/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.6077658]

why can't the usa into cover art?

[Anonymous No.6077660]

>>6077658
Is the left some sort of aged gypsy woman?

[Anonymous No.6077746]

>>6077658
Nips and Bongs used a lot of legit comic book artists. Perhaps Burgers thought that was too nerdy, or didn't understand comic book fan fags. I don't fucking know. Maybe it was just about money.

[Anonymous No.6077774]

>>6077658
Japanese: Sexy HR Giger Ghost in the Shell Robo Alien
European: Sexy sleek robonaut space butterfly woman beholding space
American: MARTIAN WRESTLER MAD

[Anonymous No.6077795]

Makes no sense. Us American kids would've been more drawn to the Euro box cover than anything else. American box art seemed to be an old executive's idea of "what the kids like."

[Anonymous No.6077815]

>>6077658
it's not even that bad

[Anonymous No.6077817]

>>6077658
your sentence makes no fucking sense try learning some english

[Anonymous No.6077821]

>>6077817

Welcome newfriend, enjoy your stay.

[Anonymous No.6077845]

>>6077658
What weirdens me the most is that the European one is the closest thing to the game, and you wouldn't expect the Japs to shy out from more cutesy art (not that they don't have grittier art either, just look at Kato Naoyuki, who did the cover and several other stuff like Starship Troopers designs)

[Anonymous No.6077858]

It's a mystery

[Anonymous No.6077879]

>>6077817
>stones
>glass houses
>restless arms
Neither does yours. Is the use of punctuation in a sentence a foreign concept to you, you retarded faggot?

[Anonymous No.6077938]

>>6077817
lurk more

[Anonymous No.6077942]

No idea
But this was bad compared to the japanese one

[Anonymous No.6077981]

[Anonymous No.6077983]

>>6077981
soul
>>6077942
soulless

[Anonymous No.6077985]

>>6077746
NA here. It's kinda true. They had to market video games alongside movies (literally, had them next to each other in the same rental places) so they probably thought they could scoop up some of that market. Rather than looking exclusively looking like kids/teens comic products.
So you have some exemplification of this here
>>6077658
>>6077858

[Anonymous No.6078015]

[Anonymous No.6078018]

[Anonymous No.6078020]

>>6078018
What was up with the western game gear boxart

[Anonymous No.6078196]

American companies are run by fags who prefer to go for 'high-concept' shit instead of actual cover art. Also, Nintendo of America wouldn't allow a sexy lady on any box with their seal on it.

[Anonymous No.6078320]

>>6077660
America too Conservative in the 80s

[Anonymous No.6078328]

All the sexy art was going to dungeons and dragons and comic books. Until they were sent to the corn fields

[Anonymous No.6078386]

>>6077658

I assume it's related to the fact that American cartoons tended to either be trash aimed at very young kids or crass/edgy satire aimed at adults. The culture seemed to have a nigh-religious devotion to the idea that earnestness and wonder are evil, except when experienced or practiced by pre-pubescent children who are too young to matter yet and so can do whatever. Delicacy and subtlety had to be snuck into the margins of in-your-face stories about crime and battle and stuff, or heavily adulterated with cynicism or mean-spiritedness. You couldn't just look at a futuristic robot girl gazing dreamily into the sky and feel wistful about it. You might then express some kind of honest feeling and then you'd have to be ostracized. You needed to stay safe with the BIG SCARY COBRA ALIEN THAT IS ON FIRE. Nobody needs to worry about responding to that image in a nonstandard way.

And the weird Giger-looking gray lady with the tubes going into her... wow what is that, something that might have a tiny, vague, distant relation to sexuality?!?!?!? Or what, is it some kind of fancy "art"??? No no that kind of thing might lead anywhere. Somebody might be honest briefly. Better make it more bland!

[Anonymous No.6078404]

>>6077981

Hm yeah it's not like Japanese artists weren't retards too. Look at those horrible generic poofy hairdos. Look at the astonishingly unflattering outfit they made flabby on the left there wear. It's better than standard anime design; the people do at least have a physical presence and don't appear to be made of characterless rubber. And yeah it's better than the English-language cover. But those dudes man, they really could not design a nice-looking human character. And many of them still can't.

[Anonymous No.6078410]

>>6078386
This, this, this. The box art differences say everything about the deficient culture of the states.

