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Bizarre and cursed offical art of popular video games

Theorymon

Theorymon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
1,376
So I've been looking to fill some holes in some obscure ports of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, and Mario Bros, in an effort to know more about Nintendo's rather lax licensing in the early 1980s. During this search, I came accross something rather cursed...

See, Nintendo gave Ocean the license to Donkey Kong and Mario Bros for computer ports in the UK due to a Donkey Kong knock off of their own (named Kong, it wasn't even subtle lol) selling pretty well. So when they made their Commodre 64 port of Mario Bros... we got THESE abominations

MarioBros%28Ocean%29Titelpic.png


MarioBros%28Ocean%29Zwischenpic.png


Holy shit this is BEYOND cursed. Why the fuck is Mario so thicc?? What the hell is wrong with the Sidewinders? Why is there a heart in the Mario logo?

There clearly wasn't a ton of quality control with these images! So, this has me wondering... what other games suffered similar fates to this one? I'd love to see other examples of offical video game art gone terribly wrong!
 
MGPanda

MGPanda

Member
Feb 25, 2018
2,476
Mega Man USA box art: the thread.

Jesus, that Mario in the OP is terrifying. I really hate most 80's PC art, it all looked this... disgusting, lmao.
 
DiipuSurotu

DiipuSurotu

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
53,148
Theorymon said:
So I've been looking to fill some holes in some obscure ports of Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, and Mario Bros, in an effort to know more about Nintendo's rather lax licensing in the early 1980s. During this search, I came accross something rather cursed...

See, Nintendo gave Ocean the license to Donkey Kong and Mario Bros for computer ports in the UK due to a Donkey Kong knock off of their own (named Kong, it wasn't even subtle lol) selling pretty well. So when they made their Commodre 64 port of Mario Bros... we got THESE abominations

MarioBros%28Ocean%29Titelpic.png


MarioBros%28Ocean%29Zwischenpic.png


Holy shit this is BEYOND cursed. Why the fuck is Mario so thicc?? What the hell is wrong with the Sidewinders? Why is there a heart in the Mario logo?

There clearly wasn't a ton of quality control with these images! So, this has me wondering... what other games suffered similar fates to this one? I'd love to see other examples of offical video game art gone terribly wrong!
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Looks like Wario trying to pass off as Mario
 
Stefarno

Stefarno

I ... survived Sedona
Member
Oct 27, 2017
893
UK home computer box art from the 80s could probably make up the entire thread on its own.

Edit: I missed the word popular from the title, so here are some relatively popular Spectrum games instead of some no-one will have heard of in 35 years:

IzezvN5l.jpg

3ichvVal.jpg

xXrWnWXl.jpg

FqO3AT2l.jpg
 
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Sanka

Sanka

Banned
Feb 17, 2019
5,778
My god, only 12 posts in but I didn't expect to be hit by so many cursed images.
 
waugh

waugh

Attempted to circumvent ban with an alt-account
Banned
Feb 21, 2020
1,401
What is the opposite of patriotism? That's what I feel like when I see the covers of British computer games from the 80s. No wonder they voted for brexit they never had good taste to begin with.
 
NDA-Man

NDA-Man

Member
Mar 23, 2020
3,075
xendless said:
Mom jeans hunk James Sunderland
EV1h7viWsAATl4r.jpg:large
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It's not official artwork though. PSM would always contact an artist to draw an original cover for their issues, up until partway through the PS2 lifecycle, IIRC. Usually they'd include the artist's original linework and some mockup sketches they did in the contents.

Since they often hired comic artists, the magazine's covers, while I think oftentimes very striking, also oftentimes didn't mesh with the artstyle of the hyped game--I remember their FFX issue depicted Tidus as a squarejawed, muscly dude.
EDIT:
final-fantasy-x-PSM-43-cover-tidus-and-yuna-liquid-christian-lichtner-joe-madureira-color-s.jpg

Brought to you by Joe Mad, of Darksiders and Battle Chasers: Nightwar fame.
tumblr_o0ji664Wj91qd4q8ao1_500.jpg

v69o1v37pey41.png

bdcfd1a7311d1021a7eda0c658381071.jpg


I'm not even saying these are cursed--I like most of em. Just currently nostalgia tripping on PSM (Their RE3 guide included all of the permutations of scenes, IIRC, definitely had all of the gunpowder mixing stuff)

EDIT: Also, can someone tell me what exactly the difference between regular jeans and mom jeans is supposed to be?
 
