f13.net

I'm trying to make a relatively high-res library of video game box art that is fantastic. Here's the two that I have thus far:

(http://www.f13.net/images/box_art/ico_europe.jpg)
(http://www.f13.net/images/box_art/katamari_damacy.jpg)

Specifically, I'm looking for art that actually looks like art. Paintings and whatnot. Not stuff like Mario 3 or Mega Man 2.

(http://archive.gamespy.com/legacy/halloffame/ultima4/box_art_s.jpg)

Much of that series qualifies.

(http://celestial.bei.t-online.de/cover/u3_box_small.jpg)
(http://www.rolemaker.dk/documents/Requirements/BA_GameReference/screenshots/ultima1-5/box5.jpg)
(http://celestial.bei.t-online.de/cover/u6_box_small.jpg)

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

Man..memories. Don't ask me why, but Ultima V and Ultima Underworld were the most immersive games I have every played in my life.

And I still remember my first "game hacking"--we decoded the data files in Ultima II and gave ourselves massive stats!

Don't forget being a 5th-grade uberhacker! Sadly, the game was C&C and the hacked item was the ini. Ah the innocence of youth...

These may or may not qualify
(http://www.retrogaming.it/nes/contraforce.gif)

[Admin Edit: Took out Angelfire Links. Don't do that. Bad Touch.]

While those are all great games, a lot of the art itself is pretty pulpy.  I wouldn't let your love of the game drown your aesthetic sensibilities.

Wow, what are those things in that "Pikmin" game?  I can't stop staring.

Pikmin.

  The mindless masses you control with your little alien avatar who will  fight, die or explode as you command!  Fear my animal-vegetable army of doom, vile beetles!  

It's a fantastic game for anyone who liked Lemmings.

Some kind of wierd plant aliens you up-pluck and get to follow you around in droves.  That about covers it.

I was going to try to post up some game boxes, but while looking at them it occured to me that (with few exceptions (http://archive.gamespy.com/top10/january03/covers/index.shtml)) they all boil down to some fairly nifty marketing statement or another.

It just now occured to you that game boxes were advertising?  Andy Warhol called, he said you don't get 15 minutes.

Not so much that the box cover is designed to sell the product so much as how the commercial meaning behind the art sort of robs it of it's artistic meaning.

I'm back in College, the rampant attack of knowledge on my sad sack of gray matter has made me a fruity socialist. It's probably just a phase.

Is there any box in the world as good as ICO? Pikmin 2 is pretty nice though. And high-res people, high-res. And use imagebucket, not angelfire.

(http://www.psxextreme.com/screenshots/ps2_rez/ps2_box_rez.jpg)

I think I was supposed to buy that game like 10 times and I kept forgetting.

(http://photobucket.com/albums/v231/lonestar627/hell.jpg) (http://photobucket.com/albums/v231/lonestar627/grim.jpg)
(http://photobucket.com/albums/v231/lonestar627/afterlife.jpg)
(http://photobucket.com/albums/v231/lonestar627/scrapland.jpg)

I say Wasteland (http://c64.mobygames.com/game/sheet/gameId,287/) or the Dune 2 (http://www.mobygames.com/game/sheet/p,2/gameId,241/) box beats Ico but that's just me. Ico looks too Dali for me.

(http://img48.exs.cx/img48/4961/ootw7wv.jpg)

Great box art and an amazing game... wish I still had the box.

(http://img118.exs.cx/img118/2480/outlaws8lh.jpg)

This one is a personal favorite because not only did I get the artist to smile at me at my first PC convention ever, I spent countless hours playing this game in my younger years. Box art that harkens back to the day when CG was an avant garde artist's wet dream...

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v239/LordDax/dott.jpg)

(http://www.rpgtimes.net/rpgtimes/images/herosquest.jpg)

(http://www.sircabirus.com/ultimaonline/images/uobox.jpg)
(The later EA-ized expansion cover art was meh.  But the original was fantastic.)

The Warcraft 3 orc box art was splendid:

(http://www.blizzard.com/images/war3/wallpaper/orcboxart-preview.jpg)

Decent resolution image (zipped) (http://ftp.blizzard.com/pub/war3/wallpaper/orcboxart-1600x.zip)

Max Payne 2 (http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0000A1P6B.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg) Though it isn't very high res.

EDIT: Bigger here (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameId,10708/)

I have a friend that claims its the hardest game ever to this day.  He somehow found the SNES version on eBay.

Grim Fandango... fun game, great cover.  The Pimkin box looks like the illegitimate child of an ant from "Ants" and a Teletubby.

I forgot about MP2. Nice pull.

(http://apple2history.org/museum/images/advconstset.jpg)

Perhaps my favorite piece of software of all time. Just seeing the box gives me  chills. Back in the day before EA was actually Satan.

