Annotations were so helpful. Especially for reviews or video essays. Good channels would link to sources or other references. Much like the "response to: videos" of old TH-cam. So good at sending people down related video rabbit holes.
My favorite The Mystery of The Druids related thing is that one case where someone printed a whole bunch of that face and hid them all around his friend's apartment. Like his mouse wouldn't be working and then he flipped it over to have that face over the sensor and so on. He kept finding them from places for weeks.
My favorite usage of The Mystery of The Druids is on Wikipedia vandalism in general. I first heard of the game when Shadow the Hedgehog became a featured article and everyone had a field day with it. That, and the druid sneaking on the photo of Phil Fish.
I'm recalling that Jones in the Fast Lane was aligned next to some Microsoft software in the store from where I used to get computer games in 1990's, so I was not even sure if it's a game or something else. Either way, the packaging made sure I didn't pick that up into my shopping cart back then. Might have reconsidered with the knowledge I have nowadays about it.
its a bizarre idea for a cover, but it falls into the "bad anatomy" trap of not really understanding how mouths work. The jaw is a hinge. That means that when the mouth opens wide, the lower jaw recedes back toward the spine. A immature artists tend to want to make the mouth "open wide" and move toward the floor which creates these huge gaping maws that don't really happen in real life.
The default background itself is fine but he is too close, it would had been better if the druid himself was a silloltte like shadow on the far background instead.
I actually didn't realize "Tongue of the Fatman" was just someone's face (as opposed to a deformed 3D model of a human head) until you pointed it out... so I guess their trickery worked on me?
Well, in theory, if a game came on floppydisk, some asshole could nab the disk, save a virus on the disk, and then sell the game to an unsuspecting customer.
I did not realize that was a nose with eyeballs shoved in the nostrils until you pointed it out, and I have watched your Tongue of The Fatman video so many times that I'm embarrassed I didn't notice it sooner.
The Spear of Destiny is traditionally the Roman spear that gave Jesus of Nazareth his last wound when blood and water flowed from his pericardium. Why they have a cover from some Daniele Steel romance novel for the game is beyond me! And by the way, I remember that author's name because I WORKED AT KMART and we sold thousands of her books.
On "The Kristal" the guy's expression doesn't really look like the face of a man engaged in a sword fight.. it looks more like the face you'd make if a best friend showed you this horrible growth on their skin, and you were simultaneously revolted and concerned.
It's pretty weird that it shows Twinsen on the dragon since you don't see the dragon that much in the game. But you can see that the hero is pretty serious about it. I love it. LBA 2 has far better cover art in Europe.
I remember seeing a thing where this guy printed out hundreds of copies of Mystery of the Druids cover art, and hid them all around his friend's house. "He'll be fucking finding that screaming druid for years" being a quote from it. Makes me giggle every time I see the cover.
Please cover "Mystery Of The Druids". The box art may be bad, but I have no idea what this game is about, and the title alone has got me intrigued as hell.
'Heartlight' and 'Robbo' (11:45), are the games originally written for the Atari, by a polish genius Janusz Pelc, who was about 18 years old by the time. specially Robbo was a massive hit in Poland, and has pushed the boundaries in Atari graphics by then. Nobody could believe, that such beautiful colors could have been generated out of simple Atari machine :)
As a professional illustrator, I think personally that it's likely that many of these game companies couldn't afford the commission rates for quality or custom art back then, which would be considered "high" for any small or "indie" company. For example: Let's say a small company, maybe a few dudes running it out of a spare room in one of their houses, is ready to design and release a box version of their game for a limited run or test run on the shelves. Factoring in all other costs, an extremely small company like that, given everything else they needed to worry about and essentially get done themselves, very likely only thought about box art actually needing to be done (instead of just a concept) when it came down to the last "stages" of work, which isn't enough time for an artist to really make something high quality, given pre-existing deadlines for publication/printing, which were likely also pressing at that stage of work! This is a common thing; People have concepts and consider it "done" for the time being, but pro tip, hire artists early in the process to avoid bad cover art! And on top of that, it's common that clients (particularly clients who may not have any experience with drawing of any kind or level) sometimes struggle to explain fully the "prompt" of the piece. For an example, I once received a job description from a client in an early project email (well, early for me; for them, the project was close to a close already!) which only read: "A4 sized poster, painting style textures, a crowd of people with at least one man and one woman over the text, situated at the bottom, 90s style colours". WHAT? I need more information if I'm going to make you exactly what you want! And then that client proceeded to yell at me and call me a "bad artist" when I asked for more details, sigh. (Not saying these game devs were mean to their artists, but often, stress and heavy approaching deadlines can turn anyone into an asshole, especially if a passion project product is on the line, which was often the case with early "indie" game companies who were figuring things out in the early days, or so I've heard from older illustrators. And unfortunately, STEM field people sometimes tend to look down on us artists pretty severely, so sometimes you get genuinely mean people, although thankfully that's relatively rare, and in the gaming industry people tend to value their artists a little more!) Hopefully this provides some insight as to WHY the box art sucks so bad in some cases! This is only two possible reasons, but they're pretty common in projects like these for us illustrators, so I figure it may be the case for some of these as well. Kinda wish there were behind the scenes material for stuff like this!
