A MOST AGREEABLE PASTIME

Another year, another countdown, another birthday.  And I’m boxing it all up, tying a nice little bow around it, and turning the ripe old age of 32 with a celebration of 32 BRILLIANT examples of FANTASTIC video game box art.  Join me, won’t you?

Lemmings (1991) – Lemmings is probably the most influential and formative video games I played as a lad.  I had a fascination with it, sometimes bordering on obsession, and would spend hours and hours memorising levels and finding the best and most efficient way through levels.  No man left behind was always my motto.  No video game box art in the history of video game box art has captured the game enclosed within better than Lemmings.  It perfectly captures both the order of the game when all goes according to plan, and the chaos when it all goes awry, in a scene that only becomes more impressive the more you look at it.  From the lollipop Lemming warning his peers of an impending cliff edge, to the poor bloke being cooked in a cauldron, it’s full of the kind of detail and European comic book visual humour you’d usually find in Where’s Wally or Asterix and Obelix.  For a game that is so intrinsically drenched in morbidity and death, it manages to set a tone that is anything but.  And it’s this messing with the audience’s expectation and perception of the rather macabre themes in the game itself that makes it such a magical piece of art.

Miss previous entries in the countdown?

Space Ace (1983) – Transylvania (1984) – Impossible Mission (1985) – Defender of the Crown (1986) – Faery Tale Adventure (1987) – F/A – 18 Interceptor (1988) – Blood Money (1989) – King of the Zoo (1990)