Custom video game covers with a story behind them
These are not official covers, but covers made by someone for the purpose of submitting them to IGDB.
Read the note attached to each cover for more details
Read the note attached to each cover for more details
13 Games
according to fror on the IGDB discord server:
"was scrolling down an national computer museum thingy that stores a bunch of extinct magazines and software released in the country and found about this game
there is nothing about it online besides someone trying to selling it and their archive"
https://discord.com/channels/114736716505546761/1018265245044723712/1222288801460916384
"was scrolling down an national computer museum thingy that stores a bunch of extinct magazines and software released in the country and found about this game
there is nothing about it online besides someone trying to selling it and their archive"
https://discord.com/channels/114736716505546761/1018265245044723712/1222288801460916384
According to fror in the comments:
"They had a screenshot on their CurseForge page that features a structure that randomly reminded me of American Football's first album for some reason and I just used that as a basis because of that."
"They had a screenshot on their CurseForge page that features a structure that randomly reminded me of American Football's first album for some reason and I just used that as a basis because of that."
According to fror in the comments:
"The Haruhi Suzumiya Project, consisting of Gekidou, Chokuretsu, Tomadoi and Heiretsu [Chou SOS Dandanin Collection], was a personal project that I randomly started with my friend Peipara a couple of years ago, of which we re-created the covers from scratch (pícking stuff from art books and magazines ads, extracting logos from flash site files, upscaling them and trying to make them look almost identical from the ones present in the box art) and filled the pages as much of information as we could. Two covers, in particular, have some mistakes that can be unnoticeable: The actual box art of Gekidou has a silicon cover case on Haruhi's controller, while the one we made doesn't and Mikuru's hand in Heiretsu was stretched a bit so it didn't look too weird."
"The Haruhi Suzumiya Project, consisting of Gekidou, Chokuretsu, Tomadoi and Heiretsu [Chou SOS Dandanin Collection], was a personal project that I randomly started with my friend Peipara a couple of years ago, of which we re-created the covers from scratch (pícking stuff from art books and magazines ads, extracting logos from flash site files, upscaling them and trying to make them look almost identical from the ones present in the box art) and filled the pages as much of information as we could. Two covers, in particular, have some mistakes that can be unnoticeable: The actual box art of Gekidou has a silicon cover case on Haruhi's controller, while the one we made doesn't and Mikuru's hand in Heiretsu was stretched a bit so it didn't look too weird."
According to fror in the comments:
"I made two covers for serial experiments lain BOOTLEG since I didn't know which I should base upon the box or the flyer that was included. Eventually, I used the one based on the box to be the main one but uploaded the one based on the flyer on the Artwork section (which should be viewable at the end of the Screenshots section at IGDB."
"I made two covers for serial experiments lain BOOTLEG since I didn't know which I should base upon the box or the flyer that was included. Eventually, I used the one based on the box to be the main one but uploaded the one based on the flyer on the Artwork section (which should be viewable at the end of the Screenshots section at IGDB."
according to dleo on the IGDB discord server:
"This one has a cool story, I took the only known photograph of the game logo and added it to a screenshot of the leaked gameplay screenshot." [pic of photograph included]
https://discordapp.com/channels/114736716505546761/1018265245044723712/1206089696153837608
"This one has a cool story, I took the only known photograph of the game logo and added it to a screenshot of the leaked gameplay screenshot." [pic of photograph included]
https://discordapp.com/channels/114736716505546761/1018265245044723712/1206089696153837608
According to alexmott on the Backloggd discord server:
"It's a lot more than one game, but I made cover art for classic Microsoft Windows games which only had icons, so I scaled up the original icons and made the background color the default desktop for Windows 95"
I particularly appreciate the background color matching the actual desktop background of the time. It's a nice touch.
https://discordapp.com/channels/624220525987889182/1207136928512872539/1207143323848941619
"It's a lot more than one game, but I made cover art for classic Microsoft Windows games which only had icons, so I scaled up the original icons and made the background color the default desktop for Windows 95"
I particularly appreciate the background color matching the actual desktop background of the time. It's a nice touch.
https://discordapp.com/channels/624220525987889182/1207136928512872539/1207143323848941619
According to MendelPalace on the Backloggd discord server:
"A lot of the games I've added to the database have custom covers, but most don't have a story beyond "I edited the title screen/combined a logo and screenshot". One interesting exception is Mastaba Snoopy.
Mastaba Snoopy is a text adventure, so there's no graphics to work with. My cover uses two images for the base: one is a piece of art I'd found in an article talking about the game (Mastaba Snoopy is a Cronenbergian nightmare vision of childhood), while the other was taken from a zine circa 1996 called "Nanonuts", which made comics out of mangled/cut-and-pasted Peanuts panels. The logo was made using a free font inspired by the Peanuts comics."
https://discordapp.com/channels/624220525987889182/1207136928512872539/1207140664106557530
"A lot of the games I've added to the database have custom covers, but most don't have a story beyond "I edited the title screen/combined a logo and screenshot". One interesting exception is Mastaba Snoopy.