(http://pkmoutl.net/candiedvertebrae/fable_boxart.jpg)

(http://www.rpgunited.com/picture/default/fallout.jpg)

Wow, Hell, the Cyberpunk Thriller. Loved that piece of shit game. Great soundtrack, and nothing quite like Dennis Hopper hamming it up as a fucking demon in a pixel-hunt adventure game. Back when they were still making decent adventure games.

I always loved the Wasteland box art.

Pretty much anything in the Final Fantasy series, really. They tend to use concept art as box packaging.

(http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ff8/packaging/ff8_us.jpg)

(http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ff7/packaging/ff7intbox.gif)

(http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ff6/graphics/boxart/ff6.gif)

Of course, some of it is also embarassingly bad:

(http://www.rpgamer.com/games/ff/ff3/graphics/boxart/ff3cover.jpg)[/img]

(http://www.toptronics.fi/TopProducts.nsf/0/b34f2496db150c72c2256e19005105fb/$FILE/TheDigLucasClassicsPC24.jpg)

You should have posted the big one.  

Is that actually larger than the box itself?  =P

I tried to buy or rent that game like 10 times and failed to find it for sale anywhere :P   I like the box arts and the screenshots and the videos, though.

Re: Grim Fangdango, Out of This World, Adventure Construction Set: Ah, the memories.

I guess even in the old days they knew how to make a good box cover:
(http://geldon.moviebbq.com/grieflink/1056055762-00.jpg)
Mail Order Monsters (Nice, made it look like a letter.   How do you suppose they did that dino - dressed up a toy?)
(http://geldon.moviebbq.com/grieflink/1088460152-00.jpg)
Below The Root (Includes full color book illustration)

Not that modern game covers suck - in fact, they're sometimes even cooler than the game:
(http://geldon.moviebbq.com/grieflink/1033628015-00.jpg)
Kingdom Hearts - sappy wierd plot, awesome artistic style
(http://geldon.moviebbq.com/grieflink/1104252195-00.jpg)
Final Fantasy X - sappy wierd plot, awesome artistic style
 (Yeah, I know, Squaresoft - easy pick for artistic style.)

Or sometimes, the art is only almost as cool as the game:
(http://geldon.moviebbq.com/grieflink/1044324670-00.jpg)
Einhander, a fitting cover for one of the best SMUPs ever.
(http://geldon.moviebbq.com/grieflink/1081072053-00.jpg)
Ring of  Red - fairly descriptive of the mood of the game.

I guess I'm over my "OMG, Game Box Covers are commercialized!" kick.
P.S. Mobygames is love except if you try to directly link their images then they kick you hard where you least desire it.

Jesus mothercock, fix that post.

Heh. Now I wish I could have seen it in all its incompetent glory.

Just replace the  tags with [img] tags, remove the descriptions in between, and you can.

I'm just stumped on building the image of "Jesus Mother-Cock" ()

I think he was more referring to how none of the links fucking work.

At least they don't seem to work on this end

There is a reason I mentioned Andy Warhol.  You should look into it.

(http://www.uwes-adventureseite.de/schachteln/ihavenomouth.jpg)

Seeing all these old covers bring back memories and old pains of regret for never picking up copies. That last one looks interesting. Anyone have any idea if its Abandonware yet or where I can find it?

Silly me, the thought occured that may have been happening but I decided to trust my cache that time.  Won't happen again.

Post fixxored, if fjcking long now.

That reminds me
(http://geldon.moviebbq.com/grieflink/977977175-00.jpg)

Are we not men? We are Devo.

!!!NEUROMANCER!!!!

MUST GET!!
MUST BUY!!

Anyone have a copy they want to get rid of? I collect orginal Interplay and LucasArts games.

If it was half as good as the book I agree with Dax

You might want to search for a cheap Amiga to play it on (http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4315&item=8160313818&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW)

Enjoy (http://www.antonraubenweiss.com/gibson/gibson0.html)

Heh heh. Got one from the days of yore :P I don't let any game/pc system that could become a classic get too far out of sight.

(http://i6.ebayimg.com/03/c/00/c0/79/85_8.JPG)

Righ still has an Amiga 500 sitting in the cupboard.  It has followed us across oceans.  It's not been out of it's box for at least 11 years.  I can't believe the sort of stuff he holds on to.  I'm the opposite.  Sometimes I throw things away while I'm still using them.  It's the Scandie in me, I think.

I still have this, although it's at my sister's house.  If it weren't, I would have tossed it a gazillion years ago.

(http://apple2history.org/museum/images/leather_goddess.jpg)

Wait, I thought we were supposed to be buried with our junk?

Nope. Got rid of the A500 when the keyboard broke. I still have an A3000 and a bunch of other Amiga stuff. I use AmigaForever now. Emulation on a modern Mac or PC is faster than my A3000 with an MC68060 running at 75MHz. But I need the Amiga to read the floppies - PC controllers cannot be programmed to do so.

