Slashdot Mirror
The Misleading World of Atari 2600 Box Art
Buffalo55 writes "These days, you don't have to worry about misleading box art, thanks to sophisticated video game graphics. In the 70s and 80s, though, companies tried to grab a consumer's attention with fancy artwork that bore no resemblance to the actual game. Atari, in particular, was one of the biggest offenders, particularly with its 2600 console."
In the 70s and 80s, though, companies tried to grab a consumer's attention with fancy artwork that bore no resemblance to the actual game.
You mean your box didn't have pages of perforated LSD blotters in the back of the manual? You got fleeced.
My work here is dung.
I never owned an Atari 2600, but I remember the same phenomenon on the C64. Box art was usually colourful and cartoony. Very few games (at least until you got to the tail end of the C64's popular life span, when you had games like the Creatures series) could come even close to living up to this. It was a good lesson at an early age that you should never take promotional material at face value.
I also remember the loading screens you'd get on the C64 while loading the game from tape (a process which would take several minutes and often fail before the end). These were generally just as "dishonest", though they were at least limited by the display resolution. In fact, worse than that, I remember one particular game where the box description actually told outright lies. It was a top-down racer (think Super Sprint) where the box text advertised weapons, oil-slicks etc, none of which were actually present in the game. I later found out that this was a semi-infamous title (in the UK at least); a sort of 1980s equivalent to Big Rigs Over the Road Racing.
Mind you, misleading box-art continued for quite a lot longer. X-Wing was a fantastic game, but I do remember being a little disappointed by the contrast between the movie-quality box art and the slightly sparse polygon graphics in game. That said, if I remember correctly, some editions of the first two Wing Commander games actually used screenshots for their front-cover art (or can somebody correct me on this - the screenshots may have been "touched up"?).
Even today, it still goes on to some extent. Ok, the differences are probably less pronounced. Box-art still tends to save screenshots for the back cover, but this is usually clearly for stylistic reasons (in fact, the trend seems to be towards box art that is simpler and sparser than a screenshot would have been). But we still get plenty of cases of "touched up" trailers, pre-rendered cutscenes shown at conferences with the implication that they're game-play footage and so on.
You know how many sugar laden pitchers of Kool-Aid I drank waiting for a massive jolly anthropomorphic red pitcher to burst through the side of my house?
And all I ever got was diabetes. Misleading advertising indeed.
My work here is dung.
Mostly through concept art and cinematics presented as teasers to the customers, allowing them to erroneously believe this will be actual gameplay.
Start here instead: http://www.rundlc.com/news/the-misleading-world-of-atari-2600-box-art-xbox-live/
The actual URL even includes "part-two" in it. I guess the misleading world of Atari 2600 box art just evolved into the misleading world of Slashdot editing.
I think it was more funny to pick up C64 games and see the words "actual C64 screenshot" during the late 80s when some game companies would put the Amiga screenshots on C64 boxes. I still see people referencing this phenomenon as a joke these days.
I don't know. I really liked the box art. I think it helped make the game more than just the blocky pixels you saw on the screen.
Is it just me, or do you hate it when people say "Is it just me..."?
So this is just like wrapping a crappy movie in 3D to make people forget that the story like is a steaming pile.
This sort of thing was common even through the early 90s for computer games. People understood that the graphical level on the boxes wasn't anywhere near the level of the games. It is misleading to call this sort of thing misleading.
If you remember video card boxes in the 90s, they always seemed to be starving for metaphors for faster speed. First a hot rod, then a plane, then a space ship. They finally just ended up putting some Aboriginy guy on the cover. I didn't know they ran that fast.
Remember that game The Black Hole? Based on the Disney movie? They had the goatse guy on the cover. I remember starting the game up and thinking "Hey, where are the hands?"
Maybe I imagined that.
Trolling is a art,
My favorite box art of the 80's was "Star Raiders" for the Atari 400/800 computers. It bore only an abstract resemblance to the game. I could waste a whole day playing that game. I'd love to see a faithful update to Star Raiders.
Do you think gamers 30 years ago expected photorealistic games? If the game was well written, the screens became more than just a smattering of blocky pixels, in the same way that a cardboard box could become an impenetrable castle.
I love modern technology, but it seems to be feeding a growing segment of the population with no desire for creativity or imagination. Read a book, people!
