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?

Theme Hospital (1997) – There is nothing I like more than clean and tidy design.  I like unused space with contrasting colours in the form of flat shading objects or logos, with straight and perpendicular lines, and if there is a colour just enough to really make it pop.  Theme Hospital is just that.  The logo is a beautiful use of a inverted colours, bringing out the whimsy of the Theme series, and contrasting it to the pedestrian and corporate nature of the game’s hospital management.  But it’s the striking use of the green medical cross sitting atop the white of a sterile white-tiled wall that really draws the eye, so much so that it’s easy to miss the dated and rather ugly plastic shaded model of the doctor and his giant syringe sitting right plumb in the centre of the box.  It is the one blemish on an otherwise stunningly simple piece of box art, but with a bit of corrective surgery, it could be near bloody perfect.

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) – Lemmings (1991) – Pinball Fantasies (1992) – The Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots! (1993) – Super Mario Land 3: Wario Land (1994) – Primal Rage (1995) – Wipeout 2097 (1996)