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14 TERRIBLE ALBUM COVERS THAT COULD BE TERRIBLE GAME COVERS

30/5/2019

18 Comments

 
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It is well established that the game covers of yore weren't always great works of art.

Indeed, many of them appeared to have been either put together from clip-art by a four-year old, or scrawled in crayon by a smelly GCSE art student, or someone who got a cheap airbrush for Christmas. 

However, the same thing could be said of the musical world too; for every Unknown Pleasures or The Velvet Underground & Nico, there's a... well, there's a load like these - which appear to fall in the intersection of the Venn diagram of covers that would work just as well for old games as they would for terrible albums.

Behold this thing of which I speak!
LIL MILT - THE PROPHECY
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An Angel? A Devil? We're in pure Peter Molyneux territory, with the fate of the world held in your hands. Build a city! Decide whether the citizens are pure or sinful! Wonder where all those promised features have gone! Join the online mob and hound Peter Molyneux out of the games industry! 
MAGNUM - VIGILANTE
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I had the great privilege of seeing Magnum supporting Marillion at Milton Keynes Bowl in 1986. I remember nothing about Magnum, but I did get hit on the head by a bottle full of piss, and endured the remainder of the concert with a big, urine-stinking, lump on my head. Nothing changes!!!!

Anyhow - here we are clearly looking at the cover for a late-80s point-and-click fantasy adventure game. Magnum, you bunch of melts! (The ice-cream-called-Magnum joke).
PLAIN - PULL MY FINGER
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Try-hard rapper Plain is clearly a fan of the Grand Theft Auto series, judging from this edgy mess. Though this cover looks like one of those PS3 bootlegs you'd find in an exotic marketplace, or a generic GTA-lite "gangsta" game, created with only a tenth of Rockstar's budget. 
SCORPIONS - FLY TO THE RAINBOW
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This clumsily-airbrushed image would look right at home on the cover of almost any Commodore 64 or Spectrum game. Most likely it wouldn't relate much to the actual content, but very few covers did back then.
SOULJA SLIM - GIVE IT 2 'EM RAW
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Again, this doesn't look like an official release, but a Taiwanese bootleg of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Which, to be honest, would still feature the words "Give it 2 'Em Raw". 
RIOT - NARITA
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Narita's squatting sloth-sumo-man features on a cover that is pure 80s home computer, presumably the cover for side-scrolling combat game, featuring a plane as an end-of-level boss. Look: he's got an axe, and is pooing out some skulls! 
DR DOOM - FIRST COME FIRST SERVED
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Dr Doom has a nice haircut. This would be a wacky Amiga resource management game in which you have to serve hamburgers to a variety of kerrrraaaazy customers, including a gorilla and what might be a big wasp. Don't get the ingredients wrong, or the customers will start smashing up your establishment! 
MAIN SOURCE - BREAKING ATOMS
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All you'd need to do is replace the rappers with some middle class white folk, and this would slot in nicely alongside any number of Amiga and Atari ST puzzle games. 
PANTERA - METAL MAGIC
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Oh look - it's the ZX Spectrum version of Sega's Altered Beast. Please, Altered Beast, why do you have no lap or penis?
SHUT UP AND DANCE - DANCE BEFORE THE POLICE COME 
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Oiled Dudes vs Dragon Ninja. You could see this on a SNES box. I like how the guy on the right is giving you a wave. 

"Hi, guys! We're really slippery."
LEI SECA - ART ROCK 
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Pure Sierra Online territory here. The sword-wielding gentleman looks a little dubious. 

"How do you like the game you're in, sir?"

"Ennnh..."

Also, she looks like she's about to administer an enema. 

Sierra Online's Legends Of Enema: The Brown Crown. 
BABY AKA THE #1 STUNNA - BIRDMAN
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Oh look - it's the PS1 version of Sega's Altered Beast. 
FRUUPP - THE PRINCE OF HEAVEN'S EYES 
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Clearly a Super Mario Brothers rip-off for the Speccy. There's even a mushroom, and a stunted little fellow with a red shirt. Watch out, Fruupp - Nintendo's lawyers will be giving you a call!

Fruuuuuupp!
TRICK DADDY - WWW.THUG.COM
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A game from the early days of the Internet, when the Web was still a strange and mysterious unknown. This would be some sort of hacker-lite sim thing, where you have to hack into various secure websites by punching cursors. 

Also: can you remember the trick daddies you used to be able to get from the practical joke rack at the corner shop? You'd take them round your friend's house and lay them in the hall, and your friend would think it was their real daddy, and that he had died.

Hilarious fun! 
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18 Comments
Joe Hartley
30/5/2019 10:49:38 am

I applaud the efforts of these tacky and general rubbish album covers. They are works of art compared to the crapness of Kasabian's 2017 album "For Crying Out Loud (2017)"!

Worth checking the amazing record covers of Wayne Cochran. He has a quiff from the gods.

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Dominic
30/5/2019 10:54:47 am

It’s not Dr Doom, it’s Dr Dooom!

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Cat Mara
30/5/2019 11:01:34 am

Yes, like Leee John (and if that reference doesn't date me, nothing will)

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Dominic
30/5/2019 11:19:33 am

And Fizzz

Chris
30/5/2019 11:12:46 am

Pretty sure Breaking Atoms is a BBC Micro "Edutainment" title. Remember being forced to play this in science class!

