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Favorite All-Time Videogame Box Art Rated

Posted by simoniker on from the squiggles-and-dots dept.

Thanks to GameSpy for its feature discussing and rating the best videogame box art of all-time. The author cheekily argues: "Video games have indeed been graced with some wonderful covers over the years, art that you'd be proud to put in a frame and hang on your wall for all to enjoy... Except when girls come over, when it must be hidden in the closet", before highlighting game covers including Pinball Construction Set ("Rather than showcase a typical pinball scene like most pinball games have done, this cover is mostly symbolic"), the non-U.S. cover for ICO ("Impressionistic and surreal, as if it's capturing a moment in fantasy or memory rather than reality"), and DOOM ("Bottom line, this is a classic.") What's your favorite game cover art of all time?

2 of 61 comments (clear)

  1. Is this a joke? by senocular · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I could have pulled better cover art out of my ass. A lot of the "art" is only impressionable due to reminiscence.

  2. Re:Shocked I am... by Scorchio · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There was a pretty good rule of thumb in the early 80s, and to some extents it still holds today: how exciting, fantastic and wonderful the game cover is, is inversely proportional to how good the game actually is. I was lured several times by drawings of vast space battles, with sleek fighter craft attacking horribly beweaponed starcruisers, through a haze of laser fire and explosions... only to find the game has a triangle firing squares at a couple of advancing, um, rectangles with legs.

    Of course, in those days, you had to use your imagination, which I think lent to more immersive gameplay. Sometimes, though, the gulf between the expectations raised by the game cover, and the actual game was just that bit too wide...