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Best cover art of all time

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GOAT BOISSSS
 
batman-arkham-city-game-of-the-year-edition-1505508166.jpg


GOAT BOISSSS

LOL. Cheers for the chuckle mate. I needed a laugh today.

One game of which the cover I always found peculiar is the first X-COM, the different versions of the cover look like they are for completely different genres, let alone games:

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The european cover for XCOM/UFO Enemy Unknown is so damned good. And it hits me right in the nostalgia bone. The shiny slipcase & quality box was fantastic too and typical of Microprose games of the time. Amazing game with an equally great soundtrack. I still play it now on occasion.
 
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LOL. Cheers for the chuckle mate. I needed a laugh today.



The european cover for XCOM/UFO Enemy Unknown is so damned good. And it hits me right in the nostalgia bone. The shiny slipcase & quality box was fantastic too and typical of Microprose games of the time. Amazing game with an equally great soundtrack. I still play it now on occasion.
What does the american cover look like?
 

It certainly doesn't hurt that Chrono Trigger is my favorite game of all time, but it's definitely one of my favorite cover arts. Rather than focusing on just one character or just one character's face (or a lumped together collage of faces) as many box arts tend to do, this one actually shows an action scene from a game. That's what I think makes for the best cover art, when a cover attempts to bring the game to life through artwork. Like this fella...

Doom_cover_art.jpg
 
The Ruins of kunark expansion had a great front cover art. I believe this was the debut of the Iksar race.

QTm7YDRh.jpg


Everquest as some incredible artwork , the artist done an amazing job that's for sure
 
The Ruins of kunark expansion had a great front cover art. I believe this was the debut of the Iksar race.

QTm7YDRh.jpg



Everquest as some incredible artwork , the artist done an amazing job that's for sure
Yeah. Keith Parkinson did, I believe, the first 5 box arts for the og EQ and its early expansions. They were all tremendous story scenes (the full paintings that extended beyond the front and back of the box) but in particular I recall both the Kunark and Luclin art being especially popular and well received. Kunark was definitely my favorite of them all.

Parkinson was also a tremendous Dungeons & Dragons artist as well, and had a couple of my most favorite pieces of Dungeons & Dragons art... In particular, alongside Elmore's Bloodstone Lands (was used for a SSI goldbox game I posted earlier), Parkinson's "What Do You Mean We're Lost" is probably one of my favorite beastmen or humanoid scenes.

Both of those are also two of my favorite D&D art pieces that feature snow, only maybe matched or surpassed by my most favorite Parkinson piece which was "North Watch," which many AD&D 2nd Ed. players would recognize as the art used for the Rangers Handbook -- and alongside Jeff Easley's version of Drizzt (more so than Salvatore's writing) were the two main reasons I wanted to play Rangers.

Elmore, Easley, and Parkinson were for the most part the center of any interest I had in painting through my childhood and teenage years...

Later in my teens I started to become move from pen and paper to tabletop, and especially Warhammer Fantasy and 40K -- anything Adrian Smith and anything Greenskins, Chaos, and Undead -- and then sci-fi such as Heroes Unlimited but especially, and formatively, cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Namely, Mark Zug (who did probably the most dramatic original Shadowrun art), Jeff Laubenstein (did really colourful and punk art and IIRC did that wild PAL box art for the SNES Shadowrun game) and both Tim Bradstreet and Mike Jackson (who respectively did a lot of the either dark and graphic or cool and slightly cartoon-y superb black and white art you'd find in a lot of Shadowrun manuals and guidebooks), and of course that one (of just a few that he did) Elmore painting that the Sega Genesis version of Shadowrun used -- and is likely why if I had to choose one favorite boxart it would be that Sega version of Shadowrun.

So, there's a chance to get carried away reminiscing a lot of artists and games. But with that context, I think especially early on, a lot of my creative interests and first forays into anything creative and imaginative, were highly fueled and inspired by Parkinson's art. Whether "North Watch" which was featured in the Rangers Handbook or his Dragonlance painting that for me put faces to Flint and Sturm, or his classic red dragon, which with all respect to Easley, is probably the my choice for most iconic Dungeons & Dragons red dragon. I think any fan of EverQuest felt the same way about how he represented the original game or each campaign setting. So, a tremendous fantasy artist. RIP.
 
Yeah. Keith Parkinson did, I believe, the first 5 box arts for the og EQ and its early expansions. They were all tremendous story scenes (the full paintings that extended beyond the front and back of the box) but in particular I recall both the Kunark and Luclin art being especially popular and well received. Kunark was definitely my favorite of them all.

Parkinson was also a tremendous Dungeons & Dragons artist as well, and had a couple of my most favorite pieces of Dungeons & Dragons art... In particular, alongside Elmore's Bloodstone Lands (was used for a SSI goldbox game I posted earlier), Parkinson's "What Do You Mean We're Lost" is probably one of my favorite beastmen or humanoid scenes.

Both of those are also two of my favorite D&D art pieces that feature snow, only maybe matched or surpassed by my most favorite Parkinson piece which was "North Watch," which many AD&D 2nd Ed. players would recognize as the art used for the Rangers Handbook -- and alongside Jeff Easley's version of Drizzt (more so than Salvatore's writing) were the two main reasons I wanted to play Rangers.

Elmore, Easley, and Parkinson were for the most part the center of any interest I had in painting through my childhood and teenage years...

Later in my teens I started to become move from pen and paper to tabletop, and especially Warhammer Fantasy and 40K -- anything Adrian Smith and anything Greenskins, Chaos, and Undead -- and then sci-fi such as Heroes Unlimited but especially, and formatively, cyberpunk and Shadowrun. Namely, Mark Zug (who did probably the most dramatic original Shadowrun art), Jeff Laubenstein (did really colourful and punk art and IIRC did that wild PAL box art for the SNES Shadowrun game) and both Tim Bradstreet and Mike Jackson (who respectively did a lot of the either dark and graphic or cool and slightly cartoon-y superb black and white art you'd find in a lot of Shadowrun manuals and guidebooks), and of course that one (of just a few that he did) Elmore painting that the Sega Genesis version of Shadowrun used -- and is likely why if I had to choose one favorite boxart it would be that Sega version of Shadowrun.

So, there's a chance to get carried away reminiscing a lot of artists and games. But with that context, I think especially early on, a lot of my creative interests and first forays into anything creative and imaginative, were highly fueled and inspired by Parkinson's art. Whether "North Watch" which was featured in the Rangers Handbook or his Dragonlance painting that for me put faces to Flint and Sturm, or his classic red dragon, which with all respect to Easley, is probably the my choice for most iconic Dungeons & Dragons red dragon. I think any fan of EverQuest felt the same way about how he represented the original game or each campaign setting. So, a tremendous fantasy artist. RIP.
Thanks for the information, ive never actually searched for who done the artwork. Now am very intrigued to know more about keith parkinson and to view more of his artwork. When i get some time ill do some research. Cheers mate
 
I miss the times when the box arts of soccer videogames were "artworks". It inspired much more the magic of the sport. Today we only have box arts without inspiration, with the image of famous players only with the commercial aim.
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Same thing happened with Nier Automata.
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Thank god for reversible cover.
Oh yes, I own automata and the first thing I did was reverse the cover.

Which reminds me, Last of us remastered has a cool reversible cover too.

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its not the best of all time, but it fits the game.
 
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