The North American SNES cover of the game depicts an old bearded man playing a banjo with a spaceship flying in the background, an unusual departure for a side-scrolling space-themed shoot 'em up. According to Matt Guss of Kemco's American advertising team, they wanted to make the game stand out more-so than other games of the same genre, saying they all had "monsters or spaceships or something [...] We wanted to create shock value so someone would have to pick the game up. We called it the 'Heavy Huh?!' factor." Art director Keith Campbell said they did the photoshoot themselves, hiring a model for the role of the "80-something hayseed" playing a banjo. That model was Bertil Valley, who owned a construction company in the state of Washington for over 20 years and was a volunteer Santa Claus for over 25 years. He previously worked with Campbell by appearing as Santa Claus on the cover of the charity Christmas album "Christmas in the Northwest". Valley died in 2004 at the age of 91.