Favourite video game art of the 90s - pre-PS2

[George White]

Just reminded as a kid looking through Argos and Index catalogues and eating up the covers of video games without seeing the games.


Always found this pulpily evocative.

I remember the tiny thumbnail in the Index catalogue made  Akira from Virtua Fighter 2 look like Princess Diana or David Sylvian.

[Magnum Valentino]

Still freaked out by the PAL art for Resident Evil 2. Reaches into some primal part of me that fears death like a child fears death. The death that kills your parents and rots your parents, that death.

Love the typeface, colour, placement. Everything. The NTSC cover is a ghastly CG render, look it up. It doesn't belong in here.

[George White]

I often think video game art is the hauntology of the 90s.

[madhair60]

[Mister Six]

I love the gorgeous Steve Purcell art for Monkey Islands 1 and 2. So much charm, style and mystery. I suppose 2 was weirdly intense considering how silly the games were, but it's a hell of a draw.





A GIS for either game will also bring up the ghastly remaster covers done in the soulless style of those games, which make me feel genuinely angry and have no place here.

Also on a Steve Purcell tip, I always liked this playful cover for earlier LucasArts game Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders (apologies for shit quality, this was the best I could find).



And shout out to the Japanese FM Towns version, which ignores the way Purcell deliberately didn't have Annie hanging off Zak:

[Lemming]

[Magnum Valentino]

Man that Wasteland box is something else.

[DJ Bob Hoskins]

Flawless victory:




Not sure if this one counts as it's really just a rearrangement of one of the original film posters, but I'll nominate it anyway:

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

Still freaked out by the PAL art for Resident Evil 2. Reaches into some primal part of me that fears death like a child fears death. The death that kills your parents and rots your parents, that death.

Love the typeface, colour, placement. Everything. The NTSC cover is a ghastly CG render, look it up. It doesn't belong in here.

It's great. Proper video nasty vibes. It might actually be scarier than the game.

ICO also had a rubbish cover in America. The PAL version was classy as hell though:

[Replies From View]

Any original GAME BOY box has that GAME BOY logo that I somehow associate with early secondary school and a horrible smell of socks in the PE changing rooms.  I don't know if it's the colours or the specific font doing that, or what, but all the later GAME BOY COLOR boxes trigger nothing even though they're ostensibly the same.

[C_Larence]

Yoshitaka Amano's concept art for the Final Fantasy games, even if they don't look anything like the characters they represent. This is Vivi from FF IX for example:




Steiner:

[bgmnts]

Still freaked out by the PAL art for Resident Evil 2. Reaches into some primal part of me that fears death like a child fears death. The death that kills your parents and rots your parents, that death.

Love the typeface, colour, placement. Everything. The NTSC cover is a ghastly CG render, look it up. It doesn't belong in here.

+1 for this.

Still creeps fuck out of me.

[Mister Six]

I liked this one as a lad for extremely obvious reasons.



And in the 1980s, a time when cover art was rarely particularly clever or interesting, this one stood out:

[bgmnts]

Yoshitaka Amano's concept art for the Final Fantasy games, even if they don't look anything like the characters they represent. This is Vivi from FF IX for example:




Steiner:

These images loading for everyone else? Can't see them but any FFIX related thing is something I'm into.

[Mister Six]

Yeah I can't see them either.

I wanted to big up the beautiful simplicity of the FF7 Europe cover (just the meteor, stylised, on a white background), but apparently I'd forgotten there was a big ugly PlayStation logo on the bottom.



The cover for 8 was nice too (despite also having that shitty logo). Prefer the way 7's text stretches right across though. And the drop shadow is horrible.

[C_Larence]

Hmm, I can see them fine on my phone. You can find them, and many more here

[Pink Gregory]

Yoshitaka Amano's concept art for the Final Fantasy games, even if they don't look anything like the characters they represent. This is Vivi from FF IX for example:




Steiner:

Love his watercolours for FFVI as well

[bgmnts]

Hmm, I can see them fine on my phone. You can find them, and many more here

Nice one! They're amazing. Zidane and Kuja look quite androgynous I like it.