Oh yeah, and often, people want too much in one piece. For example of this potential problem: "I want a cyberpunk background, a neon. city type situation, with multiple characters/people, with a neon backdrop around each character, with flavour text at the bottom to promote the game and a title at the top, with objects/items/features from the game opaque on the corners of the cover to show off some game elements..." That's too much stuff happening at once! And of course, that idea could turn out really good, but often, it ended up looking cluttered, didn't fit the shape or other design elements of the packaging, etc. and resulted in a gnarly mess of weird or even straight up bad art. So in trying to please the client, some artists were made to go overboard and make it look WAY too busy on the cover, which is visually repelling (as opposed to what you want, which is visually appealing) and resulted in some notably funky box art. Also, gradients. GRADIENTS EVERYWHERE lmao! Edit: By which I mean, gradients (as pictured heavily in one particular box in this video) were often used to fill blank space on a cover, which results in... Bad things.
Turns out that seemingly random _Spear of Destiny_ art is taken from a Boris Vallejo piece, titled _Last Stand!_ And on seeing the whole thing, it's pretty freaking awesome. vallejo.ural.net/1978/show.php?018
***** When I was writing my last comment I was trying to think of a funny quip about how 70's-80's these pictures were - Something about them being found in Conan the Barabarian's porn stash!
I recognize the "eyes" they used in that Tongue of the Fatman boxart. The came from a kids toy from the 90s. Yeah, that's right. They couldn't be bothered to get proper prop eyes, they just used some bits they got from a toy.
It was these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaks You can't see any of them in the wikipedia article, but some of the Zaks sets came with little eyes, and that's what that fatman boxart used.
Found an example. Check out here nerdyhermit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Zaks.jpg The plastic eyes from that image are what they used for their prop.
I'd love to see you talk about Little Big Adventure 1 and 2. LBA 2 is my favourite one since it's less 'dark' than the first one. LBA needs more attention since it is so underrated!
Well JazGalaxy, I think you are in for a treat! The sequel is an improvement in almost every way possible. The outside world is in full 3d and the game is better structured. It feels more 'open-world' and there is a lot to discover. You can even visit several planets!
The thing I loved about LBA was how "broken" it was. That is to say, the game design was very loose. You really felt like you were empowered to explore and conquer the game world in whatever way you could figure out. Have to kill a tough badguy? THrow your ball around a few corner and work the angles out just perfectly to hit him. Or, climb to a point over his head and fall down on him, stunning him, and then beat him to death before he can react. That, or just sneak by. Games are too constrictive these days.
JazGalaxy Cool, I never looked at LBA with that perspective, but I can agree with you. These kinds of things are still in LBA 2, so don't worry. You can buy for almost nothing these days on some retro game sites. And I heard that there is a chance that LBA 2 will get a port on iOS and Android devices, just like LBA 1. I played through LBA 1 on iOS and I was quite pleased with it.
JBrothersz JazGalaxy you can get the games optimized for modern pc's at GOG... www.gog.com/game/little_big_adventure www.gog.com/game/little_big_adventure_2
11:20 "Get me outta here" Pretty sick to imagine that this dog is actually a sentient being crying out beyond space in time for anyone to help him because he's trapped in some sort of nightmarish purgatory dimension surrounded by small PEZ Dispenser-esque statues of his deceased companions.
Call me weird, but I actually like the Deep Sea cover art. It's cute, I want to hug that shark, lol. And Ken's Labyrinth is ok, too. Much better than the game (no disrespect to Ken Silverman, but it was barely a game and the art in it was just awful).
I'm an artist and I love videos like this. From my perspective, video game covers are different from fine art so it's fine to critique them because they are a commercial product first. In the case of "Ken's Labyrinth", "Jill of the Jungle", etc. it might be a little unfair to blame the graphic designer / illustrator for the weird art style. The person responsible for choosing the appropriate style / artist is usually the Art Director. Maybe the company just hired whoever they could get?
Whoa your selection is very balanced, from flat out ugly designs to boring and disorganized design layouts. I like how you focused on different types of ugly instead of just obviously ugly box arts. Thanks for the excellent quality videos, keep on at it LGR!
seems like Problem Sleuth, a comic by none other than Andrew Hussie, has references to The Mystery of the Druids. for example, in TMotD, you have to re-assemble a phone to use it to progress in the game. the same thing happens in PS. also, PS uses a similar drag-and-drop inventory system.
HAHAHA Poor little big adventure. I remember when I choose it from the shelf of a store, with just 6 or 7 years old. I remember my thoughts exactly when look at the cover: -Angry guy? Check -Sword? Check -Dragon? Check -Castle? Check And that's all, I told my dad to buy this one and I don't regret at all! What a great game for god's sake.
Man, I really gotta play this someday. It was the first game I ever bought for myself as a kid, way back when, but to this day I haven’t played it at all. For some reason it didn’t run on my PC. I was so disappointed. Tried for a while, then eventually forgot about it. Shame. Don’t remember the box art, just that it had a light blue background, so it probably was different from this one. Pretty sure it came on two CDs in one of those bulky dual jewel cases, though.
I think one of the most obnoxious bits of art on a box I have is Phantasy Star IV, thing is it's well rendered but it's not accurate. It's done by Boris Valjeo, it's well painted and is a classic style fantasy pic. Thing is the actual game is an RPG with 90's styled anime in comicbook-like cutscenes. The manual is also filled with more anime styled stuff so it's so confusing and strange.
Ha indeed! I always thought that box art didn't match the game at all... never realized Boris Vallejo did it. Looking back, that is his style. Man, what a great game. I can hear the opening theme now...
It was pretty much the norm to change the cover when localising Japanese-made games in the 80's and 90's. Anime used to be virtually unheard of outside of Japan so it made more sense market-wise to change the cover of a game to something more "hardcore" and generally appealing to western audiences. It's also why for the longest time they would give Kirby an angry face on US box-art.
