Comments on: Accolade’s Amazing Box Art

By: Chester Schendel

Chester Schendel — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:14:25 +0000

I distinctly remember every one of these covers on the store shelves when I was growing up. I even owned a couple of these games. Thanks for sharing these.

By: GDS

GDS — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 17:44:43 +0000

Such memories. I went the C64 -> Amiga path, and I remember ALL of these covers from ads in the Commodore-centric magazines from those days. I owned about a third of those games and, yes, the slightly abstract nature of the cover art probably made the gameplay/ownership experience better by not narrowing one’s expectations.

By: Pak-Kei

Pak-Kei — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:56:41 +0000

A lot of Japanese games still have pretty classy covers. Take a look at the Final Fantasy series… the Japanese ones, not the American ones. For some reason, everything gets f-ed up, amped up to the 11 unnecessarily, when it moves across the Pacific.

I also like the SIM game covers before Maxis was acquired by EA. Back then, from SIM City 2000 to SIM Golf, they all have a coherent style and package. I collected them all!

By: aeiowu

aeiowu — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 16:29:19 +0000

maaaaan, my brother and I were huge into hardball II and III. Accolade made some quality sports games before EA took over most of the market share.

By: Justin Reese

Justin Reese — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:59:15 +0000

@Fred and Benjamin: http://www.zachstronaut.com/posts/2009/02/17/animate-css-transforms-firefox-webkit.html

By: Justin Reese

Justin Reese — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:57:25 +0000

Gorgeous!

It’s interesting that in every one except the Accolade’s Comics and Mean 18, they ensured the byline was the same width as the game title, whether through some super-kerning (Killed Until Dead) or adding By/From. Really provides a beautiful symmetry. And the two exceptions had good reason, mimicking real-world counterparts.

Yeah, that’s superb.

By: Marty Plumbo

Marty Plumbo — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 13:18:14 +0000

I like the old Synapse 8-bit game covers – a lot more stylized, but they game the Synapse product line a real personality. And talk about evocative – in an age when game box art was generally more visually exciting than the graphics in the actual game, they were a great departure point for your imagination!

By: Than

Than — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 22:43:00 +0000

Oh how I loved playing Hardball on my dad’s Mac Plus. Someday I’ll pull that thing out of the storage closet and try to get it running.

By: room34

room34 — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 05:24:33 +0000

I love it!

After my big Atari 2600 phase, my parents refused to buy me an NES like my friends all had. Instead, they bought me a Tandy 1000 computer (MS-DOS 2.11 baby!) and I spent the latter half of the ’80s playing the hell out of every Accolade game I could get my hands on. I remember loving the box art, too, but it’s been 20 years since I’ve seen it. Thanks for the memories!

By: Steven Hambleton

Steven Hambleton — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 04:43:58 +0000

I’d like to vote Ultima VII as one of the best game covers ever. You could literally feel the evil.

http://media.strategywiki.org/images/b/b3/Ultima_VII_Black_Gate_box.jpg