[Article] Curiosities on covers 7

I'm back with another article video game curiosities where we will once again see some curiosities or errors on video game covers.

You can find the rest of the entries in the free PDF magazine Bonus Stage Magazine or on this website, following this link.

The law of least effort (Copy and Paste)

In February 2020, Larry Tesler, known for being the inventor of “cut and paste” for personal computers, died. I am going to dedicate this section to this man and to all those who had very little desire to work and dedicated themselves to repeating what had already been done.

One of the most striking cases is found in Prince of Persia, where there was no hesitation in using the same image for two different games (and several versions of the same).

Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame It appeared in 1993 and one of its covers shows the prince with a blue turban, white pants and a red vest (the clothes he wore in the game). Curiously, we find that same illustration on the box of the first Prince of Persia for Macintosh and in the American version of Super Nintendo (in the Japanese and European version there was a totally different illustration).

Don't think that it stops here, since that cover was reused in re-releases for PC and versions that included the first two games, it was even reused years later for the cover of Prince of Persia for Game Boy Color, although on that occasion at least they modified the background so that it was not so noticeable.

It must be admitted that they were lazy when it came to repeating covers with the Prince of Persia, but at least it is an illustration that belongs to them and they are not taking advantage of anyone, something we cannot say about many other games.

All of us who have ever played Rastan, we have surely considered that the protagonist was Conan the Barbarian (or his distant cousin) and I think there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of a successful character to make a distant clone, as long as you cannot count on the official license (or do not want to pay for it), since the development of the game is created by you and that is where the real work is.

What I already see as more shady is that for the art of your game you dedicate yourself to copying exactly a cover of a Conan comic without any type of modesty.

As you can see, both characters are identical (and I'm sure the lizardman was taken from another comic, but I haven't found it). I have already commented in previous installments that many artists take human models to make their illustrations, but if instead of basing yourself on the same model, you dedicate yourself to copying a drawing as is, then we can no longer call it inspiration, right?

Conan's popularity led him to experience more cases of this style, as the game demonstrates Arkos, a Ziggurat video game for computers, whose cover is identical to another one of Savage Sword of Conan.

It wouldn't be the only time that a Ziggurat game looked too similar to a comic book cover of the famous barbarian, since Kong's Revenge It also seems like it had too much to do with another comic from the same collection. At least this time the resemblance is not so exaggerated and they decided not to copy Conan (although who knows if they copied the boy and the girl, if anyone knows, tip me off).

Another interesting case is Dracula Castlevania II Simon's Quest, which is identical to that of an illustration of Dungeons and Dragons even in his decoration (look at the balcony and the castle) with the only change that his face looks away. Curiously, Dracula was deleted from the European cover, coincidence or fear of lawsuit?

The following case has always intrigued me and although it is not exactly “copy and paste” it still seems too suspicious to me. I'm talking about the monster that appears on the cover of Mr Do! for Super Nintendo, since I see it extremely similar to the ghosts that appear on some covers of Ghostbusters for computers. The worst thing of all is that I have the feeling that I have seen those monsters somewhere else, but I don't remember, maybe it was only in products derived from The Ghostbusters, but I don't rule out that it appears in other video games.

And I'm going to end the section with a game that was copy and paste in every way: SHIT from MSX (yes, what a name).

This game was developed in 1988 by EuroSoft (Steve Course seems to be the creator) and it turns out that it is a clone of Pac-Man, something as unoriginal as it is common.

But if they copied the game, do you think they were going to put effort into the cover? Obviously not, since its drawing is identical to that of a novel.