</getoffmylawn>
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
These days you dont have to worry about misleading game box art because you don't usually actually buy a box at all, what with most people buying digitally and all.
No product delivered = no box.
Blessed is he who expects the worst, for he shall not be disappointed.
That artists that created the box art were often working several months in advance of the game being finalized. That pretty much means that they had the conceptual drawings by someone that were given to the developer and computer artists rather than an actual game.
So they had no idea what the game might look like. The programming wasn't done yet.
As someone that worked on a couple of 2600 games that were released under the Parker Brothers label, I can assure you that the boxes were done long before the code was completed. And the box production people were simply not interested in looking at what had been completed. We were in different parts of the country.
Incredible as it might seem, this is how software publishing works. The manual get done before the code is done. The artwork is conceptual because it has a significantly longer lead time. Marketing materials are approved and printed weeks before the gold master CD is burned. Everyone has a schedule and deadlines and stuff has to be done pretty much the way it was planned or it looks like something that was put together by a couple of high school kids after school.
Sure, it would be nice if everything could wait for the highly flexible and iterative development process to complete before committing to graphics for advertising. Except you would miss the big presentation at the trade show and nothing would get sold to the distributors, meaning nothing gets sold to the retailers. So everyone gets to go home and the furniture gets auctioned off along with the computers, phones and pretty posters on the walls. Yup, been there and done that as well for some people that didn't understand how the process works.
Growing up with Intellivision rather than Atari apparently made all the difference when it came to game box art! The first 16-bit game system definitely made me appreciate games and game art at an early age
Intellivision game boxes actually were very representative of the game play, although obviously indulged to be more artistic in presentation than the actual 16-bit (or 10-bit the way you look at it) graphics were capable of at that time. Here are a few examples.
Some of the more crazy titles indulged a little more: like Astrosmash
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
i kinda wish rorr.im worked for slashdot. :-\ i mean, we INVENTED slashdotting.
frog blast the vent core
Novels are also very guilty of this. They're just freaking words, not even crappy pictures! Quite a ripoff. I want to SEE the tits, not read about them. (Yeah, yeah, I should go to the magazine rack. Not the point, people.)
Anyone remember the 8-bit game 'Game Over'? Now that was misleading, even though they mimicked the box 'art' in the title screen. Gained notoriety for being the first box art needing to be withdrawn and redone (well, in the UK at least - not sure about anywhere else).
Here's the game in question. Look at it, then click the title image. Yep, that's what you think it is. Then click on the gameplay images bottom-left. Err....hmm.
Cheers,
Ian
I remember buying Ikari Warriors for the PC, way back in the day. The box had killer screenshots... the game looked exactly like the arcade game!
I loaded it up, and was met with horrific 4-color (white/black/cyan/magenta) graphics.
http://www.giantbomb.com/ikari-warriors/61-1619/all-images/52-164216/1029683900_00/51-803378/
When I looked more closely at the box, it had small print that said something like "Arcade-version images shown. PC images may be different", or something to that effect.
I was pissed. :(
You know I have the same thing when I go to a restaurant. The picture of the burger looks oh so good but when I get it, it's just a smushed crap sandwich in a wrapper.
If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!
This is any different from book cover how?
Back then, you filled in the missing content with your imagination. These days, nobody has one anymore. Games (and movies) have to spell out every little detail, leaving nothing to the imagination. Remember seeing the Balrog on film? Was that what you imagined it to look like when you read the book? Wasn't what I had pictured, but I can't read the book now without seeing it the way it was depicted in the movie. Kinda sad, in a way.
Have you ever seen an ad for halo that actually showed the game gui?
The big rollout of ads for BC2 never showed the game. Just a bunch of cutscenes.
Screen shots of the graphics back then wouldn't sell the game (especially not in the case of unsavvy parents and grandparents buying the games for their kids/grandkids), so they usually designed box art that was attractive and evocative of the title. Many of them were really well done, and remember that that was in the days before Photoshop and Illustrator. Whoever owns the rights on those images should sell enlarged reproductions-- they'd probably do okay among the nostalgia crowd.
If you wanna talk misleading box art, how about the Colecovision console? IIRC, the box that thing came in was *covered* with screen shots of games, many of which never actually came into existence. They put out a few catalogs with pages full of vaporware, too.
