In the days when video game pixel counts were low, retail box artists struggled to realistically depict the often abstract situations in which video game characters found themselves. This resulted in a large number of amazingly strange video game box covers in the 1980s and early 1990s.
For example, many games for the pioneering Atari 2600 console shipped with surreal (and quite frankly, wonderful) box art that extrapolated gameplay past the system's graphical limitations. Artists were forced to interpret games with huge, blocky pixels and very little detail in a very realistic or literal manner that sometimes had bizarre implications.
Oddly enough, the tradition of tangentially related box illustrations continued even as game console resolutions increased—especially in the West, where companies that localized Japanese games wanted to give their releases a marketing angle they thought would more strongly appeal to American or European cultural traditions.
With that in mind, I've gathered together a gallery full of interesting, odd, weird, and wacky retro game box art from 1980 to 1992. In each instance, we'll examine the dissonance between box artwork and the reality of the game itself.
1. Zork (TRS-80 Model I, 1980)
The Reality: Zork is well known for its sense of humor, and while it includes fantasy elements, the actual mood of the game does not fit this cover art whatsoever. Grues are always lurking unseen in the darkness, and of course, there are no graphics at all in the game. Your imagination serves as your GPU.
2. Pac-Man (Atari 800, 1982)
The Reality: The graphics of Pac-Man are obviously intended to be abstract and simple, which adds a great deal to the game's longevity and widespread appeal. Pac-Man has no legs (or body), and there is nary a castle to be seen. Why is he eating dots? No one knows. Does it matter?
3. Deadly Duck (Atari 2600, 1982)
The Reality: Deadly Duck is a vertical shooter similar to Space Invaders or Demon Attack. You play as a duck that shoots upward at alien-looking things that "shoot" down at you. What is most striking is that the developer took the basic Space Invaders formula and found a surreal way to translate it into a different theme: i.e. dropping bricks instead of shooting, a duck instead of a missile base. But flying crabs?
4. Donkey Kong (Intellivision, 1982)
The Reality: This port of Donkey Kong for the Mattel Intellivision console is well-known for being fairly horrible. The graphics are phoned-in, the animation is bad, and it's hard to control. The biggest letdown of all? Donkey Kong has no fangs.
5. Mega Man 2 (NES, 1988)
The Reality: Mega Man is a stubby Japanese-style cartoon character with a blaster on his left arm that bounces through Technicolor worlds fighting equally cute and stubby enemies.
6. Super Breakout (Atari 2600, 1981)
The Reality: You control an inanimate paddle bouncing a ball around a black corridor to break colored blocks.
7. Phalanx (Super NES, 1992)
The Reality: It's a fairly typical side-scrolling sci-fi shooter, and as far as I have seen in playing it, it has nothing to do with banjo-playing hillbillies. But it should. Can somebody hack it in there for me?
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About Benj Edwards