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Geebs
30/5/2019 12:08:16 pm

The guy on the right in the Li’l Milt album cover has a one, two, three.....:.sixteen pack. I’m informed that he has read every single issue of Men’s Health. Twice.

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Spiney O'Sullivan
30/5/2019 02:29:02 pm

The www.thug.com album cover is the most wonderfully 90s internet thing I've seen since the Space Jam website (https://www.spacejam.com). Even the word "on-line" having both inverted commas and a hyphen is great. All it's missing is a hit counter and guestbook at the bottom.

Of course, the real question is whether you'd "surf" to www.thug.com from AskJeeves, or from one of what I assume are sites belonging to rappers in the same webring.

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RG
30/5/2019 03:35:20 pm

None from Marillion's oeuvre?

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JD
30/5/2019 06:34:47 pm

Milt is a word meaning fish spunk

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Cat Mara
1/6/2019 07:06:59 pm

It's still used as an insult in Ireland (pronounced as "melt" though) in the phrase, "whore's melt"

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Voiced By Guides
30/5/2019 07:35:58 pm

Recurring By Spacemen 3 = 'free' mobile puzzler with oodles of hidden purchases required to progress
First Dinosaur (Jr) album = an early attempt at a blissed out open world farming sim where hours of play could be wiped out by a sudden drought
Paranoid By Black Sabbath = random combat RPG with plenty of fetch and carry to get Morlorck The Unclaggy to craft you a battleaxe upgrade

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Penyrolewen
30/5/2019 09:11:18 pm

But ‘Recurring’ has a great cover. True fact: my mate Adam painted his whole bedroom wall with that design. He’s a good artist and it looked ace.
Also, Dr Doooom is one of Kool Keith’s alter egos. He has many (50 or so, I think) although I’m not even sure if ‘Kool’ is really his name. The guy is nuts and also sometimes an amazing rapper. Dr Dooom was a diss album and attack on Dr Octagon who was an alter ego of....Kool Keith. Random lyric: (not from Dr Dooom I don’t think)
I get atomic, hypo galactical,
Word to mom, I’m in my own world.
Galaxy rays? Powerful.

He’s got ‘da flow’ though. And good hair.

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Voiced By Guides
31/5/2019 08:11:34 am

Ok, I've had another glance at Recurring in light of your reply (to be honest it was the first thing to pop into my head as it's always been one that's grated my gooch as it just didn't seem to suit the band or album). Fair enough, it has a sort of late 60s/ early 70s animated kids tv show thing going on that I'd missed before, and I can definitely see how it would work as wallpaper!

Dominic
31/5/2019 11:21:07 am

My search for Spacemen 3 wall decoration has lead me to the wonderful world of not just Spacemen 3 and A Tribe Called Quest leggings but also Galaga, Bubble Bobble and Wonderboy leggings (the latter really does not work!).

There’s even som periodic table leggings ffs!

Dominic
31/5/2019 11:22:23 am

The link that I forgot:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/EatmeClothing/items?ref=s2-header-shopname&listing_id=113234034§ion_id=12034572

Penyrolewen
31/5/2019 01:46:10 pm

Funny how we see things differently! It was always my favourite Spacemen 3 cover (not my favourite album though. That’s probably The Perfect Prescription, which has a well dodgy cover. ) I thought most of their other covers were a bit boring/dodgy but I liked Recurring. Mind you, my wife always tells me that I have awful visual taste so don’t listen to me! Random question but linked (a bit): who here can visualise i.e. see pictures in their mind, at will? I can’t, at all. It’s just black. I cannot ‘see’ anything at all in my mind except in dreams. Didn’t even know that this was not the norm until a few years ago - who knows what other people have in their brains? I’m now led to believe (especially by my wife) that this is very strange. What do you lot think?

Voiced By Guides
31/5/2019 06:58:51 pm

With you on 'Prescription' as their best (*grudgingly concedes that pushing the Mercia Leisure Centre bootleg's case would be a indie-wankery step too far*). I don't really think any of their covers were great, or even most of the various spin off guises. Although to belatedly get this back on topic E.A.R's 'Beyond The Pale' could double as 'Crash Bandicoot- The Julian Cope Years'.re: the whole pictures in mind deal- i think there is a gap between thought, visualisation and image that (usually) gets blurred as we get older, much like with the conversion of thought/ language/ speech- I notice the later more as I used to have a speech impediment that slowed that whole process down to point where I could see the joins, if that makes any sense at all.

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Penyrolewen
1/6/2019 11:21:35 pm

Ooh, I don’t know that one! I’m in the process of downloading it now. I haven’t paid too much attention to the (many) live bootlegs as they all seem to feature the same tracks (pretty much) as are on ‘Performance’, some done better, some worse, but all really needing you to have been there for the full effect.

As for Perfect Prescription, if we’re being indie nerds, I prefer the 1996 reissue with 4 bonus tracks. I was under a misapprehension that the 2 of these missing from the uk release (Starship and Rollercoaster instead of Soul 1 and That’s Just Fine, unless you have an original 1987 copy, which has none of these bonus tracks) were only on the American release. The 1996 version has them all and an orange, rather than gold, cover. I do prefer the gold cover though - maximum dodginess.

Back on the original topic, Spiritualized’s Lazer Guided Melodies cover could be some futuristic AI/sci fi game cover but I don’t know which one - suggestions?

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