Games with Epic box art!

[ELabit]

[Thunderblaze16]

[sheath]

If I had seen this on the shelves back in the late 80s I would have done nothing but save up until I could buy it.

[Thenewguy]

[segaddict]

Attachment 4800

[sheath]

[Joe Redifer]

None of these are "epic". I find myself growing weary of Boris. Both he and his artwork are overrated. There is an interview with him on this site and he's about as talkative and sociable as a can opener. The sword that Axe Battler is carrying on his Golden Axe 2 cover, for example, is way too short. It looks wrong. I just can't stand box art where you can tell the artist has never seen the game either like Phantasy Star 4 as well as this:



No. Just no. This is one of the worst, most horrid box arts ever. It looks like you play the game as an 80 year-old smoker. Nei looks about 60 and also looks like a smoker with the extremely aged skin, the sickly face and the "I'm ready to die any minute now" look. And horns? It doesn't even fall into a "So bad it's good" category. It's just bad. My daughter can draw better than that and I don't even have any kids!

[havok666]

There was absolutely nothing "epic" about the commodore/amiga/spectrum/amstrad/whatever the fuck euro computer box art that Thenewguy posted. Just terrible. I'm sure the ports played just as bad as the art looks.

[ELabit]

[QuickSciFi]

@Joe, alright I'll give you the PSII cover, I only hold it in high regards because the cover is nostalgic to me.
But Boris' Art (and his wife's) I showed is still epic. Now I'm off to read that interview.

[EDIT] 'Back from reading the interview. I'll give you that too.
His answers were awkward and borderline insulting. Thanks for ruining my childhood Joe.

[StarMist]

None of these are "epic". I find myself growing weary of Boris. Both he and his artwork are overrated. There is an interview with him on this site and he's about as talkative and sociable as a can opener. The sword that Axe Battler is carrying on his Golden Axe 2 cover, for example, is way too short. It looks wrong.

GA2 is particularly bad since our barbarian hero appears to be wielding a gladius. As free of historical constraints as Golden Axe obviously is there's something about giving a barbarian the military standard of the Roman Empire that doesn't sit well. Perhaps he's really a Visigoth who's won it sacking a Roman camp and is brandishing it at Death Adder as if to say "Behold! If I can do this to Caesar's army I can do the same to you!" Surely that's the sort of thinking that goes into video game box art.

I just can't stand box art where you can tell the artist has never seen the game either like Phantasy Star 4 as well as this:



No. Just no. This is one of the worst, most horrid box arts ever. It looks like you play the game as an 80 year-old smoker. Nei looks about 60 and also looks like a smoker with the extremely aged skin, the sickly face and the "I'm ready to die any minute now" look. And horns? It doesn't even fall into a "So bad it's good" category. It's just bad. My daughter can draw better than that and I don't even have any kids!

Well you had to think there was a reason I didn't post this one myself. Indeed when first I played it I thought at some point I might play Rolf's father, sort of a generations element...perhaps this cover's where Sega got the idea for PSIII...and that would be all the more reason to dislike it. Actually that man looks much more like this dude phantasystar2_screen003.jpg
And the horns bit is confusing. I forget exactly how the story goes but I always thought it just a story; something like this: the box art was designed off character sketches and Nei's ears were so big (and evidently never shown in profile with the cochlea visible) that the artist mistook them for horns. However I'm not sure there isn't another step of back-and-forth mixup in it; as I have it above it sounds rather too straightforward for anything Sega was involved in. Plus she's half monster, not half elf. I'm sure that description furthered the artists's misinterpretation.
Of course Rolf oughtn't have a gun either. But I do really like the palette, that sets the game up nicely.

[Thenewguy]

There was absolutely nothing "epic" about the commodore/amiga/spectrum/amstrad/whatever the fuck euro computer box art that Thenewguy posted. Just terrible.

That's your opinion, which seems pretty narrowminded to me.

The worst artwork in this thread was the Master System artwork by about a mile, very amateurish, and all that Phantasy Star artwork is absolutely hideous as far as I'm concerned.

Either way a lot of this is subjective, as well as being based on how you read into the "epic" theme, originally I considered posting sprawling pictures with heroine's, and far off lands, but based on the other pictures posted at the beginning of the thread I decided the topic was more about over-the-top/muscles & guns/one man fighting against the odds style pictures that have a healthy dose of ludicrous, tongue in cheek imagery.

Anyway, where it comes to SMS artwork, I quite like the Japanese Golvellius art -



There's other SMS covers I like, but I wouldn't say they fit the "epic" designation.

[sheath]

The only objective differences I can see between the Master System box art I have posted and the other systems is the black and white grid versus a single earth tone for the borders, and how Japanese (and cluttered) the actual artwork is.

How any of these, barring the Master System "clip art" early stuff, can be called more or less "amateurish" is beyond me. None of it is fine art to be sure. I think Phantasy Star II's artwork is sufficiently "epic" for the modern misuse of the term, even though it fails to portray the actual game characters.

[Thenewguy]

The Shinobi boxart especially is quite mediocre IMO, and I think actually does have that clip art look to it. The guy is drawn very stiffly, there's no life or dynamism in the picture, the shading is poor, the shuriken's look like they were just haphazardly placed to fill previously empty looking areas etc.

The Galaxy Force artwork also looks quite boring, and clinical, the spaceship isn't imaginative, and the theme has been done to death by the japanese (every single scrolling shooter essentially has that kind of artwork.

The others were alright, I wouldn't have chosen them personally but there's nothing wrong with them

All just my opinion of course, if you like them, you like them, thats nothin to do with me.

[NeoZeedeater]