[Anonymous No.6078609]

>>6077981
>>6078404
Yeah, but look at that Moebius-esque background.

[Anonymous No.6078674]

>>6077658
cuz US art school is full of hacks that teach garbage

[Anonymous No.6078718]

>>6078674
And it's only gone downhill since.

[Anonymous No.6078746]

>>6077858
>Trans World Entertainment

[Anonymous No.6078765]

>>6077658
I'm just not even really sure what the fuck they were thinking sometimes. I mean we're supposed to be all about good marketing and shelf appeal and all that shit and yet here we are constantly using cover art that doesn't give you even the slightest idea of what the fuck it is you might even be buying.

[Anonymous No.6078770]

>>6077942
They definitely hired one of those book cover artists that does them for some weirdo that writes 50 fantasy books the size of a fucking cinder block full of nonsense.

[Anonymous No.6078776]

>>6078674
Used to be based on classical art but now it's some weird fuckin' commie gobeldy gook with huge dead eyes and massive bare teeth.

[Anonymous No.6078787]

>>6078776
Nobody wants to do life drawing anymore. Students just want to rush out and "develop their style" and get a cartoon deal out the gate

[Anonymous No.6078802]

>>6078328
True

[Anonymous No.6078812]

>>6077817
t. newfag
Maybe learn some meme history.

[Anonymous ~ No.6078818]

>>6077658
don't be a consolefag?

[Anonymous No.6078825]

>>6078818
I get the distinct impression that the artists they commissioned for console cover art often hadn't even seen the game they were doing it for and knew little to nothing about it.

[Anonymous ~ No.6078830]

>>6078825
Which is weird since USA is a bigger richer market than glorious nippon land. Maybe console publishers are retards there?

[Anonymous No.6078835]

>>6078830
More a matter of business types making the decisions over the artists which has been a thing in the industry almost since the beginning. It's a big part of what caved Atari.

[Anonymous No.6078845]

>>6078830
They didn't get richer by spending a lot of money on artists

[Anonymous ~ No.6078862]

>>6078818
Larry Suit games all looked cheesecake though it fits the theme.
>>6078845
Did they not learn from MTV? Advertising and HYPE works.

[Anonymous No.6078916]

>>6078818
>trying to pretend NES didn't have FAR better games than any other platform at the time
Sorry you missed out on practically every good game from the '80s.

[Anonymous No.6078930]

>>6078818
>>6078862
It feels like western publishers weren't into console games, which explains why they cheaped out on art for console games but invested more into computer game art.

[Anonymous No.6078936]

>>6078930
Having a high-end PC in those days usually meant you had some serious disposable income and so it was often that demographic targeted.

[Anonymous No.6078939]

>>6078936
Thought it seems like computer games didn't sell very well. 2 million games until 1997 seems kind of low.

[Anonymous No.6078940]

>>6078939
It was a smaller audience. The cost of entry back then was absurd vs. a console.

[Anonymous No.6078945]

I'll let you lot be the judge on which is better.

[Anonymous No.6078954]

>>6078936
>>6078940
You ain't kiddin.
https://jcmit.net/diskprice.htm

[Anonymous No.6078969]

>>6078945
Well art aside I can tell you which title is better and it's not that phonetic mess up top

[Anonymous No.6078995]

>>6078940
That didn't stop publishers from either jumping onto consoles or becoming full console exclusive in the coming years. Those fucking Baldurs Gait spinoffs never got PC versions and Lucasarts had a brief console exclusive stint with games like Gladius.

[Anonymous No.6079060]

>>6077774
Europe is a space fairy. Very appropriate

[Anonymous No.6079094]

>>6077660
I always thought it was some artists reimagining of Grimgrin.

[Anonymous No.6079110]

>>6078825
That's part of it.

[Anonymous No.6079130]

>>6078936
what was high-end for 1989? cuz we had a couple 'puters in the house. One was mine, one was my brothers, one was the office computer and a fourth was my dad's xboxhuge work laptop.
I don't remember the specs, but they ran LSL, Prince of Persia and Chuck Yeager flight simulator. just fine.

[Anonymous No.6079201]

>>6079094
This guy will always remind me of that KC Green comic where the kid says "You aren't my boss, mo, THIS guy is!".