Ant Booth I'm aware of their reasoning but it's still idiotic, I mean the cover isn't going to change the art inside the manual and in Phantasy Star IV's case: there's comic book like cutscenes with tons of art that's all anime, so it's a waste when the game you boot isn't anything like the cover. Then again I guess the entire Atari age could be summed up with that. Painting vs beep, boop.
You wouldn't get to look at the manual in the store, lol. Also the manuals to Mega Drive games (at least in Europe) were 95% text with tiny screenshots anyway.
Little big adventure 1 and 2 are some of my fav games ever! and i picked up number 2 from a closing down sale and didnt know what it was, i just wanted an adventure game, a FPS (quake 2), and some strategy games. MAX 2 (ew) and Conquest earth (not bad but forgettable) i got 4 games for 100 hong kong dollars.
I like the relentless cover. Yes Twinsen looks ridiculous, but that's keeping with the tone of the game. Design-wise, there's not a whole lot of problems going on, I don't think.
Cosmin Banu They've been all kinds of screwed up with comments this past week. I can't even unmark your comment as spam, and it doesn't show up in my spam comment folder!
Lazy Game Reviews meh. No problem man. I don't really care about my comment. But what about the youtube comment section as a whole? It will remain as buggy until the end of time or will google give a crap about his kids?
Whao. 60fps. So strange. I love tongue of the fatman!! Yeh, I kinda dig the wierd art on it. (it is such a wierd game). Dang now I want a new copy. Hmm. Hope GOG has it.
With Mystery of the Druids, it came out back when the Australian Dollar was down around 60 US cents, so 90 dollars was quite close to the equivalent prices in the US for new games. Its just a pity the prices didn't drop as the Australian dollar got stronger.
I wait years for you to talk about Little Big Adventure and this is it's first appearance on this channel!? DAMN YOU! Oh, and the image depicts the Temple of Bu which is suspended in the mantle type area of the planet. Not entire sure why, or how, Twinsen and Dino-fly are there but I guess it's just to illustrate the main character. As others have said at least it gives an honest representation of the art style, though the font on the American version is disgusting :p.
This is a long shot but it reminds me of some parts of Hitchiker's Guide to The Galaxy. (The old BBC version) Some parts were shot on film, and other parts were shot on video cassette cameras - so some scenes would be in 24 fps, and then the next scene would be a lot higher (not sure if they were actually 60 though) - it was pretty strange. Great show though - if you like old British cheese, that is.
8:42 oh shit, I think you may have just given me the solution to a year long problem there! Been looking for LBA2 for aaaaaages. Used to play it a lot, though I didn't come far and since then I completely forgot what it was even about. Just had a vague memory of how the main character and 1 or 2 locations looked like. Thanks man! :D
I am just cackled the same way you did when i saw The Mystery of the Druids. For some reason i continue stubble upon this "gem" of a cover art from now and then.
I really think the Deep Sea pinball box art looks actually kind of nice... if it were accurate to the game at all, that is. It would definitely fit a stylised cartoon game about fish adventures or something.
I had the Deep Sea Pinball years ago. I had a collection of Epic Pinball games that I picked up at Blockbuster, of all places, during a promotion in the mid 90's.
you should do a quickie explanation and review of these games. N.B - I like how the Little Big Adventure box art is the only box art of it's generation that accurately reflects the in game graphics and content. You've got to hand it to them; they were at least honest about it :)
With a lot of these, it made me think either "were they tripping?" or "how lazy were they feeling that day?" Some of them were pretty entertaining though :)
I now understand what you're doing with the intro after this video. It's as if you're looking into the screen of a classic IBM loading up the video through the command. Mind blown.
I think you're being a bit hard on the LBA cover. Yeah, it's terrible 90's CGI, but it's the best they could manage at the time, and it's not like the game itself looked any better. At the very least it's indicative of the artstyle and characters. If anything, the PS1 version cover was worse because it's just a cropped picture of Twinsen from the PC cover with a logo slapped on it. Nevertheless, a very entertaining video as always ;) That black monster's nose-tusks on the Out Of This World cover tickle my funny bone.
Nah, I _know_ EA could've made some something far better for LBA and still use a similar 3D art style. Even beyond that style which just hasn't aged well, it's the composition, the randomly-placed objects, and that hideous gradient that make me gag :)
Just wanted to let you know, due to my current location, Internet is slow as heck. So, I put this on 144p and listen to it at .5x speed so it buffers sometime sooner than next week. The entertainment value produced by this is exceptional.
Hi Clint ! You say Little Big Adventure is a great game in this video, so maybe you could review it sometime. I remember my father buying me LBA 2 when I was a kid, it was wonderful ... The game was created by French developer Frederic Raynal, who was a kind of pioneer in 3d graphics PC games (he also made alone in the dark). Maybe you already know that. Thank you for your funny and interesting videos !
Old Man Jenkins Looked it up and... all it is is just the movie poster pasted on to a master system cover. So I can't really agree with that. It's still just as bad as all the others.
Every Non-Sonic game is just the same old "Grid Background with something in the foreground", I don't see how the Master System attracted customers like the Genesis did then.
$90 AUD in 2001 was about $46 USD, which is still sort of expensive for a crappy PC game in 2001, but I recall N64 games selling for like $50 USD so it's not too crazy.
I always liked that run of Epic boxes. That particular artstyle, while admittedly shitty, brings back some fuzzy 90s memories. Funny enough, I never even saw those boxes until a few years ago, but I remember a number of books that used something similar.
