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is this the most iconic video game cover art ever?

22/1/2018

30 Comments

 
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I'm a sucker for nice artwork. I mean, I suppose we all are; nobody wants their eyeballs assaulted with ugly art. And yet it's amazing how few truly iconic video game covers there have actually been.

I mean, look at all the greatest albums ever made. Even if you're not a fan of music, it's likely you could recognise the White Album, or The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders of Mars. 

Can you even remember the cover of, say, last year's Horizon: Zero Dawn, or Ghost Recon: Wildlands? Those responsible for most modern cover art seem to favour the generic over the truly memorable. Why? We can but speculate that they are history's biggest idiots.

Still, it hasn't always been thus. Here are 12 of the most iconic video game covers of all time - and not all for the right reasons.
DOOM
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I will say it now: this is the most iconic video game cover art ever. It's gaming's very own Nevermind, or Abbey Road, or The Velvet Underground & Nico, or Ogden's Nut Gone Flake. Which is a shame, as - once you get into it - it really isn't the best painting ever. If this was on a mid-80s heavy metal album called something like Demon Holocaust, or Slaughter Of The Space-Innocents, or Foetus Slayer Jamboree, it would've been forgotten - and rightly so.

It was painted by the excellently-named Don Ivan Punchatz, whose garish and anatomically dubious art afforded him a long and distinguished career as a fantasy and sci-fi illustrator.

Still, good use of colour - with the green of the space marine's uniform contrasting nicely with the reds, oranges, and yellows of Mars and its demons. Really, though, it's that logo (also designed by Punchatz) which truly made it.

​So, perhaps, I should've said that it's not so much the most iconic video game cover art ever, as the most iconic video game logo ever. Either way: it worked.
BARBARIAN
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Notable more for the gratuitous amount of bare flesh on display than its originality, the Barbarian cover - a photographic rendition of the sort of generic fantasy art found on any number of pulp novels - famously featured Wolf from Gladiators and Page 3 "stunna" Maria Whittaker.

You wouldn't get away with it now of course, and even in the 80s it managed to provoke a storm of indignation, being labelled "trashy", "offensive" and "pornographic". All of which, inevitably, managed to raise the game's profile massively - and led to it not only being a huge hit, but its inclusion in this: the most important list of all time.
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: A LINK TO THE PAST
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This shouldn't be iconic. I mean, it's literally just the Zelda logo on a gold background. It's the very definition of lazy, and yet... it is sort of brilliant. Somehow, its simplicity made it memorable, and the combination of sword/shield/gold did as much to tease the content of the game itself as any fancy, fluffy, painting would've done. It makes for a mystery box of a game, and succeeds in luring the player in, rather than alienating them.
LEMMINGS
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A fairly weak illustration, let's face it. Again, though, somehow it works. I think it's the limited use of colours; the green and blue, and the bold black outline of that central Lemming, help it to stand out. There's a lot of detail going on in the background, but the focus on the key character image draws your eye to that, and stops you being overwhelmed.

Let us also pause to run our bare chests across another classic logo. 
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2
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To be honest, I could've picked almost any one of Sega's Mega Drive Sonic games - they were all memorable in their own way - but I've gone for Sonic 2. It was a bold choice, and not a little odd to include the 2 itself in the artwork, rather than leave the title to do the heavy lifting. Somehow, though, it succeeds in raising expectations. Everything about it commits to more-of-the-same - but bigger and better. Even looking at it now I get a little shiver of hysteria.
HEAVY RAIN
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I've said it before, but Heavy Rain was one of the dullest gaming experiences I've ever had. I suffered through it, wrestling with boredom the entire way, but the cover should've warned me that my adrenal gland wasn't at any risk of a workout. It's simple, it's stark, and it's an image which even those who never played Heavy Rain can recognise. 

Notably, this is the European art; the American version simply plastered the four main characters on the cover, and failed utterly to intrigue. The Japanese edition was slightly better, with romanticised image of a nose and mouth sticking out of a pool of water.

However, it's fair to say that us Europeans got the best one, being treated to an image which did and said very little, but managed to tease the mystery around which this most tedious of games was constructed.
ALIEN BREED
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The 16-bit home computer era gave us lovely, big, boxes which gave cover artists plenty of room to play with. What marks out Alien Breed is that its art would've worked just as well on a modern DVD case. A sharp-fanged monster lunging at you from the shadows; it's the perfect image. It tells you what the game's going to be like, conveying tension and horror, without being overly fussy.

