above pics, significantly different from all other DQ8 cover arts, regardless of region). After receiving it, it looks like it is the standard version of the game [SLPM-65888] except, as said, the front cover is pretty obscure/rare. The back cover is exactly the same as the normal/standard version of the game except for a few differences which include the lack of a barcode, the world map on the back (second pic), the "V-Jump" on the spine, and the imperfect cutting on one side of the cover. With this information in mind, my best guess is that this front cover art comes from a DQ8 guidebook published by V-Jump (as an additional bonus). But which one? Or if not, from where? One other oddity is that this game I got, came with a bonus disc: ドラゴンクエストVIII プレミアム映像ディスク (Dragon Quest VIII: Premium Video Disc) [SLPM-62490]. This is strange for two reasons: 1) This disc is supposed to come with Dragon Quest V: Tenkuu no Hanayome [SLPM-65555] and 2) There is no reason for it to come with DQ8 since the disc is a gameplay demonstration of DQ8, basically a demo of sorts. Why have a demo included with the full game? Therefore, I conclude that the seller or whoever, had some sort of mix up and what was supposed to go with DQ5 (the DQ8 demo disc), ended up elsewhere (with the full DQ8 game). Unless hardcore Japanese DQ collectors can prove me wrong.
I think it is just an alternate jacket the came with an issue of V-Jump at some time, and you could swap it for the normal one if you liked to. I think they do it for other games too, I remember seeing different ones for some of the PS2 Dragon Ball Z games and PS3 Final Fantasy XIII.
Sellers do that all the time, i have a bunch of games with fliers advertising the game itself as coming soon, they just put together everything that have the same name of the game. Sometimes you get lucky with this as you get some rare promo discs pretty cheap as they have no clue whats that ^^
It's just a flyer, that Japanese shops sometimes have. They normally go into DVD cases and then put on display so people can preorder the game. The Cero mark is still pending and there is no barcode which means it is not really a game cover.
Ah okay, it's one of those special Japanese shop things then. I think you're incorrect on the pending CERO mark though. The CERO mark simply says "CERO: All Ages: Target Audience All Ages" and is the exact same as the one on the official cover. This particular CERO mark was superseded by "A" (i.e. 「全年齢」was replaced by "A").
