I was thinking about this the other day, but I never really noticed that the Japanese Mega Drive box art for OutRun essentially just crudely pasted what amounts to a sticker on the cover art to block out the art of the car originally on there. I only really noticed this when the Mega Drive Mini 2/Genesis Mini 2 was released, and I saw how they changed the box art for the US Genesis version (I own a Genesis copy of OutRun so it was the art I'm more familiar with). I didn't realize that this was true for the Japanese Mega Drive version as well.
Then, when looking around for the box art, I noticed that the Japanese Mark III cover art for OutRun uses the same illustration as the US Genesis cover art. So I'm guessing this was around the time Ferrari was threatening legal action against Sega over how much the car looked like a Testarossa. It does make me wonder if Sega of America just didn't care or what.
I suppose I should mention, the European Mega Drive cover art and European Game Gear release of OutRun used the original illustration, while the Japanese Game Gear cover art used the crudely pasted sticker art.