Mastaba Snoopy is a text adventure, so there's no graphics to work with. My cover uses two images for the base: one is a piece of art I'd found in an article talking about the game (Mastaba Snoopy is a Cronenbergian nightmare vision of childhood), while the other was taken from a zine circa 1996 called "Nanonuts", which made comics out of mangled/cut-and-pasted Peanuts panels. The logo was made using a free font inspired by the Peanuts comics."
https://discordapp.com/channels/624220525987889182/1207136928512872539/1207140664106557530
This is what I believe to be the oldest known video-game. I used an original photo of the digital checkerboard and superimposed on top of it the actual typewriter-written name "Draughts" which Christopher Strachey used in his paper (inverted to white).
A square version of this cover, found on an archived App Store page, is the only thing (aside from the description + developer + release date) that I could find from this game. I downloaded it in 2010 according to my Apple data but don't recall even owning it.
I actually downloaded the .swf file for this flash game, found and exported the 16 background gradients then put them into the grid order they appear in-game to make this. I had to squish it to make it fit in a 3:4 rectrangle but I like how it naturally fills the space of the cover with little manipulation needed.
What I did for this one involved using a really high quality image of this Streetpass game's 3DS icon used for a SiivaGunner rip. I don't know who originally created the image, but it was so much better than anything else I could find online, and I didn't want to go through the process of emulating the game myself, somehow. The text uses a font that I think either is or very nearly matches the actual font used in Streetpass for most titles, and I tried to match the outline and coloring with how it appears on the menu, too.
I have no idea what this 1972 actually looked like, but I found one ascii text image online (which I've misplaced sadly) that I think represented the game. Because it looked too modern for 1972, I tried to replicate what colorscheme and font would appear on a computer back then, using a font that was supposed to match the one used on machines of that era. Then I superimposed the word EMPIRE in that same font above the rest so it stood out.
Somewhere online, you can find a photo of the letter sent by the young guy who designed this game. This is just a rip of the title, as it was written, from that paper, with the same sepia-tone paper. Based on the way this title was typed out, I'd think the title should be High Noon on IGDB, but for some reason its written as Highnoon.
10 Comments
I'm only now noticing that the Stones icon looks like the guy's left arm is horrifically broken just below the wrist
Thanks for sharing the story on the Black Out cover! I never thought I'd see it referenced anywhere
Hi! Wanted to share a few that I had throughout the years of contributing :)
- The Haruhi Suzumiya Project, consisting of Gekidou, Chokuretsu, Tomadoi and Heiretsu [Chou SOS Dandanin Collection], was a personal project that I randomly started with my friend Peipara a couple of years ago, of which we re-created the covers from scratch (pícking stuff from art books and magazines ads, extracting logos from flash site files, upscaling them and trying to make them look almost identical from the ones present in the box art) and filled the pages as much of information as we could. Two covers, in particular, have some mistakes that can be unnoticeable: The actual box art of Gekidou has a silicon cover case on Haruhi's controller, while the one we made doesn't and Mikuru's hand in Heiretsu was stretched a bit so it didn't look too weird. [...]
- The Haruhi Suzumiya Project, consisting of Gekidou, Chokuretsu, Tomadoi and Heiretsu [Chou SOS Dandanin Collection], was a personal project that I randomly started with my friend Peipara a couple of years ago, of which we re-created the covers from scratch (pícking stuff from art books and magazines ads, extracting logos from flash site files, upscaling them and trying to make them look almost identical from the ones present in the box art) and filled the pages as much of information as we could. Two covers, in particular, have some mistakes that can be unnoticeable: The actual box art of Gekidou has a silicon cover case on Haruhi's controller, while the one we made doesn't and Mikuru's hand in Heiretsu was stretched a bit so it didn't look too weird. [...]
We also made assets and transparent versions of the logos for Steam and uploaded them on SteamGridDB!
- I made two covers for serial experiments lain BOOTLEG since I didn't know which I should base upon the box or the flyer that was included. Eventually, I used the one based on the box to be the main one but uploaded the one based on the flyer on the Artwork section (which should be viewable at the end of the Screenshots section at IGDB.
- I made two covers for serial experiments lain BOOTLEG since I didn't know which I should base upon the box or the flyer that was included. Eventually, I used the one based on the box to be the main one but uploaded the one based on the flyer on the Artwork section (which should be viewable at the end of the Screenshots section at IGDB.
Nice list! I've been wanting to do this too for certain games that I've reviewed/added to IGDB that lack a cover at the moment.
the "national computer museum thingy" was Datassette: https://datassette.org/
Yultimona
2 months ago