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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
Let us also pause to run our bare chests across another classic logo.
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 2
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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?
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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