/vr/ - Retro Games

>>682445

11/10 would impregnate

the fuck is this, some Turrican thing?

C64 and MSX gamers got plump nipples on their game box art? I'm jealous

>>682475
>the fuck is this, some Turrican thing?
IDK, can't say I've played it. Tried to earlier but Dosbox just spit it out

But in the Wikipedia description it did say that it was something along the lines of Turrican, so, yes

>>682445

Dragon Wars

This.

>>682548
Huh, strange to find a similar artist

>>682553
That's awesome looking. Why did Japan releases have so much better box art than the American editions?

>>682550

>>682553

It's actually one of the few cases were they kept (most) of the original art in the west

>>682554
Julie Bell and Boris Vallejo are husband and wife.
Julie Bell is also a body builder so she models for the buff chicks in these paintings

>>682550
That game was bretty good for a baseball game.

except for >>682541 these are all lame, I bet you were the type of kids that lead the whole everything had to be EXTREEEEEME thing that ruined gaming in the 90s

>>682548
>>682554

Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell, they pretty much defined oiled-up 80's fantasy art.

>>682578
That's awesome!

>>682587

>>682587

ok ok, we get it, you kids have proven how sterotypically EXTREME you all are... now can we have some actually good box art?
probably not

>>682598
Don't see you posting anything jackass
have some more Boris

>>682598
>Fantasy Airbrush Art
>not tubular as fuck

Probably one of my all-time favorites right here

Both as a game as a piece of artwork

>>682557
That's not by Amano, is it?

>>682607
that is actually cool though, everything else has been chest beating "buy this and you will become a MAN" garbage though, the genesis and it's shitty mentality of pushing the idea that people played games to feel like manly men helped to ruin video games forever

no phalanx yet? Let's fix that.

>>682625
Ehhh well, it's also become one of the retorts against women feeling objectified in video games by people who don't know the difference between "Idealized" and "Objectified"

>>682625
Calm down bro, 95% of all fantasy artwork looks like that, and there's nothing wrong with it.

>>682636
>95% of all fantasy artwork looks like that
and that's why I hate western fantasy artwork
it's all some rejects from the 80s wet dream

This.

>>682625
Sounds like you got problems.

Shit port with the coolest art.

>>682630
It's not funny if you post this in every cover thread ever.

>>682646
no, I just think the turn that the gaming industry took in the mid-late 90s and never recovered from was a bad one and that sega and it's chest beating to sell games helped push it towards that direction, it got pretty disgusting, I wish I had saved that ad from some magazine for some magical girl game so I could post it to prove my point. It was like "What's this, some wussy girl on a broom? She isn't going to save the world is she? WELL OF COURSE NOT WITHOUT YOUR HELP!" and then the rest of the ad was spent justifying why a manly man(boy) such as the reader would ever entertain the ridiculous notion of wanting to play a shooter featuring a magical girl

Screw Sega yurop/murka. The box of my copy of Alisia Dragoon could've looked like this (right) instead of this (left).

>>682642
As opposed to your japanese animes? I'd rather have a homoerotic greasy buff dude than an google eyes androgynous girly-man hero from a typical JRPG box.

>>682667
Admittedly, they got one right. I always like the box art of SF2 with side-boob and all. Minus the eyes, what the fuck is that, srsly?

>>682663
Dude. How many Mega Man games have him looking like a bad ass cybernetic warrior on the box when his sprite is a little chubby frog-thing?

How many Nintendo games a this epic adventure on the box but a simple side scrolling derp-fest in game?

Adjust your fly, your tumblr is showing.

>>682667
Whil they both suck, the one on the left actually displays some painterly skill. the one on the right is a kawaii cluterfuck

>>682674
>>682667
These are just carry overs from traditional flavors in art.
compare anything painted in the West during, say the Baroque period with Japanese art of the same time and they look like these box art comparisons

>>682625
Go away anita.

>>682642
Most of the time it literally is one guy.

1/3 of these are by Boris Vallejo.

He's amazing, but you know it was just another mass produced, thoughtless paycheck deal to him. I'd rather have art by someone who actually worked on the game.

That doesn't happen too many times with Japanese covers either, but it's still nice when it is the case.

>>682624
It's Jun Suemi, who does some video game illustrations now and then, namely the Japanese releases of Wizardry and Front Mission 2.

>>682680

You can shove your "painterly" skill. The one on the right adequately represents the game. The one on the left represents some fuckwad that never had anything to do with its creation's opinion of what is marketable and bears no relation to the game, the world, the story or the developer's intent. It's meaningless.

>>682705

>>682725
The one on the right looks like a pretty princess game and the ENTIRE point of the box art is to sell the game. The one on the left does a better job of trying to convince some body to buy it

Koei always had classy as fuck cover art. Too bad good scans are hard to find.

>>682680
sure, but sega took it to a whole other level, I don't remember any NES or SNES games that had ads or boxes that literally where just justifying why you would want to play a girly looking game and actually talked about how girly it looked and how you should play it anyhow

>>682749
It's a moot point, for they both appeal to their own markets. The original cover wouldn't obviously sell in the US because it's "gay speed racer voltron shit" nor would the Vallejo cover would have sold in the native market of Japan for obvious reasons.

