activision videodrome...

Box Art Brut...

The no-rules design of early computer games

Visual design is central to modern gaming for both independent and AAA studios, where art teams may outnumber engineers and marketing is well understood. Even games that may never ever see the inside of a physical box still get “cover art,” in dozens of aspect ratios and sizes, for distribution into digital channels and promotion online and off. But there was a time when gaming was so new that all of this was unknown. Were games sold in computer hobbyist stores? Book stores? Toy stores? Through mail-order? Was a videogame more like a book or more like a movie? Should the aesthetic be futuristic or familiar? There’s well-deserved regard for early console box art, particularly Atari’s signature montages. But not everyone wanted to follow the Atari style, and there was a lively home-brew trade in early computer games before the industry became commercialized. Literally anyone could sell games on disk or cassette tape by throwing a booklet and some media into a plastic baggie. I’m fascinated by the fertile period between ’79 and ’83, when computers and consoles went mainstream and hundreds of game companies sprung up overnight. These developers were often obscure — sometimes just a P.O. box and a single teenager—but a few racked up enormous profits. And while there were no real rules yet, there was one agreed-upon convention: graphics were primitive and were never to be shown on the cover. This led to an awful lot of experimentation, for better or worse.

Warrior of Ras (1982)

I didn’t remember this roguelike series by Randall Masteller, but thanks to these covers I will never forget it. I appreciate the consistency of the artistic vision and luxurious hair volume, but I’m disappointed that the artist lost interest in scenery after Dunzhin. Nice codpiece work in Kaiv though. Like a lot of early covers, there’s literally no information presented about what this game is or why you might want to play it (or even that it’s a game at all). Necessary details like what system it was for or how much memory was required were usually added on as stickers, since the same art would be reused for multiple platforms. And this is all before Photoshop, CorelDraw, or even MacPaint, so all of the artwork for these games was drawn the old-fashioned way. Today you can play Ziggurat in a browser.

Hyperlight Patrol (1980) · Forbidden Planet (1981) · Devil’s Tower (1982)

These three TRS-80 games have nothing in common other than being by the same publisher and, presumably, sharing an artist: Hyperlight Patrol is a space war simulator; Devil’s Tower is a shooter; and Forbidden Planet is a text adventure with low-fidelity speech samples that shout at you when you make typos. I appreciate that actual time was taken with the art, though. It’s full-bleed, minimally annotated, and the aspect ratio is more 12" gatefold than game box. The visual style is an appealing middle ground between OMNI magazine cover and prog rock concept album. The original painting for Devil’s Tower (sadly, still uncredited) is up for auction.

Campaign Trilogy (1980) · Apventure to Atlantis (1982) · Crisis Mountain (1982)

Synergistic Software mostly self-published their own (forgettable) adventure games, though Crisis Mountain was well-regarded and widely ported. Synergistic took their pseudo-book aesthetic pretty far, laying out their entire game manuals as if they were print books.

And why not? These were stories (or aspired to be), and nobody had decided yet what videogame art looked like. This was a missed opportunity to stake out games as a literate form, even if that form is a bit Hardy Boys Meets the Dungeon Master. You may not call them “apventures” though.

Aztec (1982) · Blockade Runner (1983)

I wish I could’ve found more pulp-influenced covers that weren’t winking parodies. Blockade Runner’s art is just so great—there is no context for the crew’s attire whatsoever, and I love how Lt. Troi is helpfully pointing out the giant explosion in case Captain Beefcake hadn’t noticed it. The game was successful enough to be ported to multiple platforms but in none of them does the dude ever put on a shirt. Aztec’s hero is also having a wardrobe malfunction, but I’m more interested the physics on display here. Is he… jumping? Scampering along the edge? Sitting on an invisible platform? Also cobras aren’t indigenous to Mexico. Lack of Wikipedia doesn’t excuse sloppy research.

Honorable mention for an unrelated pair of games called Aztec Challenge (1982/3). The second version by Paul Norman is considered a classic, but I have to wonder at the the choice to deliberately repaint that art. (Why do so many early game boxes include topless guys? Asking for a friend.)

Computer Foosball (1983)

I don’t even know where to start about how much I love this. The art is credited to Janet Lopez. The game was written by Apple employee Keithen Hayenga and came free with the Sirius Joyport, an external game adaptor which was less titillating than it sounds. I love that the brush strokes are clearly visible in the background, and that one of the foosball teams is composed of little matching robots. I guess the spheroid thing in the middle is supposed to be the foosball flying at us, but the composition is weirdly static. The Westminster typeface was already a cliche in 1983 and was rarely used in actual game packaging. The flat design of the background and the minimalist byline are also pretty odd. The net result is that this cover art looks less like an actual artifact and more like a contemporary designer’s idea of 1983. Sirius Software published dozens of games in the period between 1980 and 1983, many coded by Nasir Gebelli, who left to form his own company when the Sirius founders refused to give him equity. Steven Levy covered Sirius in his seminal book on the early computer age, Hackers. If this post were about videogame titles rather than covers, they would get prime placement for The Earth Dies Screaming and Cops and Robbers. Both Gebelli Software and Sirius published a lot of turds, in terms of both games and cover art. But the best of them are the best this period has to offer, almost indistinguishable from a lot of modern design. Some are credited to Lopez but most have no credit at all. They are great.

And then the crash of 1983 happened, and nearly all these companies were gone.

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