/vr/ - Retro Games

>>6077746
Would depend on when and where you were looking. Doom's cover was illustrated by Don Ivan Puncthatz (his son did the posable latex and steel models for some of the monsters), and Doom 2's cover was by Gerald Brom, genuine good painters with some legit chops. Gerald Brom also painted the cover to Heretic.
You had Julie Bell (wife of fabled Boris Valejo, who she models for) who did an unused cover for Doom, and one of the Wolfenstein 3D cover arts, along with some other game covers, like Demon's Crest, Splatterhouse 3, and Golden Axe, also Shadow Warrior, before that game changed direction during development (which it did a lot, it began development in 1992, concepts dating further back, finally releasing in like 1997).
Other American games with good cover arts include the Ultima series (at least partially).

There's definitely some bad trends which grew with time, partially it's Hollywood's fault, and it could often result in localized titles getting a bland and generic cover art due to publishers being terrified that it won't sell as well with the original cover.
It's interesting that this trend persists today, people have much wider access to promotional material and information now, it's kind of unlikely for someone's first exposure to a game to be to see it on a store shelf and that being what first draws them in.
I wish publishers would just ignore the (likely miniscule) marketing angle, and instead just treated cover art like a prestige thing.