Furthermore, it's paying just enough homage to the Alien movies to wink at the audience, without going so far as to face legal action.
TETRIS
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How do you get people hepped-up for a game which isn't known for having particularly complex graphics? Well... you do it like this. Admittedly, the Tetris cover for the Game Boy might have achieved iconic status due to the game's sheer ubiquity, but there's a nice sense of drama in its use of perspective.

​It doesn't overstep the mark by offering much more than the game itself, yet manages to portray the panic often associated with Tetris. Look at those holes and the horizontal orange block on the right-hand side. it's enough to give anybody anxiety-diarrhoea.
DUKE NUKEM 3D
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Frankly, a shameless rip-off of the Doom artwork, even down to the colours, the Duke Nukem 3D cover has nevertheless become almost as memorable as its inspiration. It's actually a better painting, on a purely technical level, and it's because of this image that Duke himself has become a gaming icon - despite the entire experience being viewed through his eyes.
ANT ATTACK
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This cover was a lie. The ants in Ant Attack were nowhere near that big, yet I - and thousands of others - forgave it. On a purely artistic level this is pretty basic, but another dramatic use of perspective, the desolate setting, and the size of that ant towering over the terrified couple, pushed this into the brains of all who saw it.
BORDERLANDS
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Massive kudos to the Borderlands team for eschewing the modern games industry standard of releasing all video games with a cover of a moody, unshaven, middle-aged male protagonist in a long-sleeved t-shirt and harness, holding a gun.

The Borderlands cover was bright, comic book-y (in keeping with the game's art style), and featured that guy, whoever he was. A right mental, from the looks of it. Frankly, we didn't know prior to playing the game, and that's precisely how it managed to hook us in.
WORLD OF WARCRAFT
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Having been knocking around for what feels like forever, World of Warcraft's original box-art was pretty rote fantasy nonsense. Nevertheless, a combination of the circular framing's earth colours, and the more ethereal artwork within it, coupled to that logo, is another great example of the whole overcoming the individual elements. I mean, it's a nice enough picture and all that, but you wouldn't really want it on your living room wall, unless you were insane in some way. 

Yet, great video game cover art doesn't need to be high art to do it's job. It simply needs to be memorable, and convey some sense of what you're going to be getting. World of Warcraft succeeded consummately. Also: dwarf with a blunderbuss. Who's going to refuse that?
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30 Comments
Ter G
22/1/2018 10:14:47 am

What's that guy in the background of the doom cover doing ?

"Hey, wait for me .... yoohoo !" ?
People don't say 'yoohoo' anymore - but they did when doom came out.

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Harry Steele
22/1/2018 10:39:50 am

I've always appreciated that standard-issue space marine uniform has a window for your six-pack

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Dagenham Swish, Private Pie Investigator
22/1/2018 10:21:56 am

Errr, no Roger Dean artwork? At all? Are you mad or what are you?

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Mr Biffo
22/1/2018 10:31:36 am

Nearly put Shadow of the Beast on there, but... well... all his stuff looks the same to me, just in different colours. It's not about the best!

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Dagenham Swish, Privage Pie Investigator
22/1/2018 05:51:47 pm

Yeah fair enough, his stuff does look very samey. I guess I just like that sameyness.

Bruce Flagpole
22/1/2018 10:52:26 am

What a strange, sad twist of fate to be on the day that it's announced that Bob Wakelin has passed away. i'm not sure we'd have got Doom like that if not for stuff like his Operation Wolf cover/logo (assuming he did the logo too).

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Super Bad Advice
22/1/2018 11:05:18 am

I would like to endorse the statement that Heavy Rain was extraordinarily dull, but with the caveat you could make it unintentionally hilarious by using the game's po-facedness against itself. For example, simply revolving constantly on the spot in the shopping centre while calling out for your missing son repeatedly like a deranged tannoy, watching shoppers ignore you. As they probably would in real life, only with fewer security guards being called.

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David W
22/1/2018 11:38:48 am

Shaun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAhG9D9UO7c

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RichardM
22/1/2018 11:42:34 am

I always liked the Warcraft 2 box art: an angry man and an angry orc staring at each other, on a boat in a raging sea. Also most of the Sim- ones, Sim Tower and SimCity2000 come to mind.

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Gamer Boy
22/1/2018 12:03:49 pm

Strange, the Tetris cover is recognisable despite the stand-alone game never really appearing on shelves from what I can remember, as it was bundled with the system.

The box artwork for the Game Boy system itself also did a great job of conveying the fun and magic contained within.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f9/92/de/f992dedb9e9ed2f53a37ed536c88fb3a.jpg

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RichardM
22/1/2018 01:05:24 pm

It was on the cartridge too, hence the recognition factor: for some reason I’d forgotten this was the case. Must be because everything comes on disc now, generally with different or no art?