The artwork for Jones in the Fast Lane reminds me of the images used on Leisure Suit Larry 2 and 3. It doesn't look as good, but they all have the sense of cutouts making up the image - with more detail on the Larry cutouts.
Those horrid covers for the Epic games...Back around 1996 or so, our department store got a bunch of those things, where we sold them for a buck each. I bought a few of the Epic Pinball titles myself despite the covers; titles like Super Android, Enigma and Cyborgirl before I got the entire Epic Pinball set on CD-ROM. Excellent games, crappy covers. And that Spear of Destiny art...I remember seeing that on a Boris Vallejo calendar I bought in late 1980, well before the game (or company that produced it) existed.
Re: Spear Of Destiny box art. This seems to be inspired by the ending screens when you beat the game. It uses the same Black-And-Brown shading, though the box art has a little more red in it. But yes - to anyone who hasn't actually beaten the game, the box art doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. :-)
Do you always release videos on Sunday night? I was thinking that you have been and it has become part of my Sunday night routine to watch them. Thanks for the great videos!
VIRTUOSO might not have been a good game but I really liked it. It had some really neat atmosphere. I loved it's music, but not the CD quality, but the PC midi music. It was so catchy.
OMFG, Mystery of the Druids! I doubt people got far enough through that game to actually remember anything other than the box art. I finished it, and it still feels like a fever dream to me.
![PASULOL รามเกียรติ์ ตอนที่ 4 นนทกพบรัก [Ramakien Ep.4: Nonthok in love]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/tMUQgmZzf_A/mqdefault.jpg)
"If you dont have annotations on... what is wrong with you?" - Me watching from the future where annotations are no longer an option
It really hasn't aged well has it lol
There were whole channels dedicated to adding annotations to videos. What happened to them?
@@kiddhkane ded
@@kiddhkane They probably either went to subtitling videos or just abandoned the channel
Annotations were so helpful. Especially for reviews or video essays. Good channels would link to sources or other references.
Much like the "response to: videos" of old TH-cam. So good at sending people down related video rabbit holes.
My favorite The Mystery of The Druids related thing is that one case where someone printed a whole bunch of that face and hid them all around his friend's apartment. Like his mouse wouldn't be working and then he flipped it over to have that face over the sensor and so on. He kept finding them from places for weeks.
link pls
burp, haven't found any info on it yet but if I don't forget and find it I'll post it in this thread.
This is inspirational
My favorite usage of The Mystery of The Druids is on Wikipedia vandalism in general. I first heard of the game when Shadow the Hedgehog became a featured article and everyone had a field day with it.
That, and the druid sneaking on the photo of Phil Fish.
@@AgsmaJustAgsma Which photo?
I'm prety sure Jones in the Fast Lane is trying to mimic business software packaging, which has to be so bland it can't possibly offend anyone.
I'm recalling that Jones in the Fast Lane was aligned next to some Microsoft software in the store from where I used to get computer games in 1990's, so I was not even sure if it's a game or something else. Either way, the packaging made sure I didn't pick that up into my shopping cart back then. Might have reconsidered with the knowledge I have nowadays about it.
The cover for Jones in the Fast Lane made me want to make a spreadsheet of some sort.
That means it's a great cover for what they were going for.
Its really neat art.
It screams productivity software.
Why did this make me laugh so much?? (Laughing in Microsoft Office 360 Excel)
0:30 That annotation bit has not aged well at all.
RIP TH-cam annotations.
When I saw Mystery of the Druids I thought it read Mystery of the Drugs which I think would explain the face.
its a bizarre idea for a cover, but it falls into the "bad anatomy" trap of not really understanding how mouths work. The jaw is a hinge. That means that when the mouth opens wide, the lower jaw recedes back toward the spine. A immature artists tend to want to make the mouth "open wide" and move toward the floor which creates these huge gaping maws that don't really happen in real life.
JazGalaxy
No, it HAD to be drugs! Didn't you notice his missing teeth?
The default background itself is fine but he is too close, it would had been better if the druid himself was a silloltte like shadow on the far background instead.
0:39 this face?
I actually didn't realize "Tongue of the Fatman" was just someone's face (as opposed to a deformed 3D model of a human head) until you pointed it out... so I guess their trickery worked on me?
Love how that Spear Of Destiny as an "Anti Virus Seal" sticker on it. 'Cause you know, if you don't properly seal your games, they'll get viruses.
Well, in theory, if a game came on floppydisk, some asshole could nab the disk, save a virus on the disk, and then sell the game to an unsuspecting customer.
The "That's Life" artwork looks like the animation from "Food Fight".
the ugly person looks like they were edited into the picture lol
That's an insult to "Food Fight".
I did not realize that was a nose with eyeballs shoved in the nostrils until you pointed it out, and I have watched your Tongue of The Fatman video so many times that I'm embarrassed I didn't notice it sooner.
q306005 You're welcome :D
It's okay man, I didn't recognize it either. Looked even more bizarre when LGR pointed it out.
same with me
It took me some time to realize. I thought it was his whole head. Does it mean the cover isn't bad after all?
Surprised that people don’t see it, to me that was very obvious that they are doing a parody on the pit boss. Also, one of my favorite fighting games.
That dragon looks like a pickle.
lmao avocado dragon!
The cover on That's Life reminds me of that Desperate Housewives game in every single horrible way imaginable.
Tracers looks like Spock vs. Hank Hill
Zac Fitzgerald Asian Spongebob Vs. Hank Hill.
Jin Kazama VS Hank Hill
ILL KICK YOUR ASS!