~Philly
I know slashdot stories tend to come out a bit late now days, and that is not such a bad thing. But... damn.
Plenty of TV commercials show nothing but cutscenes and not actual game play.
I love modern technology, but it seems to be feeding a growing segment of the population with no desire for creativity or imagination. Read a book, people!
Or at least go play Dwarf Fortress. That's probably the only 'modern' game that I know of where the ability to construct a mental 3D view of the world from 2D slices is essential to success.
It looked exactly like the cover
...except for ALL the details
...and that the game sucked
Really few of the Atari games boxes looked like the game - but it was pretty obvious.
We've all been subjected to so much false promises it's now part of culture. People expect, demand, massive promises, don't buy the product if it's not flaunted as an outright miracle, and don't complain when it ultimately doesn't fulfill expectations. It's established business practice, called marketing and advertising, and those who master it are rewarded with lots of money and prestige. Enforcing an actual, 100% fulfilled, do-as-you-say in the marketing business would mean practically a revolution. No more smiling hotties in car ads on empty roads, show traffic, stress, and endless expenses with insurance, parking. Lots of accident statistics, pollution. Just imagine the ads for junk food. Cavities, no nutritious properties, vastly overpriced and unhealthy salt-and-fat-and sugar based, fattening and artery-busting food. It implies deep changes in advertising profits, marketing, production, communication companies, culture.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
Read a book, people!
Books are even worse :
You got a nice cover with a pretty picture, but once you open it, there's nothing else than lots of tiny letters everywhere !
That's definitely misleading !
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
There is nothing else in the stores or on TV
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
http://xkcd.com/531/
And the cap gun you bought at the toy store didn't shoot real bullets. Before the age of computer photorealism, there was imagination.
It had a color picture on the cover.
Yet inside there were just black letters on white pages bearing no resemblance to the scantily clad lady on the cover.
You think that's misleading, how about the awesome box art... for a text-based role playing game.
Atari? Try Infocom, or any of the other less established companies that produced text adventures into the early 90s.
Which isn't to say that I take exception with this practice; on the contrary, it's an example of why box art needn't accurately represent the contents. The art was simply something to admire, like the dust sleeve of a sci-fi novel. In some cases it added to the overall effect of the game; in others it added to the mystery. And back in the age of a prepubescent internet, genres were less rigid and reviews of a given title could be much harder to come by, so each new game purchase was almost always a mystery.
Of course, there was also *zero* expectation that a game would resemble the cover art back then. Everyone knew this and for the most part nobody cared. These days, a CG scene on a box (or TV commercial) could reasonably be construed to represent the game content, and a variance between the two could therefore be seen as misleading, or worse.
Still, I've always been told that you can't judge a book by its cover, and packaged software, while typically (though not always) sold on a medium other than book/paper, was no exception. That's was as true back then as it is today.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"Everyone knows" is the phrase tossed around when people comment on how an actor or actress looks in a photo shoot or on a movie poster. Kiera Knightley has been photoshopped more than once and commented on it, http://www.ministry-of-information.co.uk/blog1/keiramanip.htm They like to endow her with a breast size nature didn't and one she won't use surgery to obtain. From presenting perfect complexions to lightening the skin of black female celebrities; especially Beyonce; we are bombarded by what marketers perceive as the perfect image.
Technology caught up with games, yet I have found that some of the games that strive for the most in realism sometimes look more fake as one bad effect can blow the entire presentation.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
All kidding aside, the cover art on some of these games is worthy of framing in its own right.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I see it as the opposite of the way the summary described it: When I had a 2600 I *knew* the games weren't going to look like they did on the box art. It just wasn't possible. These days, gamers are treated to bullshots, hi-resolution scripted renders, and other kinds of doctored media designed to make gamers think the game looks better than it really does. This is especially common, I've noticed, on the console side of gaming where the graphical fidelity achievable on modern computers isn't attainable anymore (this gen).
I still play text adventures/interactive fiction - but I remember getting a kick out of the box art on early Infocom games - the box my Zork came in had numerous pictures of a guy wielding a sword and carrying the famous brass lantern!
The Luddites were ahead of their time.
Nobody has even mentioned padded bras... oh wait, this is slashdot, isn't it.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
The guy who wrote this must have been suckered in by misleading web hosting box art because the site is slash dotted.
