
Box Art Brut: The no-rules design of early computer games box art - cpeterso
https://worldwritable.com/box-art-brut-6fad75d971e1
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colanderman
All those and no mention of the classic "Forth on the Atari: Learning by Using
Forth"? [http://www.globalnerdy.com/2007/09/14/reimagining-
programmin...](http://www.globalnerdy.com/2007/09/14/reimagining-programming-
book-covers/)

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taneq
I 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.

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galdosdi
Heh, 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.

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PhasmaFelis
The 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/E...](http://www.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/games-
inlays/e/Extreme_Front.jpg)

You get to play as that guy in the last level, apparently.

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SixSigma
One 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 !

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labster
I've seen the Borg cubes, but I'm glad to see spacecraft built in the shapes
of other Platonic solids.

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stcredzero
I 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)

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pnathan
I'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.

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dbish
I might need to commission a repainting of the Computer Foosball box art.

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xirdstl
How 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.

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nevster
Thumbs up for the Lode Runner screens!