Not logical
The Spear of Destiny is traditionally the Roman spear that gave Jesus of Nazareth his last wound when blood and water flowed from his pericardium. Why they have a cover from some Daniele Steel romance novel for the game is beyond me! And by the way, I remember that author's name because I WORKED AT KMART and we sold thousands of her books.
I dunno man, a dragon made of cucumbers is pretty awesome.
A dragon made of Morty's LOL
the Jones in the Fast Lane box art looks like the cover to some business application, it's actually really fitting
On "The Kristal" the guy's expression doesn't really look like the face of a man engaged in a sword fight.. it looks more like the face you'd make if a best friend showed you this horrible growth on their skin, and you were simultaneously revolted and concerned.
Haha, I remember pretty much all of these boxes! I bought Relentless when I saw that box because I thought it looked so cool. :)
It's pretty weird that it shows Twinsen on the dragon since you don't see the dragon that much in the game. But you can see that the hero is pretty serious about it. I love it. LBA 2 has far better cover art in Europe.
funny meeting you here rerez
Me too bro xDD. What a bad taste can children have.
JUST. BAD. GAMES
Hey rerez!
I actually didn't know it was a nose until out mentioned it.
You know mystery of the druids is that bad when you try to search in on google and its full of memes
I remember seeing a thing where this guy printed out hundreds of copies of Mystery of the Druids cover art, and hid them all around his friend's house. "He'll be fucking finding that screaming druid for years" being a quote from it. Makes me giggle every time I see the cover.
Please cover "Mystery Of The Druids". The box art may be bad, but I have no idea what this game is about, and the title alone has got me intrigued as hell.
the game is awful
end of story
Its a shitty ES Rip-off.
Smedis2 that makes me even more curious.
Amelia Wright
ES?
@@JanoyCresvaZero I'm thinking Elder Scrolls? Could be mistaken.
That Virtuoso one looks like it's "Dog The Bountyhunter, The Game".
hahaha
rimmersbryggeri now you mention it, I see it too :)
"Doggo, The Bootyhunter, The Game".
'Heartlight' and 'Robbo' (11:45), are the games originally written for the Atari, by a polish genius Janusz Pelc, who was about 18 years old by the time. specially Robbo was a massive hit in Poland, and has pushed the boundaries in Atari graphics by then. Nobody could believe, that such beautiful colors could have been generated out of simple Atari machine :)
As a professional illustrator, I think personally that it's likely that many of these game companies couldn't afford the commission rates for quality or custom art back then, which would be considered "high" for any small or "indie" company. For example: Let's say a small company, maybe a few dudes running it out of a spare room in one of their houses, is ready to design and release a box version of their game for a limited run or test run on the shelves. Factoring in all other costs, an extremely small company like that, given everything else they needed to worry about and essentially get done themselves, very likely only thought about box art actually needing to be done (instead of just a concept) when it came down to the last "stages" of work, which isn't enough time for an artist to really make something high quality, given pre-existing deadlines for publication/printing, which were likely also pressing at that stage of work! This is a common thing; People have concepts and consider it "done" for the time being, but pro tip, hire artists early in the process to avoid bad cover art!
And on top of that, it's common that clients (particularly clients who may not have any experience with drawing of any kind or level) sometimes struggle to explain fully the "prompt" of the piece. For an example, I once received a job description from a client in an early project email (well, early for me; for them, the project was close to a close already!) which only read: "A4 sized poster, painting style textures, a crowd of people with at least one man and one woman over the text, situated at the bottom, 90s style colours". WHAT? I need more information if I'm going to make you exactly what you want! And then that client proceeded to yell at me and call me a "bad artist" when I asked for more details, sigh. (Not saying these game devs were mean to their artists, but often, stress and heavy approaching deadlines can turn anyone into an asshole, especially if a passion project product is on the line, which was often the case with early "indie" game companies who were figuring things out in the early days, or so I've heard from older illustrators. And unfortunately, STEM field people sometimes tend to look down on us artists pretty severely, so sometimes you get genuinely mean people, although thankfully that's relatively rare, and in the gaming industry people tend to value their artists a little more!)
Hopefully this provides some insight as to WHY the box art sucks so bad in some cases! This is only two possible reasons, but they're pretty common in projects like these for us illustrators, so I figure it may be the case for some of these as well. Kinda wish there were behind the scenes material for stuff like this!
Oh yeah, and often, people want too much in one piece. For example of this potential problem: "I want a cyberpunk background, a neon. city type situation, with multiple characters/people, with a neon backdrop around each character, with flavour text at the bottom to promote the game and a title at the top, with objects/items/features from the game opaque on the corners of the cover to show off some game elements..." That's too much stuff happening at once! And of course, that idea could turn out really good, but often, it ended up looking cluttered, didn't fit the shape or other design elements of the packaging, etc. and resulted in a gnarly mess of weird or even straight up bad art. So in trying to please the client, some artists were made to go overboard and make it look WAY too busy on the cover, which is visually repelling (as opposed to what you want, which is visually appealing) and resulted in some notably funky box art. Also, gradients. GRADIENTS EVERYWHERE lmao! Edit: By which I mean, gradients (as pictured heavily in one particular box in this video) were often used to fill blank space on a cover, which results in... Bad things.
the alternate art for 'out of this world' just screams tim & eric to me, and i love it.
Turns out that seemingly random _Spear of Destiny_ art is taken from a Boris Vallejo piece, titled _Last Stand!_ And on seeing the whole thing, it's pretty freaking awesome.
vallejo.ural.net/1978/show.php?018
I had a feeling that artwork was stolen. It was so low-res that there was no way that they drew it.