Monstar L
Dwarf fortress is awesome.
I just wish Toady would implement better population checks on goblin invasion forces. So far, I have captured more than 3x my dwarf population in goblin invaders. My fortress has three whole levels of "Halls of shame" dedicated to this purpose.
Good thing the dwarves enjoy seeing caged goblins.
This sort of thing was common even through the early 90s for computer games. People understood that the graphical level on the boxes wasn't anywhere near the level of the games. It is misleading to call this sort of thing misleading.
Gamers understood, but the deception wasn't aimed at them. As a child, I remember being gifted crappy games quite a few times because the non-gamer adults thought I'd like it based on what was on the box art. "This looks really cool, I'll bet my son, nephew, grandson, will like it!"
The parents are the one with the money, so they were the ones that needed to fooled.
I think computer games were just mimicking the board games. When you opened a Monopoly box, you did not expect the pieces to look as realistic as the box art. Even today, if you buy any of the German board games (Ticket to Ride, Carcassone etc.), the box art is a lot more realistic than the pieces inside. Computer games were NOT deliberately misleading anyone. They were just piquing our imaginations.
Back in the 80s you could send a cassette tape and a printout of your computer game written in BASIC to magazines like "Computer and video games". They would then publish the code in the magazine so others could, hold onto your hats young folk, TYPE IT VIA THE KEYBOARD INTO THEIR OWN COMPUTER.
The code printout in the magazine was always accompanied by great artwork. I was lucky enough to get one of my c64 programs printed in C&VG and it was the highlight of my teenage years.
how is this "news"? is this currently relevant? does this really belong to slashdot?
Who writes an article like this? Half of the mentioned games don't have any images at all and instead feature lame one line descriptions of the box art. Of the other half that the author bothered to provide images for, over half of those don't have contrasting images which makes the posting of the one image pointless as well.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
It's obviously a seahorse! what's wrong with you people?
Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, though I'm not yet sure about the universe. - A Einstein
As to the box artwork: I remember programmers commenting on the nice box artwork, but there was never any mention about how it didn't match the game. Like someone else said, it was like looking at a cover of a science fiction book, knowing that the contents were probably very different.
To put things into perspective: Back in those days pinball machines were still popular and people expectations of computer games were pretty realistic, e.g. rather low. The IBM AT and XT had just come out, and were targeted at businesses and considered too expensive for the normal household. Graphical user interfaces only existed in research labs and universities. Coin operated video games had much better (and much more expensive) hardware, as compared to the home versions. The home systems had to be less sophisticated, otherwise they would have been too expensive for their target market.
I used to program these things and remember late night sessions pouring over hex dumps trying to recover a byte or two. The initial programming was done in 6502 assembler (to keep the cost down the CPU packed in a 28-pin DIP, which allowed for all sorts of tricks for saving bytes by addressing memory in unconventional ways). The last few weeks of the programming was typically done in hex, looking for opcode sequences that could be used as data. E.g. we spent our time hand optimizing the hex code. Sometimes we found enough space to put in a new feature or two.
Now nearly 30 years later I can still remember some of the hex code a few of the 6502 instructions. 4C is JMP, A9 is LDA, etc.
And by the way, we considered C a high level language back then.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
Using the cover art like a primer; giving you visuals for your mind's eye to work with while you enjoy the (largely) non-realistic experience of reading text/looking at sprites.
Check out the box scans (scams?) here: http://www.the-nextlevel.com/odyssey2/media/boxscans.php#1
Note that almost every sentence in the description ends in an exclamation! Exciting! Thrilling! Death-defying!
Uh... Not so much.
And to think, my family paid $49.99 for some of these games back in the 70's! Now that IS worth an exclamation point!
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
I don't know what it was like at Parker Borthers, but Atari (we supplied game software and hardware design to them) got marketing people heavily involved. They were typically fresh out of some MBA mill and no understanding of the their target audience (apart from being given 'focus group' results) and little interest in video games beyond concerns about them being hits. I'm sure this helped widen the gap between the artwork and the way the game actually looked. It certainly helped drive Atari into the ground, as the titles got stupider and stupider, leading to the infamous Atari land fill.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
I actually think there was an edgier/more interesting vibe in the days when the cover artist could use the game concept as an inspirational jumping-off point for a unique piece of art. You got things like "the coolest war ever" as per the article, and that ain't a bad thing.