[Anonymous No.6079826]

>>6078386
>The culture seemed to have a nigh-religious devotion to the idea that earnestness and wonder are evil,
This didn't happen until the 90's, the birth of ironic detachment from everything in an effort to be jaded and cool. And this attitude still persists not just in the US, but throughout the world. It's basically what meme culture and this godforsaken site are centered on.

[Anonymous No.6079831]

>>6077815
The guy that did this said he'd never played the game and was just a friend of the marketing reprsentative at capcom USA that was given six hours to make a cover

[Anonymous No.6079836]

to this day i never really understood how to beat this game, but i always found it fun.

[Anonymous No.6079838]

Atari cart/box art was great, though.

[Anonymous No.6079871]

>>6077942
>>6077981

>America: Elderly Conan with his space elf maiden
>Japan: Am I kawaii? uguu ^_^

[Anonymous No.6079878]

>>6078320
No idiot.
The 80's was all cocaine and hookers.

[Anonymous No.6079885]

>>6079878
t. got his knowledge of the 80s from American Psycho

[Anonymous No.6079914]

>>6078015
>>6078018
This is way too funny.

[Anonymous No.6079979]

>>6079826
not really, at least a couple years ago the memes here still showed genuine feeling (like every other post saying somethi g was zomg the epicness) Though there was still irony, like how waifu was first used to mock people fawning over 2D girls (and distance tyemselves from those waifufags) until people unironically used it to refer to anime girls they were in love with. It's more recent, but it's not because of memes themselves, but the way they are used, which drives me to the wall how you call it meme culture when it has to do with sardonic irony

[Anonymous ~ No.6080002]

>>6078862
Ultima covers were great up until VII with its lazy full-black texture. The expansion's cover was nicer, but i doubt most people bought it separately. U9 was glorious despite forgetting what's a paladin.

>>6079130
You were rich by comparison then. Most senpaitachi didn't have PCs, even in murika. Definitely NOT multiple PCs, and no laptops. Even crappy laptops cost 5000+ murika francs.
https://www.sutori.com/item/1988-the-first-laptop-is-introduced-by-compaq-it-was-priced-at-5-399-and-was-f735

check ye privileges, kensama.

[Anonymous No.6080083]

>>6080002
>U9 was glorious despite forgetting what's a paladin.
Spoony was literally complaining about optional dialogue that only existed to acclimate new players to the series. Not saying Ultima 9 was above criticism or even good, but that criticism was beyond bullshit.

[Anonymous ~ No.6080098]

>>6080083
>optional dialogue that only existed to acclimate new players to the series.

how >>>/new/ are you?

[Anonymous No.6080186]

Why were US zelda covers so boring

[Anonymous No.6080190]

>>6080186
Comparison

[Anonymous No.6080196]

>>6079914
Heres the back of the japanese box

[Anonymous No.6080209]

>>6078015
>>6078018
>>6078020
>>6079914
>>6080196


What about the original MSX art? Its p damn awesome

Title used to be Psycho world on there

Whyd they butcher the western boxarts i dont know, Master system at least resembles the game but the western game gear one? Yuck

[Anonymous No.6080242]

>>6080196
I would have bought that game in a heartbeat as a kid, but I wouldn't have given the EU box a second look.

[Anonymous No.6080284]

>>6080242
I bought it for my game gear recently after i found out its actually a fun game via a friend

The eu cover art sure put.me off from it for years thinking it was some weird game

Tbh if id ever find a jp copy in the wild i might swap it for the japanese one just because of the art

[Anonymous No.6080378]

>>6078020
Again the shit with a random giant face. It was way too common.

[Anonymous No.6080383]

>>6079838
This one is beautiful imo

[Anonymous No.6080384]

>>6080209
Pretty sure that the people making those decisions thought that Japanese animation looked too childish to appeal to western audiences. Anyways, most of the games bought in the west back then were by parents for their kids.

I think the whole idea to shit like the Phalanx box art was to help kids fool their parents into letting them get a more violent or otherwise adult oriented game.

[Anonymous No.6080434]

>>6078386
Amazingly articulated.

[Anonymous No.6080442]

>>6078818
>trash games
>generic, sci fi trash art
Epic

[Anonymous ~ No.6080748]

>>6080442
>i have bad taste and can't appreciate good realistic art.
i hear ye.

[Anonymous ~ No.6080751]

>>6080383
cool. but looks nothing like the game.

[Anonymous ~ No.6080754]

>>6077942
>>6078770
Those are some of the greatest artists. I would post examples, but mods.
>>6079871
True. Except the anime art elf looks fat.

