[Article] Curiosities on video game covers 4

Some time ago I wrote several articles about curiosities on video game covers for this website, being the first of them one of my first collaborations with ComboGamer.

It's been quite a while since third article of this style, but due to the release of the movie Expendables 3 I thought it would be good to do a curiosities article on covers dedicated to some of the most popular actors from the action movies of the 80s and 90s.

Yesterday and Today Expendables

The return of veteran action movie actors like Schwarzenegger or Stallone may seem unnecessary to many people who do not understand the need to see fifty-somethings (in the best of cases) repeating the roles they played 30 years ago. Personally, I have to say that I only saw the first movie of Expendables and it left me quite indifferent.

However, it is worth remembering that for several decades these actors were icons and their films were classics that were repeated on television and rented weekly in the now defunct neighborhood video stores.

Obviously their influence reached video games, both in the official games of their films, as well as in unofficial games but “inspired” by them, as demonstrated by many of the covers of the time, where the illustrators were based on those muscular actors to make the game much more striking.

"I didn't come here to save Rambo from you, I came to save you from Rambo."

Silvester Stallone's character was one of those that appeared the most in war games, and the image of Rambo as a standard soldier for video games spread like wildfire, as these images demonstrate.

JCVD the video game

Van Damme has a curious history related to video games, and in his most popular years the Midway company decided to make a game starring the actor, but the negotiations were not fruitful and the concept of the game was left in the air, until it became Mortal Kombat, one of the oldest sagas of the fighting genre.
Paradoxically, the fact of not having Van Damme allowed the game to be renewed and include many concepts and characters that are classics of the video game industry today, however the spirit of Van Damme was still present with Johnny Cage, who imitated him, both visually and in his way of fighting (recreating one of the most remembered scenes from Bloodsport with one of his special blows) in addition to having some points in common in their history.

Leaving aside the Midway saga, Van Damme also inspired other illustrators who used him as a model for their covers with greater or lesser success as this drawing demonstrates.

Although possibly the strangest cover that includes the actor is that of Jim Power in Mutant Planet, where in addition to seeing Van Damme we can find various tributes to science fiction films and even a scene from Robocop.

I will return

Arnold Schwarzenegger had many successful films and was quickly classified as the ideal model for game covers of various kinds.

When one threw some coins into Rastan, in reality "he was playing Conan", when he chose the Barbarian in golden ax, in reality he was playing with Swarzenegger and the video game creators knew it, so all that was left was to make some covers according to what was expected, and that's how covers like Xyphoes Fantasy, with all the possible tributes to the Austrian actor's film.

Unity is strength

Para rizar el rizo alguien pensó que no tenía sentido usar solo uno de los actores y que daría mejor resultado si se ponían varios a la vez, creando un crossover que a más de uno le habría gustado ver en el cine.

La saga Contra contiene algunos de los homenajes más descarados que existen, cualquiera que haya jugado al Against recordará a Stallone y Schwarzenegger en la portada y de regalo el extraterrestre de la película Alien entre ambos. Situación que se repitió en los posters y portadas de otros juegos de la saga.

Por supuesto, el homenaje se perdía en la versión europea, ya que los protagonistas fueron cambiados por robots debido a la censura alemana que imperó en muchos juegos de la época (especialmente de Konami).

Si nos alejamos de Contra, veremos otros juegos de acción que tambien recurrieron a las estrellas del momento, Double Hawk es uno de los ejemplos.

Otro caso lo encontramos en la portada japonesa de Streets of Rage 2 (Bare Knuckle 2) que cambia a Stallone por Van Damme y mantiene a Schwarzenegger, ademas de incluir a la actriz Phoebe Cates, que se hizo bastante popular por la película Gremlins.

Con esas fotos se termina el artículo, espero que hayáis pasado un buen rato recordando viejos tiempos o al menos os haya sacado una carcajada al ver lo “inspiradas” que estaban las portadas de la época y lo fácil que era encontrarse con Van Damme, Schwarzenegger y Stallone en los juegos de antaño.