>>682762
>The original cover wouldn't obviously sell in the US because it's "gay speed racer voltron shi
that is what the gaming industry would think, but it wasn't true at all

>>682749
And this is exactly why "marketers" such as what you're trying to pass of as are absolutely pointless in the grand scheme of things.

"I'm beginning to feel that marketing people are the bane of the universe. I used to think it was lawyers."
- Anonymous, Fallout 2

>>682578

Holy shit, I never knew that. And Eternal Champions is one of my favorite cover arts of all time, it's so absurd yet so great. Why is Jetta flying across the place? Who the fuck knows?

>>682778
Because all she ever does is fly around the place at double speed? Fucking annoying fight, that.

>>682680

How about fuck you, the one on the left is generic fantasy stuff, i.e. metal as fuck, but the one on the right is genuinely beautiful to look at.

>>682772
One anon brought up the VHS comparison a while back and I think that was a pretty good point

Our movie box art for things like Star Wars, Indiana Jones and such are these exaggerated Frazetta-esque paintings. so they tried to match that was the video game boxes.

Look at Dragon Warrior. The Japanese one would not have appealed to me as much as the other one.
The jap one is cute and childish and looks like some kind of Mario thing. The other one looks like an epic dragon slaying adventure.

A lot of people here also didn't grow up in a time when anime was an obscure and exotic thing that, yeah, was represented by Voltron and Speed Racer

>>682791
It's not even beautiful by anime/manga standards dude! Is EQUALLY generic, only a whole lot more pink.

>>682792
that's different though, because the box art for dragon warrior actually fit the game, half of these have nothing to do with the game and are pretty ugly

>>682772
"Japanimation" was still a thing then, but marketers still spun games as something for kids only. Big manly metal shit is a shitload more easier to peddle to 11 year old boys than the riskier, slightly novel world of animu in the early 90s.

>>682804
but why only market to boys in the first place?

>>682802
The box didn't need to "fit" the game, it needed to "SELL" the game. They jazzed it up.
Given the DnD tradition of video games that goes back to the very beginning of the industry, any generic Frazzetta styled fantasy stuff clicked better than a pretty animu chick floating amongst sparkles and fuzzy friends.

>>682816
because in the 80s and 90s nobody thought girls wanted to (or should have) anything with swords or guns

boys got weapons girls got dolls

>>682816
Oh god, are we really going this route? Just stop now

To the anons arguing in this thread, I'd rather have Vallejo's art instead of shitty cgi + poser art. Look at MTG, the art has become awful.

>>682445
Unf.

>>682825
yeah... but living in the 80s and 90s, that actually wasn't always true, you younger people seem to think that the 80 and 90s were still the 50s, also the 90s was a time of huge social changes... sadly most of them got reverted when le bush came along so there is next to no sign of them today

>>682843
I meant George W Bush, not the first bush

>>682830
I'm not being all "womans r objectified in the games" or anything like that am I? Just there always have been an underlying current of misogyny through the videogame industry that goes much deeper than that, but then again, maybe this isn't the best place to address that..

>>682843
>you younger people

I was born in 1985, please stop generalizing. Gender stereotypes were still a fucking thing in the late 80s early 90s. It was better than the 50s, yes, but it was still like "We'll include girls by giving them special pink stuff that involves makeup" rather than "pretend girls don't exist outside of the kitchen".

>>682739
The thing that I find funny about these compairisons of art between cultures is that the people who use them in the "Yurpe is best there is" arguement, they completely ignore the actual cultural and historical reasons behind the difference.
Europeans were and always will be wet for hyper realism and showy oil paints. The Japanese were always into minimalism.

Love Atari stuff.

Barely /vr/.

Prince of Persia on the Super Famicom

>>682843
Girls got Treasure Trolls, boys got Stone Protectors
Girls got Sky Dancers, boys got Dragon Flyz

Stop pretending you're old enough to remember

>>682873
yeah... you have a point... I was kinda to the point where I should have stopped a long time ago, I get like that sometimes, let's end this here and agree to disagree and just post box art we think is cool, ok
I'm sorry I let this get this far

>>682880

>Jackal

I loved the shit out of this game for multiplayer

>mfw when my friend or myself die and we have to beg each other to steal lives

>>682874
Yeah I wasn't saying "lol Japs can't draw!" I was just saying that culturally, we have always had different focus.
Dude with flowing cape and torn shirt holding a sword that is getting hit with lightning will almost always do better over here than cute anime drawing of a little boy holding a sword.

>>682896
and through videogames the secret reason we didn't win the vietnam war is revealed to us, THEY HAD FUCKING GIANT LAZOR SHOOTING ROBOTS

>>682868
It's not misogyny. Video game publishers would LOVE for girls to buy more games, that would be TWICE the potential sales.
Fact is girls, GENERALLY, don't go for it though so the next best thing to do is to be as manly as possible so as to at least attract the males better than the competition.