It's funny when you see the more cartoonish final design in the game itself. Steiner looks buff as fuck and badass in that design.

[fflip]

I wanted to big up the beautiful simplicity of the FF7 Europe cover (just the meteor, stylised, on a white background), but apparently I'd forgotten there was a big ugly PlayStation logo on the bottom.

I wondered if it was a region thing but I've just looked through my still extant stack of PAL PS1 games and it seems quite random whether they get the black bar or not. The first two Wipeout games escaped unscathed:
     

The third was not so lucky:

[Capt.Midnight]

Those Wipeout covers by Designers Republic felt so futuristic at the time. Still do really. It's amazing what can be done with simple vector art shapes and text. Their work for the band Pop Will Eat Itself followed a similar style.

Funnily enough Wip3out seems to have a much better art design in the game and UI, compared with Wipeout 2. Cover is not the best though.

[Mister Six]

That cover for Wipeout 1 is stunning.

[Memorex MP3]

Yeah I can't see them either.

I wanted to big up the beautiful simplicity of the FF7 Europe cover (just the meteor, stylised, on a white background), but apparently I'd forgotten there was a big ugly PlayStation logo on the bottom.



The cover for 8 was nice too (despite also having that shitty logo). Prefer the way 7's text stretches right across though. And the drop shadow is horrible.

Iirc the original Japanese box (not the "International" reissue) was just white with the logo and the PlayStation icon in one corner I think.

Think Ico's Japanese cover was the same as the UK too

Fucking hell looks like Biohazard 2 had the skull cover too

So the US just went out of their way to make shit new covers not used anywhere else repeatedly...

[machotrouts]

I wondered if it was a region thing but I've just looked through my still extant stack of PAL PS1 games and it seems quite random whether they get the black bar or not.

It's when they were released I think. A while ago I made a series of Sporcle quizzes where you identify PS1 games by their covers, divided by era, and I remember the first quiz with 1995-96 games didn't have the bars, and the 1997 ones onward all did.

[oggyraiding]

Yeah I can't see them either.

I wanted to big up the beautiful simplicity of the FF7 Europe cover (just the meteor, stylised, on a white background), but apparently I'd forgotten there was a big ugly PlayStation logo on the bottom.

I like all the EU boxarts for FFs VII - XII. Just the title and the Amano illustration on a white background, very classy. Then XIII went with a render of Lightning, ruining the simplicity and minimalism.

[Mister Six]

XIII also ruined everything by being shit.

[Capt.Midnight]

Controversial, but I've come to really like the stark, uniform minimalism of Master System games.



Ranger-X



King of Fighters '98


Doom (PS1 Port)

[Mister Six]

Urgh, I didn't like the Master System covers. The weird grid background made it look like a maths textbook. Weirdly sterile and bleak.

I assume they were trying to mimic the very cool NES covers, but struggling to find a different take that was affordable and equally stylish.



The covers for the Barbarian games weren't great, but had appeal for young lads for a rather obvious reason. Well, two...





I am, of course, talking about Wolf from Gladiators' bulging biceps.

The cover to Another World was lovely and atmospheric (and very French):

[oggyraiding]

Fairly simple, but striking. When it was my turn to pick what game my brother and I rented for the weekend, I gravitated towards Skullmonkeys. He hated it and was salty about it being my pick for a very long time. I don't remember much about the game itself beyond its visuals.

[Glebe]

The covers for the Barbarian games weren't great, but had appeal for young lads for a rather obvious reason. Well, two...





I am, of course, talking about Wolf from Gladiators' bulging biceps.

Remember on a school trip to Galway buying either Crash or Your Sinclair and a free Barbarian poster falling out of the magazine on the train home and feeling embarrassed.

[Brundle-Fly]

Cool game too.