The 16 bit era was fantastic for box art, console and otherwise. The Genesis/Mega Drive had its fair share of this, despite Sega’s attempts to completely ruin the look of their packaging (transition to card boxes, the god awful red framing).
I wanted to post an article about one artist in particular, Boris Vallejo. Boris did ten covers for Genesis games, while having a pretty straightforward ero-fantasy style popularized from the late 80’s, he did some pretty atypical ones. My favourite feature of his work is a complete disregard for human anatomy. Five of the covers graced the sturdy boxes of Ballistic/Accolade releases, all in 1991.
Wings Of War (Gynoug in Japan and Europe) – 1991
His artwork only appeared on Wings Of War itself, this piece is called “Bug Eyes”
Golden Axe II – 1991
The artwork itself has a title of “Journey”
Turrican - 1991
This also made it’s way onto the Game Boy & TG-16 ports, I guess because they were all released in the same year.
FUN FACT : The game that would have been Turrican II on the Genesis was reskinned and released as Universal Soldier; you can thank JCVD for that.
Onslaught – 1991
Mike Ditka Power Football – 1991
Hardball – 1991
I’m pretty sure he had a scrapped piece of fantasy art with a dude holding a massive sword and simply painted over it. HOME RUNS REQUIRES MASSIVE, VEINY ARMS!
Star Control – 1991
His most famous cover among fans. There are a bunch of conspiracies around this piece of art surrounding L Ron Hubbard (See “The Invaders Plan”). It’s all bullshit. It was a simple reworking of the original PC artwork. This piece is called “Star Control” – woah.
Phantasy Star IV – 1993
Sadly, this one came about during the HEY THIS IS A GENESIS GAME red box era and suffered some cropping and recolouring. The original is called “Blackstar”
…and now for the reason I felt compelled to write this post
…ready?
Ecco The Dolphin – 1992
With heavy ass cropping
Ecco: The Tides of Time - 1994