>>682925

Exactly this. You always go toward the target audience and who is more likely to play your game or buy your product.

Same reason beer commercials have hot women in them or at least did. Now it is usually some multiracial group of buds with one token women.

>>682918
>>682874
I think most of us in this argument were actually amerifags though

>>682909
>agreeing to drop it and getting back on topic

hats off to you anon, if more people were like this boards would be a better place

As much as I love the Secret of Mana box art, it's actually just a mere crop of the japanese art. They had those crazy tall/long SFC boxes and you really got to see the mana TREE in scale

>>682940

>amerifags

Just stop it, or leave. Thanks.

>>682941

Whoops. Here's something a little better.

>>682937
totally offtopic but

I read a thing about beer commercials the other day wondering why there were so many where men were "hiding" beer from women. Usually the caveat was that it was wives/girlfriends who didn't approve of the manliness and the men were rebelling by finding a place to drink beer anyway. They pointed out how this seemed really weird until you realize it's aimed at teenagers and is basically telling them to go hide from mom and drink beer with their buds

>>682925
I have things to say about that, but I'm not going to because I don't want to prolong this argument. All and all it's really more a problem with society as a whole than it is the gaming industry, but we are opening up a whole can of worms that will only attract trolls once it's oppened

>>682876
the hell is even going on here, are they trying to portray breakout as like an astronaut running around frantically playing stick-racketball to destroy rainbows in space

Not sure if this applies.

>>682960

Trust me. It is mostly pure economics.

And while true that the game development world is a mans game you are somehow under the impression that the same pasty programmers are marketing the games, when that couldn't be farther from the truth.

It is suits and marketing departments going for their target audience and yeah it stems from societal issues, it is ultimately the greenbacks that are going into marketing decisions.

Ethnic Marketing & McDonald's

Dumping a few Super Famicom covers

>>682941
>>682953
leave it to psygnosis to actually name a game Awesome
most of their box art was pretty cool really

>>682987

meant actual covers

>>682953

The thing I HATED about psygnosis is that they used Roger Dean art.

Which is beyond amazing. So they would hook you with those crazy colors, textures and landscapes. And then they gave you a mediocre game.

Their games were light years worse than the actual games.

>>682963

Oh it does. Please. Continue.

>>682987
>And then they gave you a mediocre game.
are you on drugs?

Hardly a game it seems.

>>682994
lolwut

>>682962
That cover art and interpretation really makes me more emotionally invested in the outcome of Breakout.

>>682997

Wish I could dump some newer stuff too.

>>682990
Wow that's aged well.

>>683004

Psygnosis? Try playing their games now. Most have controls that are broken beyond belief. That "icons" control method was interesting... but then you realized the only value to their games that the controls were so fucking shit, you felt great whenever you were able to get something done.

Barbarian and Obliterator suffered this. Terrorpods... I never even understood what the fuck was going on there. Brataccas was great, but also had shit controls.

Oh... and Arena. Holy hell. If James did AVGN videos about computer games, Arena should be the first episode. What a piece of shit.

>>683018
>breakout is the portrayal of a stranded astronaut who is fighting against incomprehensible, almost lovecraftian abstract terrors while not knowing if he's even sane or not

>>683023

old is OK. you got any marquees from the golden age, like Tron, Tapper or Spy Hunter?

>>682987
Yeah I hated them for that. did they ever make a good game?

>>682990
oh shit I didn't realize this was a callback

>>683039

Brataccas is the closest I know. It had a very GTA feel to it, since you could go around and murder complete innocents and get away with it.

Also, it had ALF in it.

>>683034
The best thing is that it's a Gemini/Apollo era suit.

>What Michael Collins was doing while Neil and Buzz were moonwalking on TV

>>683056

>>683036

I'm having trouble finding similarly large ones.

>>683028
ok.. maybe you have a point there, to be honest, Shadow of the Beast, the Lemmings games and Brataccas where the only pre-Wipe Out Psygnosis games I have ever played

>>682576

Probably because you can't make any box art more extreme than that.

>>683093
That would be perfect if it didn't have that stupid "action packed" bit on the right.

>>683058
>Michael Collins just tripping absolute balls while Neil and Buzz are filmed

beautiful

>>683089
I always thought this version did a better job of letting me know how much of an ass kicking I was in for

>>683093
the series of movie posters that box art is based on are a lot cooler

>>683104

>those off-telly screenshots

genuinely surprised they knew better than to take the pics full on with a flash.

>>683110

>that Michael Myers face

>>683119

>>683127
>tfw you'll never be a buff american, kicking the shit out of nazis

>>683119
dat fukken art deco

what the hell was packaging like this graphically designed on in the 80s and 90s before computers became widespread for that use

>>683172
paper

>>683201
I need to go look up the history of color printing pre-computers

>>683093

Never beat the first level of that game but holy shit.

Also why does that version of the art have eyebrows on the mask?

>>683218

It's exactly the same as now. What you might want to look up is pre-adobe design.

Holy fuck did that change.

>>683093
>>683113
>>683119

You guys read the comics? They still make them, and they've got throwback incentive covers.