This is Roger Dean’s first piece of commissioned artwork for the legendary 80/90s Games House Psygnosis, and dates from way back to 1986. In addition to Roger Dean Psygnosis also used other Sci-Fi-O-Rama Favorites Tim White and Peter Andrew Jones examples of which I’ve featured earlier. Not all of the games were that memorable but the artwork certainley was and although some of it had been used before as SF Novel covers I think it’s fair to say that it reached a much wider and younger audience thanks to Psygnosis. Read more about Psygnosis here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psygnosis
Another example of box art from the early 90s’s, Knights of the Crystallion (great title!) was a third person RPG mix of puzzling solving and exploring made solely for the Commodore Amiga in 1990 - so I think it’s safe to say, fairly obscure. Whats so appealing about this cover? it’s a smoke breathing Crystal Stallion hatching from an egg!
Knights of the Crystallion is an interesting looking Fantasy Game and one I’d never heard of until recently, read more at: http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/knights-of-the-crystallion
(Above) Another sample of Chris Foss’s uber cool space hardware design style. This Example is especially interesting as it shows Foss’s style at it’s most minimal and therefore abstract, and as with all of his work has tremendous sense of scale.
See more of Chris Foss here http://www.chrisfoss.net/
Looking at this piece made me wonder how much of an influence/inspiration Chris Foss’s Art must of been on David Braben & Ian Bell’s legendary 80’s computer game Elite. Original 80’s Elite Poster featured below, It’s not another Chris Foss By the way, but in fact another Airbrush Legend - Philip Castle, more on him soon… (thanks for the tip Jim!)
Cover Box art again from, you guessed it, the early 90’s. Transarctica was a 16-bit steampunk themed strategy/management game developed by now defunct French Software Silmarils. Interestingly the actual art “Heavy Metal Hero” was produced in 1985 by Britsh Sci-Fi & Fantasy Illustrator Rodney Matthews, the game itself features designs based upon that image, so basically Transarctica seems to have been envisaged BECAUSE of the Cover Art! Can’t imagine this has happened too many times.
More on the game here: http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/transarctica/screenshots
Rodney Matthews has had a long career in Fantasy and Sci-fi Illustration spanning several decades. Akin to Roger Dean he’s also produced a large body of work for the music industry being responsible for well over seventy LPs sleeves, his first commission was for Thin Lizzy in 1969. See his site here http://www.rodneymatthews.com/
Tim White’s another UK Sci-Fi Artist most prominent in the 70’s & 80’s. This painting of a long limbed robotic insect was also used as cover art by Software House Psygnosis for their 16 bit Game “Infestation”.
Cover art for the ZX Spectrum Version of “The Hobbit” 1983.
The Hobbit was an text adventure game for 8-bit computers like the C64 and the Speccy, it’s considered a bit of a classic, what’s interesting is the ZX Spectrum branding - 48K of RAM! The game itself featured some very early pixel art, crude but atmospheric and remember the speccy only had a palette of 7 colours!
Read more about the game at Mobygame.com http://www.mobygames.com/game/zx-spectrum/hobbit
