Games where the box art is a photo!

I've been thinking a lot about this katamari damacy TGS 2003 demo disc box art and how it is probably my favorite videogame boxart ever

And that got me thinking about photos in videogame box art and my mind went straight to Minna Daisuki Katamari

And then I thought about the three beautiful limited edition covers that Iam8bit released for wattam

Is keita takahashi the only interesting enough person in videogames to have photos in his box art? I hope not, are there more examples of this?

I can only think of phalanx

I guess there may be some overlap with the ~~~~Touchy Game Art thread because a lot of that touchy art are photos, so maybe letā€™s not include those here? or maybe letā€™s include them? I dunno

1 Like

I just thought about sports games and shovelware, a lot of them have photosā€¦ Maybe we can include just the ones that are interesting? This tread concept is kind of quickly falling apart lol

Great thread idea! Agree that there may be some Touchy Game crossover (I guess the difference is that Touchy Games are likely do be dioramas and not actual life-size things in the world?), but here's a couple PC Engine guns

[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/anjabUu.png]

[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/atfEFBK.png]

And PlayStation food
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/0RwNWJP.png]
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and an album for good measure
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We should also probably exclude movie-tie-in-games as those are generally just a repurpose of the films poster.

The Chessmaster! They sure did reuse this one picture [a whole bunch.](https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/chessmaster-series)
The guy on the cover was Will Hare, an actor who you may better know from his role as [Old Man Peabody](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/bttf/images/3/35/Otis_peabody.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20070218054353) in Back to the Future. [Benj Edwards did a fantastic write up on his life a few years ago.](https://www.vintagecomputing.com/index.php/archives/896/the-chessmaster-died-in-1997)
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My gambling-loving uncle passed this down to meā€¦ I think itā€™s a photoā€¦ it has to be a photo![upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/kaHtyw4.jpeg]

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@ā€œhellomrkearnsā€#p41232 We should also probably exclude movie-tie-in-games as those are generally just a repurpose of the films poster.

Yeah, that's a good idea! I was kind of talking about that when I mentioned shovelware, but now that I think about it shovelware with photos is kind of interesting, (like the picture below) while movie tie-in game covers are not so much

[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/cSUquol.png]

Hereā€˜s a case where I canā€™t decide if this is belongs here or on touchy game art, I guess here?

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@ā€œDunkrā€#p41247 oh lord! It was only a couple of years ago that I discovered that Mavis Beacon wasnā€™t a real person. Was my whole childhood a lie?

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Do these count as ā€œa photoā€, when they are composed to look like movie posters?

https://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/384521-wing-commander-iii-heart-of-the-tiger-dos-front-cover.jpg

https://www.mobygames.com/images/covers/l/3760-wing-commander-iv-the-price-of-freedom-dos-front-cover.jpg

(I struggled to play through both of these on my 486. I bought a new video card because of these! I really noticed the difference going from the Cirrus Logic VGA card I had to a Trident that had support for VESA Local Bus)

The Intellivision (original from Mattel, not the upcoming horrible Amico thing) hosts some real good (bad) examples:

[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/51pfMPE.png]

[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/7M6WQ6T.png]

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[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/MKbF3Ot.png]

There were also a lot of games that had box art where I never really knew if they were painted or edited photos. Things like:
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/ojh03yD.png]
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/X4g8n0p.png]
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/cq8b25M.png]

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@ā€œrejjā€#p41261 Do these count as ā€œa photoā€, when they are composed to look like movie posters?

Top one is not a photo but a painting by Sam Yeates in the style of Hollywood poster legend Drew Struzan. Not sure about the WC4 one.

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@ā€œrejjā€#p41263 There were also a lot of games that had box art where I never really knew if they were painted or edited photos.

All paintings by (or in the style of) Jerrol Richardson.

that truckin cover gives me anxiety

@ā€œyesoā€#p41269 [upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/LJBxAkR.jpeg]


lol that one doesnā€™t bother me because itā€™s less plausible

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@ā€œhellomrkearnsā€#p41284 I love that shisensyo match-mania cover!

Probably not actually a photoā€¦but still, lmao

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