Same thing for stand-up arcade game art -- I missed it when the cabinets changed from being their own independent art design. It gave a different filter on the proceedings, and sort of implied "you can imagine your own interpretation, too".
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
If you want us to play dwarf fortress, help petition the creator for an easier interface, consistent menu items/descriptions, mouse input (it's 2010), and a way to manage jobs when you have 20 or more dwarves without having ot use an external application. Then, the average idiot could START to try it.
I for one love it, but it has taken weeks to gain any personal strategy or insight that makes the shitty interface feel transparent.
A 3D version would'nt be hard. Minecraft is capable of rendering the same amount of blocks. In fact it might even be....*gasp* fun for the lowest common gamer denominator. I'm not saying turn it in to the Sims. I'm saying make it accessable to these people and you'll have a better chance of 'converting' some douche into a brain using self aware....hahahaha yeah right.
How many of you actually grew UP during that era? I'm willing to bet very few. Why? Because if you did, you'd know that THE BACK OF THE BOX HAD THE ACTUAL SCREENSHOTS. Want to know what the game looked like for reals? Flip the damn box over and use your damn eyes. Simple isn't it? See in the old days we used our hands to do things like that.
OHH WAH you mean the cover of "Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar" doesn't have a high resolution guy in a robe conjuring up a tidal wave? Sheesh. The authors of this nonsense need to get a life.
See back then, the actual box art was often something to be admired. The above mentioned "Quest of the Avatar" was painted by Denis Loubet, who made some of the best cover art for any game, bar none. There were many games that had fantastic cover art. Do you think any of us were fooled into thinking that this is what the game actually looked like? I used to KEEP the boxes around and mount them on the wall of my computer room (haw haw he said computer room he so old!).
The whole article is just a sarcastic "haw haw look how primitive old consoles were, xbox is so cools!" my-dick-is-bigger fest.
Someone who's in marketing recently told me this story, which demonstrates the most important aspect of marketing: target audience selection. Disclaimer, before I continue: marketeers don't usually go this far.
You pick a random stock. You then send a letter to 4000 people saying this stock will rise, and a letter to 4000 other people saying it will fall. Wait two days, see what it does. Divide the 4000 people who got the right prediction into two groups of 2000.
Pick a new random stock. Tell 2000 people it'll rise, tell the other 2000 it'll fall. Wait two days, see what it does, repeat with two groups of 1000.
You now have 1000 people who have received three consecutive correct predictions from you. Remind them how much they could have made if they followed your advice in the last week, then start charging them for stock market advice.
I'd rather you rationally disagree than irrationally agree.
...and that the game sucked
Come on, really. How many games gave you the opportunity to spend half a day trying to get out of a well, only to find half a Reece's Pieces Candy and fall into another well? That was cutting edge gaming, man! It was all the plot elements of Pac-Man and Space Invaders wrapped into one easy-to-play package!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm glad you were good enough to mention the artists, since it seems they never get the recognition they deserve. Some of the artwork they produced for Atari is exceptional. Unfortunately, much of this work has disappeared, either thrown away or stolen by people at Atari. Among the creators of the "Atari look":
Cliff Spohn is a talented and sought after portraitist of real people, sports figures in particular.
http://www.artworkoriginals.com/JAAAAAOU.htm
Steve Hendricks also usually focused on portraiture and has created some of the most evocative and distinctive work to come out of Atari.
http://www.sundancecreative.com/
Rick Guidice often worked with NASA doing space illustration.
http://www.nasaimages.org/luna/servlet/view/search?q=Guidice&search=Search
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Rick_Guidice
http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/advart.html
James Kelly is not just an artist, he was one of Atari's art directors for many years.
http://www.orangecountyfineart.com/kelly.htm
http://www.slideshare.net/aditaciobanu/james-kelly-painting-nx-power-lite-presentation
Bob Flemate is someone I unfortunately haven't found much information on. He worked on Atari arcade cabinets and created the marvelous Atari 400/800 Space Invaders cover art.
http://thenewgamer.com/content/archives/gamephemera_space_invaders_atari_400_800
George Opperman was one of Atari's first artists and art director, and is notable for designing the original, iconic, and difficult to reproduce Atari "fuji" logo. The logo is meant to resemble the letter "A" and represents two players facing each other with the Pong "net" between them.