Had a look at the whole thing, plus some of the other art and - nope, they're all terrible!
***** When I was writing my last comment I was trying to think of a funny quip about how 70's-80's these pictures were - Something about them being found in Conan the Barabarian's porn stash!
The link doesn't work for me. Searched for it and couldn't find the box art, is there another link for it?
JukaDominator Kinda sounds like the title of a porno too, if you ask me...
I recognize the "eyes" they used in that Tongue of the Fatman boxart. The came from a kids toy from the 90s. Yeah, that's right. They couldn't be bothered to get proper prop eyes, they just used some bits they got from a toy.
It was these: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaks
You can't see any of them in the wikipedia article, but some of the Zaks sets came with little eyes, and that's what that fatman boxart used.
Found an example. Check out here nerdyhermit.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Zaks.jpg
The plastic eyes from that image are what they used for their prop.
Wow! I think you may just be right!
i.imgur.com/uNFlmNt.png
Aww, I like the Deep Sea pinball art - it's cute!
I'd love to see you talk about Little Big Adventure 1 and 2. LBA 2 is my favourite one since it's less 'dark' than the first one.
LBA needs more attention since it is so underrated!
never got to play LBA 2. I would be interested to know how it is.
Well JazGalaxy, I think you are in for a treat! The sequel is an improvement in almost every way possible. The outside world is in full 3d and the game is better structured. It feels more 'open-world' and there is a lot to discover. You can even visit several planets!
The thing I loved about LBA was how "broken" it was. That is to say, the game design was very loose. You really felt like you were empowered to explore and conquer the game world in whatever way you could figure out. Have to kill a tough badguy? THrow your ball around a few corner and work the angles out just perfectly to hit him. Or, climb to a point over his head and fall down on him, stunning him, and then beat him to death before he can react. That, or just sneak by.
Games are too constrictive these days.
JazGalaxy Cool, I never looked at LBA with that perspective, but I can agree with you. These kinds of things are still in LBA 2, so don't worry. You can buy for almost nothing these days on some retro game sites. And I heard that there is a chance that LBA 2 will get a port on iOS and Android devices, just like LBA 1. I played through LBA 1 on iOS and I was quite pleased with it.
JBrothersz JazGalaxy you can get the games optimized for modern pc's at GOG...
www.gog.com/game/little_big_adventure
www.gog.com/game/little_big_adventure_2
11:20 "Get me outta here"
Pretty sick to imagine that this dog is actually a sentient being crying out beyond space in time for anyone to help him because he's trapped in some sort of nightmarish purgatory dimension surrounded by small PEZ Dispenser-esque statues of his deceased companions.
I love going through the LGR backlog when I can't sleep, thanks LGR!
9:33 the dragon looks like a pickle
Call me weird, but I actually like the Deep Sea cover art. It's cute, I want to hug that shark, lol. And Ken's Labyrinth is ok, too. Much better than the game (no disrespect to Ken Silverman, but it was barely a game and the art in it was just awful).
I'm an artist and I love videos like this. From my perspective, video game covers are different from fine art so it's fine to critique them because they are a commercial product first. In the case of "Ken's Labyrinth", "Jill of the Jungle", etc. it might be a little unfair to blame the graphic designer / illustrator for the weird art style. The person responsible for choosing the appropriate style / artist is usually the Art Director. Maybe the company just hired whoever they could get?
Whoa your selection is very balanced, from flat out ugly designs to boring and disorganized design layouts. I like how you focused on different types of ugly instead of just obviously ugly box arts. Thanks for the excellent quality videos, keep on at it LGR!
seems like Problem Sleuth, a comic by none other than Andrew Hussie, has references to The Mystery of the Druids. for example, in TMotD, you have to re-assemble a phone to use it to progress in the game. the same thing happens in PS. also, PS uses a similar drag-and-drop inventory system.
HAHAHA Poor little big adventure. I remember when I choose it from the shelf of a store, with just 6 or 7 years old. I remember my thoughts exactly when look at the cover:
-Angry guy? Check
-Sword? Check
-Dragon? Check
-Castle? Check
And that's all, I told my dad to buy this one and I don't regret at all! What a great game for god's sake.
Man, I really gotta play this someday. It was the first game I ever bought for myself as a kid, way back when, but to this day I haven’t played it at all. For some reason it didn’t run on my PC. I was so disappointed. Tried for a while, then eventually forgot about it. Shame.
Don’t remember the box art, just that it had a light blue background, so it probably was different from this one. Pretty sure it came on two CDs in one of those bulky dual jewel cases, though.
@@Dad................. Mine was the ps1 version. Man give it a shot! It won't disappoint you :D
I agree %100! More effort needed from EA on LBA's art lol.
Gotta love that "Anti-Virus Seal" sticker on the Spear of Destiny cover.
I think one of the most obnoxious bits of art on a box I have is Phantasy Star IV, thing is it's well rendered but it's not accurate. It's done by Boris Valjeo, it's well painted and is a classic style fantasy pic. Thing is the actual game is an RPG with 90's styled anime in comicbook-like cutscenes. The manual is also filled with more anime styled stuff so it's so confusing and strange.
Ha indeed! I always thought that box art didn't match the game at all... never realized Boris Vallejo did it. Looking back, that is his style. Man, what a great game. I can hear the opening theme now...
David Hoffnung
Phantasy Star IV? Heck yeah, not many seem to know about it. All you ever hear of jRPGs is Final Fantasy
It was pretty much the norm to change the cover when localising Japanese-made games in the 80's and 90's. Anime used to be virtually unheard of outside of Japan so it made more sense market-wise to change the cover of a game to something more "hardcore" and generally appealing to western audiences. It's also why for the longest time they would give Kirby an angry face on US box-art.