[Anonymous No.6080756]

>>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.

[Anonymous No.6080758]

>>6080751
Welcome to the entire Atari 2600 library.

[Anonymous No.6080785]

>>6078770
That shit is good though, you philistine.

>>6080442
Abhorrently bad taste.

[Anonymous No.6080795]

>>6080083
That shit is still inexcusable within that context, a glossary in the manual would be a better solution, but then again, EA presumably thought their customers weren't literate.

[Anonymous No.6080909]

>>6080384
The Phalanx box art was due to the fact that the game was seen as a generic shoot-em-up by the American localizers, so the cover was intentionally designed like that to be unique and eyecatching. Problem was that it was a bit too unique and probably would have gotten more sales if it just had a cover like every other shoot-em-up.

[Anonymous No.6081124]

>>6078787
I think style is fine, abstraction and stylization is great if it has some consistency and method, and preferably not intentionally ugly.
There's absolutely a lack of life drawing though, and it's a shame.

[Anonymous No.6081125]

>>6077942
A classic example of different not being bad.

[Anonymous No.6081137]

>>6078945
Hard to go past Vallejo but I like both.

[Anonymous No.6081145]

>>6078825
That definitely happened a lot.

>>6079878
>>6079885
There was some of both going on, and it could really depend on where in America you were. It's a very big country, and culture could (and still does) vary a lot even state by state.
The states of California, Louisiana, New York, Texas, Vermont, Wyoming, these are all so strongly different from each other they're practically different countries.
Then you have differences between just small town/rural areas to actual urban areas (and I'm not just talking the biggest metropols).

To say that in America there weren't strong conservative bents, or that there was never any drug fueled excess, either would be wrong, both were pretty powerful in the 1980s.

[Anonymous No.6081162]

>>6078830
Lots of old CEO people who weren't in touch, calling shots they really didn't need to.

You ever see an American cartoon or movie for kids where there's a completely uncalled for and terrible rap number? Half of those are because rap was big at the time, and some people correctly realized they could cash in on it (you'd see this with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and early seasons of The Simpsons), and the other half is that some old fuck realized that rap is hip with the kids in 1987, only problem is that it's 1999 and his product is shipping in 2000 (possibly localizing in some countries as late as 2001), and you can't get away with rapping to kids and teens as a middle aged/senior upper middle/upper class white person by that point, especially not when you try to sanitize it.

[Anonymous ~ No.6081821]

>>6081162
>upper middle/upper class white person by that point,
muh white mean can't rap. >>>/pol/ >>>/mu/

[Anonymous No.6081837]

>>6080196
i never knew where this art came from.

Is this game worth playing?

[Anonymous No.6081839]

>>6081837
Yeah its fun

Wheres that shirt from?

[Anonymous No.6081840]

>>6081839
https://jeremyklein.com/

He's the guy that made the Hook Ups skate stuff from the 90s, he's still around doing stuff.

[Anonymous No.6081865]

>>6081821
>lived in nice homogenous neighborhood with no racial tensions or frequent violent crime
>not poor
>no criminal background
>no overt mental illnesses
>not beaten by his parents because they got beaten by their parents and 'turned out fine'
I'm sure a 66 year old producer or CEO who hasn't even beatboxed in his life is going to write amazing rap lyrics, particularly when he's careful to not say anything racist or something which will make soccermoms screech. Point is that there ought to be some kind of hardship involved.

I didn't say only blacks can rap, Eminem was big for a reason, and Ice-T is like, mulatto or something (and for that matter does better metal than a lot of white guys), but I apologize for hurting your delicate sensibilities, the out of touch old fuck could just as well be a handicapped and gay old asian lady.

[Anonymous ~ No.6082059]

>>6081865
>the out of touch old fuck could just as well be a handicapped and gay old asian lady.

i don't think beastie boys or will smith are gay transwamen crippled war vets. also their albums are GREAT. >>>/mu/

dumb hipsters.

[Anonymous No.6082087]

>>6081837
>>6081840
why does it says "Jerumy"?

[Anonymous No.6082120]

>>6081840
So he just steals art and sells it?

[Anonymous No.6082142]

>>6082059
>i don't think beastie boys or will smith are gay transwamen crippled war vets
The Beastie Boys and Woll Smoth are both POC though, so they get a bit more leeway.

