David Hayward spent a lot of time looking at boxes
Computer and video game box art, or cover art, was once just as important element of game marketing as the game itself. Who cared if the game consisted of a stickman running a wire-thin strip of landscape, dodging ASCII characters? If the box art displayed something totally amazing, then the game invariably sold.
‘Never judging a book by its cover’, is what we’re often told, and never was that sage advice more relevant in another media than when we used to buy computer games as a physical tape, floppy or disc that came packaged in a box. Many were the hours we spent ages looking at the shelves of John Menzies gripping a fiver, before picking up the game with a cover depicting a great space war (or some barbarian chap with scantily clad damsel in tow brandishing a sword and fighting off some terrible looking beast), bought it, got home and loaded it up to be met with something beyond awful.
That’s box art for you. Tweaking and playing with the imagination; fiddling with your eyes and making you believe that, possibly, within the many ones and zeros that make up the game within, there’s something truly wonderful.
On the other side of the coin, however, there were really bland and nondescript box art attempts that held an exceptional game within. Look at Strider for the Mega Drive; a cracking game with really naff box art. There were some, though, that hit the nail on the head, combining both amazing packaging with a really decent game inside the box.
Take, for example, 3D StarStrike for the Spectrum. A great game by Ian Oliver, Andrew Onions and Graeme Baird, with excellent art work by none other than Oliver Frey. Then there’s the Amiga game Awesome: a seasickness-inducing space faring game by Psygnosis, with box art by science fiction artist John Harris.
History
Obviously video game box art only really appeared once video games started to arrive in the home. One of the earliest examples is Shooting Gallery for the Odyssey, from 1972.
Throughout the 70s the box art became more and more elaborate, with publishers quickly realising that the gamer of the day wanted their imaginations fed through the cover and into the game (despite the game being a selection of coloured blocks). Star Ship, Escape, Invasion Orion, Datestones of Ryn, Adventureland and the Temple of Apshai all brought some fine box art throughout these early gaming years.
The 80s were a golden age. The Spectrum, C64, Amiga and ST all had some incredible examples of box art, far too many to mention here. Even the nineties had some memorable moments: remember Gods, Monkey Island, Steel Empire and Epic? Bet you do...
Box art is still going, and there has been some interesting additions in recent times. Modern examples, though, do tend to pale in comparison to some of the great hand drawn artwork of the past.
The Good
Amazing art work could lead into the game, fire your imagination and have you gazing at it even when you weren’t playing the actual game.
The Bad
Poor box art forced your eyes to keep wandering over the shelves, in search of other titles. Often, bad box art hid some exceptional games, and you were always reminded never to judge a game by the quality of its cover.
Conclusion
In this digitally downloadable age, box art has taken a bit of backseat in the overall marketing of a game. While there are still notable examples of it about, we tend not to notice them. Not surprising as we’re browsing Steam’s library, rather than the shelves of the local computer shop.
Did You Know?
• Stephen Bliss is the Senior Artist at Rockstar Games, and the one behind the GTA box art
• One the earliest box artists was Jerrol Richardson, who worked with Intellivision throughout the 70s and early 80s. Sadly, he died in 1991
• 3D StarStrike wasn’t the only game that Oliver Frey did the artwork for. There’s also Vulcan, Beachhead 2, Hawkeye, Creatures, Creature 2 (all of Thalamus games, basically), Napoleon At War…
• Ciruelo Cabral is another renowned fantasy artist who worked with the DOS games of the Ishar series, among others