Ant Booth
I'm aware of their reasoning but it's still idiotic, I mean the cover isn't going to change the art inside the manual and in Phantasy Star IV's case: there's comic book like cutscenes with tons of art that's all anime, so it's a waste when the game you boot isn't anything like the cover. Then again I guess the entire Atari age could be summed up with that. Painting vs beep, boop.
You wouldn't get to look at the manual in the store, lol. Also the manuals to Mega Drive games (at least in Europe) were 95% text with tiny screenshots anyway.
Little big adventure 1 and 2 are some of my fav games ever! and i picked up number 2 from a closing down sale and didnt know what it was, i just wanted an adventure game, a FPS (quake 2), and some strategy games. MAX 2 (ew) and Conquest earth (not bad but forgettable) i got 4 games for 100 hong kong dollars.
I like the relentless cover. Yes Twinsen looks ridiculous, but that's keeping with the tone of the game. Design-wise, there's not a whole lot of problems going on, I don't think.
LGR in 60fps?? :D
Much smoothness. Such wow.
Man...the last one is so bad....it's great!
OrangeOctangular wow...i just realised that my previous reply was deleted...WTF TH-cam?
Cosmin Banu They've been all kinds of screwed up with comments this past week. I can't even unmark your comment as spam, and it doesn't show up in my spam comment folder!
Lazy Game Reviews meh. No problem man. I don't really care about my comment. But what about the youtube comment section as a whole? It will remain as buggy until the end of time or will google give a crap about his kids?
I remember I would print out the face on the Mystery of the Druids boxart and tape it up around school. Good times.
Whao. 60fps. So strange. I love tongue of the fatman!! Yeh, I kinda dig the wierd art on it. (it is such a wierd game). Dang now I want a new copy. Hmm. Hope GOG has it.
That Spear of Destiny's cover almost made me spit out my morning coffee, bravo!
I actually like the Deep Sea cover art. The shark is almost adorable with its blunt edges and nightmarish tooth-circle.
Why does “Welcome to the Future” have BSE (aka Mad Cow Disease) in large text on the front?!
With Mystery of the Druids, it came out back when the Australian Dollar was down around 60 US cents, so 90 dollars was quite close to the equivalent prices in the US for new games. Its just a pity the prices didn't drop as the Australian dollar got stronger.
I wait years for you to talk about Little Big Adventure and this is it's first appearance on this channel!? DAMN YOU!
Oh, and the image depicts the Temple of Bu which is suspended in the mantle type area of the planet. Not entire sure why, or how, Twinsen and Dino-fly are there but I guess it's just to illustrate the main character. As others have said at least it gives an honest representation of the art style, though the font on the American version is disgusting :p.
The in game art style is great. It's a shame that you don't see it in the cover art. The back of the box art is a lot better in that regard.
I immediately had to play Jones in the fast lane after seeing this.
Its weird watching people in 60fps, im used to it in pc gaming but, you rarely ever see film in 60 fps. I do like it though.
The smoothness! It's real! It's fucking sexy.
This is a long shot but it reminds me of some parts of Hitchiker's Guide to The Galaxy. (The old BBC version) Some parts were shot on film, and other parts were shot on video cassette cameras - so some scenes would be in 24 fps, and then the next scene would be a lot higher (not sure if they were actually 60 though) - it was pretty strange. Great show though - if you like old British cheese, that is.
David Hoffnung Yup, I've heard of it, but never scoped it out. I should, I know.
8:42 oh shit, I think you may have just given me the solution to a year long problem there! Been looking for LBA2 for aaaaaages. Used to play it a lot, though I didn't come far and since then I completely forgot what it was even about. Just had a vague memory of how the main character and 1 or 2 locations looked like.
Thanks man! :D
I am just cackled the same way you did when i saw The Mystery of the Druids. For some reason i continue stubble upon this "gem" of a cover art from now and then.
I really think the Deep Sea pinball box art looks actually kind of nice... if it were accurate to the game at all, that is. It would definitely fit a stylised cartoon game about fish adventures or something.
90 bucks for a Cdv game?! Australia needs an adult.
Their PM is proof of that
TheSinfultictac
I've heard Yahtzee Croshaw talk crap about him, but I must admit I don't exactly know why.
australian dollars are worth next to nothing
marmaladesnails
when that game was released it was worth at least a s little bit of something
90 AUD, especially back in the early 2000s, is way too much to pay for any video game, let alone Mystery of the Druids.
I had the Deep Sea Pinball years ago. I had a collection of Epic Pinball games that I picked up at Blockbuster, of all places, during a promotion in the mid 90's.
you should do a quickie explanation and review of these games. N.B - I like how the Little Big Adventure box art is the only box art of it's generation that accurately reflects the in game graphics and content. You've got to hand it to them; they were at least honest about it :)
I never noticed that the face on The Tounge of the Fat Man was a nose.
That Spear of Destiny cover is to Spear of Destiny what the Silent Hill moves are to the Silent Hill games.
With a lot of these, it made me think either "were they tripping?" or "how lazy were they feeling that day?" Some of them were pretty entertaining though :)
I now understand what you're doing with the intro after this video. It's as if you're looking into the screen of a classic IBM loading up the video through the command. Mind blown.
I think the Deep sea cover was pretty good in his way.
