5 ms·
Box Art Brut: The no-rules design of early computer games box art
- colanderman 11y agoAll those and no mention of the classic "Forth on the Atari: Learning by Using Forth"? http://www.globalnerdy.com/2007/09/14/reimagining-programming-book-covers/ http://www.globalnerdy.com/2007/09/14/reimagining-programmin...
- stcredzero 11y agoI played "Odyssey: The Compleat Apventure" as a grade school kid. Looking back on it, I think the guy at the Pittsburgh computer store was thinking "sucker!" when my dad was checking out with it. It was done using Apple "shape tables" instead of proper sprites, so getting caught in a whirlpool would cause you to "spin" with the very flashy animation consisting of 8 frames. And the ones at 45 degrees were ~sqrt(2) times too large because of how shape table "rotation" worked. (Or didn't work)
- pnathan 11y agoI've taken up painting in the past few months - digging into art history some and aesthetics, as I try to understand the nature of the thing I have undertaken. It really causes me to reflect on the intertwingling of art and culture; the mentalities that produce an imaginative image and the image giving seeds to the mind. Perhaps, these are simply images that reflect on the artist's view of what the buying society would appreciate; and thus we can infer a variety of things about the buying society.
- taneq 11y agoI disagree with "no-rules design." As a kid, the one rule was that after seeing the box art, you would be thoroughly disappointed the first time the game loaded and you saw the actual graphics.
- galdosdi 11y agoHeh, the article author seems to point out the same thing! > 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.
- nevster 11y agoThumbs up for the Lode Runner screens!
- PhasmaFelis 11y agoThe best "WTF" box art I've stumbled across is for a platformer-ish thing called Extreme: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/e/Extreme_Front.jpg http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-inlays/e/E... You get to play as that guy in the last level, apparently.
- dbish 11y agoI might need to commission a repainting of the Computer Foosball box art.
- xirdstl 11y agoHow about the 90s, when boxes came in all shapes and sizes. I loved collecting them, and conversely (as I worked retail), I loathed stocking them.
- SixSigma 11y agoOne of my prized posessions http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/Elite.jpg http://www.proweb.co.uk/~matt/Elite.jpg I wish I knew it was going to be prized before I didn't take care of it !
- labster 11y agoI've seen the Borg cubes, but I'm glad to see spacecraft built in the shapes of other Platonic solids.