http://www.arcade-history.com/index.php?page=person&name=George+Opperman
http://www.cooganphoto.com/gravitar/cabinets.html
Hiro Kimura has had the honor of creating three US postage stamps.
https://shop.usps.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10001&storeId=10052&productId=10001795&langId=-1&parent_category_rn=&parent_category_rn=10000003&categoryId=10000028&top_category=10000003
http://www.virtualstampclub.com/images/flagcity.jpg
http://www.virtualstampclub.com/images/99chalk.jpg
Warren Chang was a staff artist at Atari for two years, starting in 1981. His beautiful work can be described as classical realism and has garnered several awards.
http://warrenchang.com/
+0 Meh
Panic, maker of (excellent) Mac software has some Atari 2600 boxes for their current lineup of products.
Pretty cool if you ask me.
We thought the box covers were lame, and the games were totally cool.
I want to see the Venn diagram of people who thought 1980's video game artwork was actually real, and people who think Obama is actually a Muslim.
I can't tell you how many records I've played that had beautiful covers, but were nothing but audio as soon as I tried to play them. I demand my money back!!
Atari isn't the only computer company to use misleading advertising.
There is a product on the market called 'Microsoft Works'.
I don't recall seeing any progress bars on the box for WoW.
Just a FYI.
You're not the only one. There are some neat modern games out there that capitalize on this, such as that ultimate incarnation of space invaders, Titan Attacks.
Ah yes, the cover art, the storyline communicated in an included comic book or short novella, the minimal attempt to tie either to the game itself. I remember the 80's console & computer game microcosm well.
And I sort of miss it.
After reading things like this, I've begun to realize that in many cases it's still the same setup (story tacked on after they decide what the game is going to be) but with far less effort put into attempting drawing the eye away from it.
At least back then the game didn't match the story for technical reasons, not because the developer didn't bother to involve the story writers till the game was almost already complete.
http://getlamp.com/order/artwork.jpg
http://getlamp.com/
http://getlamp.com/order/
http://getlamp.com/introduction.html
To call early-1980s video-game box art "misleading" is to apply the expectations of the 21st century to society back then. Back then, everybody knew that computers and game consoles couldn't do realistic-looking graphics, and that video-game graphics were minimal and functional; good enough to play the game with. The idea of a video game, of images responding to joysticks and paddles, was novel enough, and it didn't occur to players to expect elaborate graphics. Meanwhile, since pixellated graphics were new, there was no nostalgia for them, and the age of pixel art hadn't yet arrived, so a frame grab of a game on a box would have just confused people.
The box art was in the same tradition as cover art from scifi/fantasy novels of the time: lurid, superficially exciting, and only tenuously related to the content of the product being sold. A dragon or spaceship could give a reader an idea of what kind of world the book is set in, without necessarily being from the same story. Similarly, racing cars or fighter planes on a game box would give some idea of the ostensible theme of the game.
Aside from the obvious fact that everyone knew drawn graphics were far beyond what any video game could create in that era, compare the same to album covers from the 70's and 80's.
When I bought my 12-inch vinyl, I didn't get a prism splitting-light in a dark room, a scantily-clad barbarian woman or busty babe draped over a sketch of a car.
I was at the store and there is this cool thing with wizards and a bunch of monsters and shit.. Get home and open it up....
Nothing but a bunch of letters in black and white....
WTF!!??!
I take it back and they said all books are like that.
False advertising I say!
I remember as a kid seeing the cover of Yar's Revenge and thinking how cool a game it would be. I think the blurb on the back also had a pretty enticing background story. Then, a friend got it and the graphics were such a disappointment. That distinction always stuck with me and it's probably the reason I don't have such a nostalgic memory of Ataris.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Here's an anecdote to support your assertion:
I once met a fellow at a party who told me that when he was a small child his mother was single and they had to bounce around from cheap motel to cheaper motels. For him, the Atari 2600 game, Breakout, was pure escapism. He had read every bit of text on the box about how the paddle you control is really a space ship and it is trying to destroy a cosmic cloud barrier that has trapped the ship with all its passengers. This fellow even had constructed a space helmet out of cardboard which he would wear while playing the game. He would often stay up late at night playing and so his mother could sleep in their small hotel room, he would drape a blanket over the television and himself to block the glow.