I think you're being a bit hard on the LBA cover. Yeah, it's terrible 90's CGI, but it's the best they could manage at the time, and it's not like the game itself looked any better. At the very least it's indicative of the artstyle and characters. If anything, the PS1 version cover was worse because it's just a cropped picture of Twinsen from the PC cover with a logo slapped on it.
Nevertheless, a very entertaining video as always ;) That black monster's nose-tusks on the Out Of This World cover tickle my funny bone.
Nah, I _know_ EA could've made some something far better for LBA and still use a similar 3D art style. Even beyond that style which just hasn't aged well, it's the composition, the randomly-placed objects, and that hideous gradient that make me gag :)
Lazy Game Reviews Alright, fair nuff. I suppose I'm just biased cause I love the game :P
Oh my god I want spear of destiny on a poster and a t shirt! I love it! Its so much cheese its cool!
Having seen Retsupurae play Mystery of the Druids, I can say the druid on the cover is in shock because of what the protagonist does
You seriously need to make another one of these videos. Bad box art is so satisfying to watch and shame.
Just wanted to let you know, due to my current location, Internet is slow as heck. So, I put this on 144p and listen to it at .5x speed so it buffers sometime sooner than next week. The entertainment value produced by this is exceptional.
Hi Clint ! You say Little Big Adventure is a great game in this video, so maybe you could review it sometime. I remember my father buying me LBA 2 when I was a kid, it was wonderful ... The game was created by French developer Frederic Raynal, who was a kind of pioneer in 3d graphics PC games (he also made alone in the dark). Maybe you already know that.
Thank you for your funny and interesting videos !
Worst Box Art? Like, every Sega Master System game ever.
Not every box is bad moonwalker is decent.
Old Man Jenkins Looked it up and... all it is is just the movie poster pasted on to a master system cover. So I can't really agree with that. It's still just as bad as all the others.
That's why it is the best.
Yeah, I mean am I going to play a game or do my arithmetic homework?
Every Non-Sonic game is just the same old "Grid Background with something in the foreground", I don't see how the Master System attracted customers like the Genesis did then.
Mystery of the Druids looks like a Residents album. I don't know, something about the CGI quality, his expression/clothes, even the title
$90 AUD in 2001 was about $46 USD, which is still sort of expensive for a crappy PC game in 2001, but I recall N64 games selling for like $50 USD so it's not too crazy.
That's Life's box art reminds me of the software I used to practice my driving exam theory. Mainly because of the colors and the background. :)
LOL I love the Jill of the Jungle box art, especially the black cat with the fangs!
I always liked that run of Epic boxes. That particular artstyle, while admittedly shitty, brings back some fuzzy 90s memories. Funny enough, I never even saw those boxes until a few years ago, but I remember a number of books that used something similar.
The artwork for Jones in the Fast Lane reminds me of the images used on Leisure Suit Larry 2 and 3. It doesn't look as good, but they all have the sense of cutouts making up the image - with more detail on the Larry cutouts.
6:23 - "I AM CORNHOLIO! Are you threatening me? I need teepee...for my bunghole!" lol ;)
Those horrid covers for the Epic games...Back around 1996 or so, our department store got a bunch of those things, where we sold them for a buck each. I bought a few of the Epic Pinball titles myself despite the covers; titles like Super Android, Enigma and Cyborgirl before I got the entire Epic Pinball set on CD-ROM. Excellent games, crappy covers.
And that Spear of Destiny art...I remember seeing that on a Boris Vallejo calendar I bought in late 1980, well before the game (or company that produced it) existed.
BSE on Welcome to the Future: did they know at the time that was another term for Mad Cow Disease? Woops.
That sharks mouth and teeth are totally messed up. Guess the artist missed his art classes explaining perspective.
"Everything about these smells like poo" I lost it, straight up laughing.
This video was hilarious! Please do a part 2.
Re: Spear Of Destiny box art. This seems to be inspired by the ending screens when you beat the game. It uses the same Black-And-Brown shading, though the box art has a little more red in it. But yes - to anyone who hasn't actually beaten the game, the box art doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. :-)
as a disigner i may get burnt out on the same style of artwork. but that shark is amazing. i would love something like that in poster size.
Do you always release videos on Sunday night? I was thinking that you have been and it has become part of my Sunday night routine to watch them. Thanks for the great videos!
They go up on Mondays and Fridays, but usually really early on those days! So, around 1AM Mondays for instance :)
Omg, thank you. I've been trying to remember Jill of the Jungle used to love that game but couldn't remember what it was called.
I remember seeing a lot of shareware with bad box art like SoD. I used to buy them for $.50 a pop at my local used computer store.
VIRTUOSO might not have been a good game but I really liked it. It had some really neat atmosphere. I loved it's music, but not the CD quality, but the PC midi music. It was so catchy.
I was waiting for this. X) Had a feeling you would do it.
I think the lady on the "That's Life" box is related to Sunshine Goodness from "Food Fight"
"Today is gonna be a contrast from my previous video which you can click on right here..."
- No, I can't. Thanks, TH-cam fuckos
Hehehehe these are legitimately cringeworthy! Nice work!
I would love to see another video about the worst game cover art. It's a truly fascinating and hilarious topic.
If I didn't see the name on Jones in the Fastlane's box, I would have thunk it was a program to do your taxes. LOL
LBA 1 had a different box art where I live...
would megaman be on this list if it weren't just PC games?
It would be even if it were just PC games.
there is a dos version
OMFG, Mystery of the Druids! I doubt people got far enough through that game to actually remember anything other than the box art. I finished it, and it still feels like a fever dream to me.
4:40 oh hey, Spoony made it on a video game cover!