Your Favorite Cover Arts!

I've seen quite a few threads about bad cover arts in games, but what about the good ones? Sure, there's that old saying that goes "you can't judge a book by it's cover", but it doesn't hurt that game companies should put some real effort once in awhile by hiring real artists to drawn their cover arts once in awhile. So I salute them by choosing what I think are the best cover arts of all time in no particular order.

1) The original Metal Gear (MSX, NES): We get a good look at Snake long before he became well-known Yoji Shinkawa-drawn badass he was in Metal Gear Solid, looking alot like Kyle Reese from the Terminator films. Okay, he looks ALOT like Michael Biehn, which is the earliest known evidence of Kojima's Cameron worship (the latest being Raiden's and Rose's names in MGS2), but it's still a cool cover art and I would like to see Yoji Shinkawa's take on it. Oddly enough, the Metal Gear mech is featured in the NES cover art, which is odd since he doesn't appear in that version (the Famicom cover art had it brushed out).
http://junkerhq.net/cgi-bin/dwld.cgi?img190

2) Double Dragon II: The Revenge (multi-console): So good, that almost all versions of this game used it or some remake of it, regardless of their differences. The Lee boys are there kicking ass, while one of them holds the hot damsel in distress in his arms (nevermind that they mixed up their outfits, a strangely common mistake in a few of Technos' cover arts). The NES version was oddly censored though, in which Marian's tank top was repainted red (over the original's pink) and her skirt was drawn a bit longer (not that there was anything revealing in the original), but it's still quite hot.
http://www.arcadeflyers.com/flyers/technos/67422901.jpg


3) Contra III: The Alien Wars (SNES): One of the few instances where the American cover art was superior to the Japanese one. The main characters are there fighting agaisnt some of the in-game enemies in the Stage 3 factory. It depicts the game faithfully and it's a lot more exciting than the boring Japanese art (which was just Bill & Lance looking pretty).
http://www.classicgaming.com/contra/contra3/b-cont3.jpg

More to come!

Welcome back.

You know, I was just thinking about how I liked Contra III's American art better the other day, and how weird that was. Glad I'm not the only one.

I might say that the same is true for a number of the early Castlevania games.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by BenT
Welcome back.

You know, I was just thinking about how I liked Contra III's American art better the other day, and how weird that was. Glad I'm not the only one.

I might say that the same is true for a number of the early Castlevania games.

---

Thanks Man! I also thought NES cover art of the original Contra was better than the Japanese Famicom one (even though thr Famicom version was better). But with more than 50 views, you would expect more than one reply (even if it's just saying how lame this thread). Oh well.

Continuing from with another of my favorites (if anyone still cares):

4) Donkey Kong '94 (GB): No reason other than I like this artwork. I miss the day when Nintendo would used draw a really cute hand-drawn art in their latest Mario game. Nowadays, they just used CG renders. Of course, they're still use hand-drawn covers for their GBA, it's not the same when most of them are just ports of existing games or side-titles like G&W Galley 4. I'm still wondering where's Donkey Kong Plus (hopefully E3 will give us an answer).

I found the Kyle Reese picture very interesting. I'd never seen the two pictures side by side. They are near dead on look alikes.

Pretty cool.

Also cool.

And then there was Contra.

Good covers :). It's a great idea to include pictures, but it took me a bunch of times to get the links to work. Attaching will hopefully help people see them.

I'm in love with Final Fantasy X's cover art for some strange reason...

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0...1.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Gitaroo Man has a pretty good cover.

http://www.gamesarefun.com/games/ico/screen1.jpg

(european/japanese)

edit: i can't seem to find the art for cosmic smash or jet set radio (japanese), but they definately belong in this thread.