Last edited:
MikeProtagonist

MikeProtagonist

Member
Oct 26, 2017
7,301
xendless said:
Mom jeans hunk James Sunderland
EV1h7viWsAATl4r.jpg:large
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Ah, the good old days when games magazines
existed and
used some artist of their own to make up cover art because the concept of sending out raw promotional artwork didn't exist yet. Sometimes you got quite charming stuff like the UK Super Play, sometimes you got not so great stuff.
 
404LinkNotFound

404LinkNotFound

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,585
NDA-Man said:
It's not official artwork though. PSM would always contact an artist to draw an original cover for their issues, up until partway through the PS2 lifecycle, IIRC. Usually they'd include the artist's original linework and some mockup sketches they did in the contents.

Since they often hired comic artists, the magazine's covers, while I think oftentimes very striking, also oftentimes didn't mesh with the artstyle of the hyped game--I remember their FFX issue depicted Tidus as a squarejawed, muscly dude.
EDIT:
final-fantasy-x-PSM-43-cover-tidus-and-yuna-liquid-christian-lichtner-joe-madureira-color-s.jpg

Brought to you by Joe Mad, of Darksiders and Battle Chasers: Nightwar fame.
tumblr_o0ji664Wj91qd4q8ao1_500.jpg

v69o1v37pey41.png

bdcfd1a7311d1021a7eda0c658381071.jpg


I'm not even saying these are cursed--I like most of em. Just currently nostalgia tripping on PSM (Their RE3 guide included all of the permutations of scenes, IIRC, definitely had all of the gunpowder mixing stuff)

EDIT: Also, can someone tell me what exactly the difference between regular jeans and mom jeans is supposed to be?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
so...who did make #1 on thier top 25 games at the time?
 
Lowblood

Lowblood

Member
Oct 30, 2017
5,180
CliveLH said:
7776_front.jpg
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Always tried to figure out who these were all supposed to be. Top left is clearly Barbossa, he's the only one here who actually resembles anyone in the game. I guess the women are Wendy (left) and Leknaat (right)? Top right dude could be Luc, if you noticed Luc had a staff and decided to draw everything else about him differently.

The weird part is I assume Brick Chunkhead in the middle left there is supposed to be Tir, since he's riding the dragon as you do early in the game. He shares absolutely nothing else with Tir though.

All of those characters show up in the first 30 minutes or so of the game too, which would make sense if that's all the artist got to see.
 
DiipuSurotu

DiipuSurotu

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
53,148
Lowblood said:
Always tried to figure out who these were all supposed to be. Top left is clearly Barbossa, he's the only one here who actually resembles anyone in the game. I guess the women are Wendy (left) and Leknaat (right)? Top right dude could be Luc, if you noticed Luc had a staff and decided to draw everything else about him differently.

The weird part is I assume Brick Chunkhead in the middle left there is supposed to be Tir, since he's riding the dragon as you do early in the game. He shares absolutely nothing else with Tir though.

All of those characters show up in the first 30 minutes or so of the game too, which would make sense if that's all the artist got to see.
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Leftmost dude looks like Pahn
 
Speely

Speely

The Fallen
Oct 25, 2017
7,995
I would play the game that this box art suggests. It's nice.

But for this game? Gross.

ps2boxsdjb7.jpg
 
P-Tux7

P-Tux7

Member
Mar 11, 2019
1,344
Stefarno said:
UK home computer box art from the 80s could probably make up the entire thread on its own.

Edit: I missed the word popular from the title, so here are some relatively popular Spectrum games instead of some no-one will have heard of in 35 years:

IzezvN5l.jpg

3ichvVal.jpg

xXrWnWXl.jpg

FqO3AT2l.jpg
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not a bad word about Horace, this is truth in advertising.
 
Ailanthium

Ailanthium

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,270
Nihilistic Monk said:
Every time this game comes up, I go back and forth on if this is a real photo of a dude or if it's a Poser3D Model, or maybe even a bizarre mixture of the two... I'm still not sure.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This was for the GameBoy Advance and it clearly wasn't made using a lot of effort. It was a picture of the dude they edited sloppily using Photoshop or maybe even MSPaint.
 
Richiek

Richiek

Member
Nov 2, 2017
12,063
uYoHYCSPa8STd6JoSzHEIy6LXtcu6k3vgCnjCT2whmoVsCq-8IV2FbbD5IeAV721nf9rMdCFHOvA5wyuimGoMqNGkZTvXz-apXLiPy9dXsI2xUm4fAiTHES_zrSfKQ=w1200-h630-p-k-no-nu

I'm surprised Marvel didn't sue.

Also:

559c7b6b094d6a5adfe01d1c79582534.jpg


The video game about a Japanese ninja features a buff, blonde white guy.
 
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