The story he told me climaxes when he said one night the fire department came banging on their motel room door. The whole building was being evacuated. The boy, his mother, and the other residents were instructed to stand on the other side of the street opposite the motel. A landslide had weakened the foundation of the building. As they stood out there in the night, they watched as the motel slid down a cliff into the ocean. The boy cried as he watched, in his words, "his whole life being destroyed in that landslide." He meant that his Atari 2600 with Breakout had been lost.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
Like any book cover... One of the reasons people buy books is because it's attractive on the shelf. And no one would expect the graphics in a, say, Asimov's book to be like any of those covers.
I'm not sure about everyone, but I was generally satisfied with how the games existed in reference to their box art.
Unless the game itself wasn't fun for me to play (e.g. suck).
E.T.
*DrugCheese rants*
For the last year or so there's been an exhibition going around Spain of Alfonso Azpiri's work (for cover art for Sinclair Spectrum, Amstrad CPC etc.) games from the 1980s. Azpiri is a well known comic artist in Spain, so it's been drawing quite a crowd and has had TV coverage. His art was probably the best exemplar of the tape/cartridge box art of the era, and he made artwork for around 200 games. Quite often, the game content would be changed a bit when the programmers saw Azpiri's artwork. (I had the privilege of going to RetroAcción's dinner this year, with Azpiri and some of the pioneers of Spanish games in the 1980s, including the authors of the first commercial Spanish computer game). I also got to meet Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari) at that event, he visited us at the RetroAcción stand (in Euskal Encounter, the 2nd biggest LAN party in Spain with over 4000 gamers).
Here's some information about Azpiri's exhibition: http://www.retroaccion.org/exposicion-spectrum-del-pincel-al-pixel (Del Pincel al Pixel - from the paintbrush to the pixel). It's in Spanish, but there's plenty of images there so you don't really need to read much :-) Azpiri's cover art was well known amongst those who had a Spectrum, Amstrad CPC or MSX (I think there was some of his cover art on C64 games too).
He recently also made cover art for "La Corona Encantada" (The Enchanted Crown), a new game for the ZX Spectrum and the MSX (came out last year, yes, people still write Speccy and MSX games!)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
God, I hate the art of the cover of books.
You get this great picture, then while I read the story, the picture in my head looks like stick figures!!!!
God that sucks.
Be seeing you...
That was the entire point of being a kid and playing solid, maybe stupid, but solid pre Ghz games.
using your fantasy until it worked, then getting bored of the computer and taking that fantasy elsewhere
What a load of bollocks. If anyone thinks a so obviously hand-drawn picture is anything like a video game, they're simply daft. It's not misleading, it's "box art". Is album-art anything like the album? Well perhaps, if it was drawn by someone with synesthesia. Otherwise not. Same with movies - how many movies these days are properly represented by their trailers? Not many. It's called advertising, not information - people understand it is supposed to be somewhat misleading. I say bring the box art back, at least we'd get something worth the cost of games nowadays.
How about the art on LP covers?
And virtually every game has bullshots before actual release. The bullshot will be superficially like the game (they might lamely claim it is rendered with in-game assets) but it will be rendered at hi resolution, full AA, full detail, full effects, and with a carefully position pose. Then the game comes out and it's nothing like that.
The moral is don't believe hype. Don't preorder. Read the real reviews (not previews or exclusive reviews). Chances everything you read up until the review flood gate opens is spin.
With books, you get nice cover art. Once you open them, they are filled with black and white crap and no pictures at all! How dare they?!
Also, I seem to remember that most box art for games does not show actual screenshots on the front. Even today. Shock and awe!
The real story? That crap like this makes /. ;)
Most modern game ads on tv still show hardly any gameplay. The Wii will show gameplay, but a ton of other systems' games do not. They just show the pre-rendered payoff sequences. If you're not showing the actual gameplay, you are lying to people. It's that simple.
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Back then these games were astonishing, the fact that one could actually control the previously passive TV never failed to entertain or amaze. Gaming also produced a degree of imagination and wonder; the games were so primitive as to be pure abtraction but like impressionism, produced a feeling of the subject matter. I still recall the escapism of my first few multi-screen games like Adventure and early flick-screen platform games. There was a virtual world there.
Don't get me started on text adventures...