But, if you think that's bad... I have a CD32 too. If C= hadn't failed so dismally, more people might know that Zool was once the greatest platform game ever written.

The great game noone has seemed to play

*Should be a boxart image of Dreamweb*
(http://www.cdaccess.com/gifs/shared/front/large/dreamweb.gif)

And ofcourse yet another game noone seemed to play ( that rocked )

*Should be a boxart image of Sanitarium
(http://www.lukaswebs.com/lacueva/caratulas/images/sanitarium_jpg.jpg)

Edit: Right, we'll have another go at this

Your're right. I certainly never played "MobyGames The definitive resource for PC Games mobygames.com".

I made teh same mistake, it's why I had to donwload and mirror those mobygame titles on my own space.  Pesky mobygames, they just won't share.  (It's probably why their site's actually responsive.)

Crap, the images showed up when I previewed the post... Ah well I'll edit it for now...

(http://g.metron.com/alice.gif)

God, I loved that game.

(http://archive.gamespy.com/legacy/halloffame/bardstale/btcover.jpg)

(http://www.gametab.com/boxart/boxes/unofficial/gcn/1170.jpg)

Yea. I wish the Windwaker art was that. Frickin Nintendo.

Sorry about that.  Everything in that cupboard looks the same to me.  I think we have an empty Amiga 500 box, though.  Figures I'd shift an empty box from country to country.  :(

(http://home.san.rr.com/jobu/gk2.jpg)

And I'll throw in the original one because the shape of the box was just so bizarre.

(http://home.san.rr.com/jobu/gk1.jpg)

Mobygames > images.google.com

Other than Moby Games is made of user contributions. It's an incomplete wiki.

I need to go home, find my Sqoon box, and copy it. YAY.

Someone tell me where to download this.  I have no idea what the fuck it is, and it probably blows anyway, but I must have it.

Ignore me. I'm far too tired to post.

I second wanting to play "I have no mouth..."

http://www.iosphere.net/~eric/wizardry/box04.jpg

There is something about those early Wizardry boxes...

Heh. "I have no mouth..." is the primordial storyline for pretty much all "machines take over the world" modern day stories. Terminator, Matrix, Lawnmower Man, pretty much anything that includes machines becoming intelligent and hating mankind are all derived from this short story. It's a sci-fi classic!

You can actually read the short story Here (http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/ellison/ellison1.html).

The amazing thing about this story is that it was written in 1967.

For those looking for some of these older games...

One of my favorite sites (http://www.xtcabandonware.com/)

They have Neuromancer!!

And the first Ys title(Ancient Land of Ys)!!

And the orginal Pirates, talk about old school :)

Plus they host a great flash video in tribute to classic gaming.

Take a look (http://www.xtcabandonware.com/flash.html). (Warning: contains gratuitous amounts of David Lee Roth-era Van Halen as the auido).

Bring the noise.
Cheers.............

I have no mouth.. is not exactly abandonware since Mr Ellison's site still sells it here (http://harlanellison.com/herc.htm#ihnm).

The abandonware rips allegedly are missing the movies that are required to play the game anyhow.

I did find the photo of Harlan and friend rather amusing. Presumably the young lady is a surviving Homo Floresiensis as Harlan himself is hardly altitudinous.

(http://harlanellison.com/gallery/images/ellisusn.jpg)

Syndicate (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,353/gameId,281/)

Golden Axe (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,21054/gameId,199/)

And lastly for teh win...

Powermonger (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,4806/gameId,1993/)

Notice how the axe isn't even gold.

The enemy Droids are amassing on Earth's orbiting power station, "The Grid". To combat them, the humans have developed a lightning fast battle ship known as "The Gridrunner". As a pilot you must avoid the Droids weapons and annihilate them before they attack Earth! Joystick Required. (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,34991/gameId,14092/)

Climb into your Gridrunner fighter to defend Earth from attacking Droids and unleash a stream of white-hot death on the enemy! Joystick Required. (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,35645/gameId,14321/)

 A game in which up to four players attempt to settle a distant planet with the so-called help of a mule-like machine they all learn to hate. (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,22824/gameId,9752/)

The Light and the Dark (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,103/gameId,73/)

Damn game doesn't have a tag line (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,25114/gameId,10379/)

MegaTraveller (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,670/gameId,426/)

MegaTraveller 2 (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,2690/gameId,2060/)

Both have truly excellent box art and fairly horrific gameplay.

This game wasn't officially approved by Nintendo. But it still rocked (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,15584/gameId,4642/).

HUMAN-LIKE BEINGS ACTUALLY FOUND LIVING INSIDE COMPUTERS. Read How Researchers Are Working Around The Clock Studying Fantastic Computer Beings. (http://www.mobygames.com/game/covers/gameCoverId,20930/gameId,9241/)