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Chris
22/1/2018 12:33:49 pm

I note there's not much 8-bit games art here. I guess that's because in the olden days, publishers had a certain "look" for their game box designs. You could recognise a Mastertronic release at 20 paces even if you had no idea what the game was. It was the overarching style, rather than the art itself, which was iconic.

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DEAN
22/1/2018 04:19:44 pm

Absolutely - and the same idea but inverted for the Sega Master System which had some of the most terrible artwork ever but yeah, an iconic grid!

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Chris
22/1/2018 04:22:50 pm

Can you do one of your famous collages just out of the terrible art found on Master System boxes?

DEAN
22/1/2018 07:05:55 pm

Oh my, Chris! I'd love to but I've promised Mr Biffo 2 things:

No more collages.
No more 'blog-like' letters.

And I'm a man of my word!

But thanks for asking - made me smile that did :O)

David W
22/1/2018 07:32:02 pm

Nothing to stop you putting the collages and blog postings on your own website, though.

On that topic, no website for the chip shop that rushed in where KP feared to tread? I appreciate the security risks, but a cardboard Mr. T will deter casual chip fork chancers.

Mr Biffo
22/1/2018 07:50:15 pm

Dean - you can send your collages! Just not fifty of them at once!

DEAN
22/1/2018 08:06:10 pm

Cheers, David - you're right apart from one small (catastrophic) thing: I don't have a website!

Get one?

Ah but.... I'd rather just play in the comments on here with you fine people!

Chip fork chancers? Never been a problem - come to think of it less people are even bothering to help themselves to them at all.
But they'd miss them if we took them off the counter because, aptly, they're pretty iconic in their own right really!

KP were never realistically going to do it - a big company like that has to be so careful who or what they ass-ociate themselves with!

I think Mr B might have more takers for his Digitser Retro games show, though - but, that said, he's still a little too risqué for these ultra-conservative abominations.

This'll make you laugh - when customers heard that we had sponsored the show they wanted to see it - fair enough - I remember showing it to this elderly lady and she looked a bit confused, pulled a face and asked me what it was?

I'm sure you and the man himself would agree that that is the most appropriate reaction!

DEAN
22/1/2018 09:58:24 pm

Oh well that changes everything then; thanks Mr Biffo!

I think this may be more difficult than I'd first thought... they all sort of come in from the left don't they.... Leave it with me, Chris!

Chris
22/1/2018 10:15:58 pm

Wow! This is the best thing that's happened today! If you can't make the terrible Master System art look good then nobody can!

DEAN
23/1/2018 12:25:14 am

No pressure then, Chris!

I've done and emailed it so all going well it should be in the Friday letters!

Hope you like it :O)

Chris
23/1/2018 09:47:53 am

This is literally the best thing that's happened this year so far!
(admittedly we're not even out of January so there hasn't been much competition)

Adam
22/1/2018 06:46:07 pm

Well. I thing covers like Mega Man could be on this list.

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Christian Dabnor link
22/1/2018 01:05:45 pm

I'd have put Jet Set Willy up there. Then I'd have remembered the Banyan Tree and smashed everything within a four foot radius of my desk.

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colincidence link
22/1/2018 01:29:26 pm

You made me notice that Robotnik is drawn with a beard.

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TT Toilet
22/1/2018 04:17:48 pm

I would have thought SNES Mario Kart and/or some other mario game from the late 80s early 90s. Centipede sticks in my mind too because it terrified me when i was about 4 or 5 years old. Other than that most video game art really very forgetable.

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Retro Resolution link
22/1/2018 06:04:56 pm

Amongst many others, I'd nominate the following as classic cover art:

Elite (BBC Micro)
Rage Racer (Playstation)
Knight Lore (Spectrum)
Tornado Low Level (Spectrum)
Ballblazer (Atari 8-bit)
Jet Set Willy (Spectrum)
Dungeon Master (Atari ST)
Call of Cthulhu (Xbox)

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Pablo Watsoni
22/1/2018 07:41:14 pm

Some good calls there, RR. I think the Ultimate images for the Sabre Man games - Sabrewulf, Underwurlde, Knightlore etc. qualify as iconic.

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Kevin Reed
26/1/2018 04:57:09 pm

Completely agree with Elite, and Ballblazer.

Would've liked Gunship, Wizball (or any of those fabulous Wakelin covers), Kick Off II on the list...

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Kara Van Park
22/1/2018 08:59:41 pm

The Borderlands one reminds me of 2000AD

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