[Article] Curiosities on video game covers 3

It's been quite a few months since I made my first article for this website, where he showed video game covers that hid curiosities and funny coincidences, which had a continuation few months later.

Now I have decided to make the third part, continuing the same basic idea in an article full of visual curiosities, because I am sure that you have seen some of these covers many times and did not know that in reality they were not as original as they might seem at first glance.

The inspiration of Uncharted 3

I'm going to use the word inspiration and not the word plagiarism, because many of the elements on this cover are relatively common (crashed vehicle, surviving protagonist with his back to the disaster...) but the more I look at the cover of the Bermuda Project of Atari ST and Amiga, the one from the Atari ST and Amiga seems more “inspired” to me. Uncharted 3.

When metal gear became Terminator

metal gear has always been an example of “shameless inspiration.” The character of Solid Snake is clearly based on Snake Plissken (a character played by Kurt Russel in Rescue in New York), Big Boss is identical to Sean Connery in the old games, the theme song of Metal Gear Solid It turned out to be a plagiarism of the song Winter Road by Georgy Vasilevich Sviridov and many other things that border on the limit between homage and impudence.

One of the first curiosities that I remember about this saga is the cover of the metal gear of NES and MSX, without a doubt the illustration is very good, but surely it must have sounded familiar to more than one person. And it is normal, since if you copy a scene from a popular movie like Terminator, because the most likely thing is that someone will remember her and see how Solid Snake becomes Kyle Reese.

Having said all the above, many will think that these inspirations are from a bygone era where everything was more shameless and that things like that are no longer done today, but hey, then one starts looking at illustrations of Metal Gear Rising and finds out that someone was a fan of Neo Human Casshern, an anime from the seventies. Without a doubt, the list of “tributes” of metal gear It grows with each new game.

Shamelessly seeking sales

The fact that it is relatively difficult for someone to remember a specific scene from Terminator, an anime from the seventies or the cover of the Bermuda Project, gives some credit to the illustrators who made the aforementioned covers, at least in terms of trying to disguise the original source,  but would anyone dare shamelessly copy something that is very famous and perfectly recognizable to get automatic advertising?

It is clear that we all know that the answer is a resounding yes, after all we have all seen Chinese imitations of successful products, and if not, I would not have mentioned it in this article, so let's look at some of the many covers that were directly made to "visually deceive" the consumer and relate the video game to something that has previously been successful.

It is very clear that whoever saw the cover of this wrestling game thought of the media Hulk Hogan, in fact, more than one would think that the guy on the cover is the Hulk himself wearing a more patriotic outfit than normal, when in reality he turns out to be his twin brother without a mustache.

We all know that many illustrators need some model on which to base themselves in order to give a realistic appearance to their work, although it is undeniable that basing it on something and making something identical to what you base it on are quite different things. Using a famous character like Hulk Hogan is an easy resource, in fact There are dozens of covers based on “tough guys” such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Jean Claude Van Damme (perhaps I will compile them in a future article).

Although if we talk about covers and tough guys, I can't leave out Clint Eastwood, who was also honored very blatantly in several games, the clearest being Outlaw.

Y aquí un segundo homenaje, en la caratula de West Phaser, en este caso es algo más disimulado porque la cara no es la de Eastwood, sin embargo su nuevo rostro tampoco parece estar carente de inspiración, pues recuerda mucho al Capitan Kirk (Willian Shatner) de Star Trek.

The law of least effort

Como ya he comentado, son muchas las caratulas de videojuegos que se basan en personajes populares, actores y películas, con más o menos descaro. Estos ejemplos anteriores mostraban a un actor famoso rodeado de otros elementos que hacían la portada más o menos vistosa (y disimulaban un poco la inspiración original) pero hay algunas ocasiones en las que ni siquiera se molestan en añadir elementos decorativos, simplemente toman algo que les gusta y lo ponen como portada de la manera más directa posible. Uno de esos ejemplos seria el True Crime: Streets of L.A. que se podría considerar un reajuste en tamaño  y color de la película Replacement Killers.

Tribute and original, all in one

A veces hay casos en los que las coincidencias se dan la vuelta sobre sí mismas. Por ejemplo, la ilustración del juego Turbo Girl, que está ligada indudablemente con la película Necrópolis: El Reino de los Condenados, pues no solo el parecido es obvio, sino que encima ambos productos han usado la misma ilustración.

Hay varias versiones de la historia que explica esa coincidencia, una dice que el ilustrador (Luis Royo) se basó en la película para hacer la portada del juego y que esta a su vez gustó tanto que la usaron como portada para algunas versiones de la película. Otra versión por el contrario dice que la ilustración iba a ser utilizada en la película y finalmente se usó en ambas cosas.

Y bueno, con esto acaba el artículo, podría haberme explayado más y haber puesto más ejemplos, pero creo que con estos había suficientes para hacer un artículo lleno de curiosidades.