'Head Over Heels' Game Cover Artist Quizzed

Thanks to Redkeyreddoor for its interview with former Ocean videogame cover artist Bob Wakelin, known for his airbrushed game covers for classic '80s UK titles including The Great Escape and Head Over Heels. Wakelin explains the creative process: "I'd go over to [Ocean's] offices and down into their basement, where one of their 'slaves', as I called them, would show me the games. At that stage they were just bits and pieces of code, full of bugs. They'd show me 20 pixels that were supposed to represent a mighty warrior", before concluding by noting of the Wizball cover art: "I think I was very stoned when I did it."

Comments

I see

[Prien715]

1. Play games.
2. Get Stoned.
3. Draw
4. PROFIT!

Anyone else have trouble reaching step 4?

Re:OMG!

[iainl]

Yeah, Wizball was relatively sensible gameplay under its mad exterior.

Shoot stuff. Stuff drops ink, with different colours from different enemies. Pick up the ink. Once you've got enough of any one colour, you can use it to fill one of the background colours of a level (there were three, I think, per level to do). But the level with the right colour isn't necessarily the level where you need to use it, so you have to switch back and forth between them by diving through the wells.

Great game, I thought, though because there were stacks of powerups to pick up, the game was most difficult by far early on, and cleaning up the last few levels was really simple.

Ah, yes, the Ocean we all remember..

[eddy]

:-)

"Although every so often, I would get a call or be summoned to a meeting, and Ocean head Dave Ward would say, ''Bob, this needs to be your best-ever illustration.'' Of course, that was invariably because it was for their worst-ever game!"