[Anonymous ~ No.6082146]

>>6082142
that's racist >>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.6082238]

>>6082120
sorta, he's just a weeb from a time there wasn't a lot of weeb merch in the states, so he made his own.

[Anonymous No.6082256]

>>6082120
Pretty much, yeah.
His stuff was pretty damn popular in the 90s. This is one of the ones I had. If I had known it'd be worth 100s of dollars nowadays, I would've taken better care of it.

He can't really get away with stealing art like he used to though. so nowadays most of his art just seems to be of the "How to draw Anime and Manga Vol 4" quality.

[Anonymous No.6082460]

>>6078930
It's the opposite. Nobody gave a shit about the miniscule market for computer games. It was so small compared to the market for games on actual video game systems that it was practically just a tiny hobbyist community. However, where money is involved, publishers will stick their giant hooked noses into things, and therefore they cared enough to meddle in games for video game systems, but not in computer games.

[Anonymous No.6083523]

>>6082059
I like Will Smith, he's a charming guy and Fresh Prince still stays with me to this day, but I was never too impressed with his music.
I can't really remember Beastie Boys at this moment, so take my opinion with some salt.

>>6082460
This, pretty much.

[Anonymous No.6083551]

>>6080002
IMO, the Black Gate box was extremely effective at the time. With a shelf full of mostly air bushed art boxes in computer stores, seeing a box that was starkly black stood out like crazy. It begged you to pick it up and look at the back to see what it's deal was.

[Anonymous No.6083669]

>>6080002
I like the Ultima VII box design, it's simple but looks really good, the font and the arranging are perfect.

[Anonymous No.6083714]

>>6082256
Only the poor white trash wore those shirts in my school. The one guy in my spanish class that wore that exact shirt was some meth-head or something. Could barely form words.

[Anonymous No.6084227]

>>6078939
Games like Doom were quite the outliers, and actually drove sales of PCs, then you had Quake, launching with software 3D, and people would settle for 20fps, but then GlQuake was released, and people really wanted their copy of Quake to look like that, so it was a big part of starting the arms race for hardware accelerated 3D graphics.

Yet still, PC games in total sold only so much.

[Anonymous No.6084239]

>>6077981
Nei's legs
That's it mane hnnng

[Anonymous No.6084571]

>>6078787
That's not true anymore, luckily. I don't know if it's because of this book, but life drawing came back with force. But yeah, in the 80s, it was not super popular.

[Anonymous No.6086037]

>>6084571
Really? We're not doomed to Cal-Arts mediocrity?

[Anonymous No.6087434]

>>6077817
Does it count as not retro if the person posting was born after the ‘00s?

[Anonymous No.6087546]

>>6079878
>>6078320
Anecdotal, but the two most conservative guys I know both still do cocaine occasionally. One's a redneck, both are actual boomers.
To be on topic, US covers are usually the worst, but I've also seen them have the best.

[Anonymous No.6088639]

>>6082142
>The Beastie Boys
>POC
ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

[Anonymous No.6088643]

>>6082142
>The Beastie Boys
>POC
ZOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

[Anonymous No.6088716]

>>6080442
Starflight and Star Control are both excellent.

[Anonymous No.6089150]

>>6080442
GTFO zoomer

[Anonymous No.6091393]

Bump for more good American covers.

[Anonymous ~ No.6091667]

>>6091393
>muh murikas world polis
Britbong art is just fine,

[Anonymous ~ No.6091774]

>>6091667
More quality from murika and europoors.

[Anonymous No.6091841]

>>6091774
I love all of those.

[Anonymous No.6092048]

>>6080383
>cover features a cosmonaut vs astronaut
Holy shit cold war kino

[Anonymous No.6092072]

>>6081840
I was absolutely captivated by these when I was like 13. Such a wonderfully weird way to be reminded of them.

[Anonymous No.6093342]

>>6079979
>like how waifu was first used to mock people fawning over 2D girls (and distance tyemselves from those waifufags) until people unironically used it to refer to anime girls they were in love with.
No it wasn't you dumbass.
The term Waifu comes from Japan and was borrowed by foreigners unironically.
Get the fuck out with that reddit lore.

[Anonymous No.6093346]

>>6080002
Ultima VII's cover is a great plebfilter.

[Anonymous ~ No.6094003]

>>6093346
>Black is the new black shitposting
No u.