Ranking the Lucas adventures' cover art

[TimeGentleman]

First off, a nod to Laserschwert's thread of remasters, the best place to go to peruse these posters.

 

 

Okay, my personal ranking of the Lucas adventures' cover art. I'm not taking the logos/text into consideration when ranking, and I'm also forgiving any empty spaces in the composition designed to put said logos.

 

1) Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge
Perfect. Absolutely stunning art. A great composition, wonderful use of light. Dramatic yet with notes of goofiness, matching the game. I spent a lot of money having Laserschwert's no-titles version of this printed on canvas and put in a big old frame so it looks like a lost 19th century painting.
 

2) Sam & Max Hit the Road
Gorgeous. Stands alone as a great Sam & Max piece, and works great as box art as well. It gets in a bunch of the stuff from the game, acting as a kind of trailer to keep the player excited to progress, and there's so much detail in there to gaze at while stuck on a puzzle, without feeling too busy. The only thing I could possibly criticise it for is that it doesn't include a classic Sam & Max rat, but the jackalope makes a fine stand-in.

 

3) Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders
I love the clean, bold cartoon style here. A lovely companion piece to Hit The Road. Great composition and use of colour, lots of lovely detail, and a cheeky evocation of the classic Luke & Leia pose. Better than the game, and I've probably spent more time on it too!

 

4) Day of the Tentacle
This was a surprise to me, because I had assumed I'd be ranking it second. It's from my favourite game of all time, it's iconic, the linework and character art is delicious, it cleverly imitates Chuck Jones cell art by giving a slightly more painterly detailed look to the mansion in the background. The only thing that knocked this down a few places is that it's very simple and I suspect my love for it is more driven by nostalgic association than some of the other covers here.

 

5) The Curse of Monkey Island
A really nice composition, very clean, matches the game well. Good use of colour. Guybrush looks a tiny bit off in the face, somehow?

 

6) Labyrinth
Standing on the shoulders of the movie's artists, of course, but this is still a great fantasy painting and a smart choice to show restraint and simply portray a wide view of the labyrinth with an owl in the foreground rather than overworking it with a bunch of different elements.

 

7) The Dig
The more I look at this, the more I like it. It really nails that Bob Peak 80s family sci-fi mystery movie vibe, which ties in nicely to the Spielberg association. It walks a fine line between mysteriously minimal and bland, but for me it lands on the former.

 

8 ) Loom
Very similar strengths to The Dig, but I'm going to place this below because all the elements feel a bit cramped.

 

9) The Secret of Monkey Island
I love Guybrush here, and obviously Purcell is a great artist, but the overall composition is just too vague for me. I assume it's intentionally evoking old adventure movie posters, but I'm personally just not a big fan of that 'slap all the things on there and call it a day' style. It took seeing Laserschwert's no-titles version for me to realise that there's three quarters of a crossbones in there!

 

10) Grim Fandango Remastered
A lovely piece of art, and far superior to the original cover. It loses a few places due to being a little too busy, and (possibly due to it being all pencils, an admittedly classy and interesting move) feeling more like a limited edition A5 print than cover art.

 

11) Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Perfect emulation of the Struzan style. Unfortunately, this means it has that typical Struzan muddled composition. It's better than Struzan's art for Infernal Machine, though!

 

12) Maniac Mansion
I appreciate that it captures the cheapo 80s horror vibe quite well, but that also means that intentional or not it feels a little ugly and cheap to me!

 

13) Full Throttle
While this is a cool image, it seems to be some kind of filter over 3D art. Whether I'm right about that or not, it feels like it is, which is the important thing. (The explosion also feels like a stock image.) It worked as a promotional image, it doesn't work as a piece of art, and that's a real shame when it's the cover for such a beautiful game. It's such a shame that they didn't use the Mignola-esque version of this by Peter Chan that we've seen elsewhere.

 

14) Full Throttle Remastered
This might have overtaken the original, as I prefer the 2D art style, if it weren't for the utter lack of energy and the slightly off anatomy. They also did a reworking of the original as promotional art and it is miles better than both this and the original - an odd choice not to use it.

 

15) Escape from Monkey Island
Some fairly cute bits and pieces of character art in here, but a muddled composition, a weird mish-mash of 2D and 3D, and Guybrush has a queasy Margaret Keane look about him.

 

16) Day Of The Tentacle Remastered
This feels like perfectly adequate fan art achieved mostly by dragging around and tweaking existing assets. A lot of the characters look off-model, the linework is inconsistent, the composition is messy and the posing is odd. This puts the restraint and casual mastery of the original into stark contrast!

 

17) Grim Fandango
Just a bunch of models slapped on a black background. So lazy! I think it's supposed to be evoking Casablanca et al, but for one thing I personally don't like a lot of those posters and for another they could have at least done a painted version in that style. This is clearly designed purely to shout "it's in 3D, this isn't your grandma's adventure game!" from the shelves. Particularly embarrassing next to the amazing wall mural artwork used on the CD slipcase.

 

18) Monkey Island 2 Special Edition
Blasphemous, but one of the two versions in Laserschwert's thread (the one with the wider LeChuck eyes) is a better piece of art on its own terms than the SOMI:SE one so I'll count that one and put it here. (The other one is dreadful and would go second last.)

 

19) The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition
An absolute sin. Like a microcosm of the SE itself.

 

20) Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
The laziest possible option, and just in case it didn't have enough 'cynical corporate synergy' vibes, they put two versions of the IP's logo on it right next to each other!

 

What do you all think? This is all subjective opinion, of course, and I'd be interested to hear how close others' are to mine. How do other related game covers compare (like Lucasarts non-adventures or non-Lucasarts adventures, say)?

 

 

Edited May 26 by TimeGentleman
damned automatic smileys!

[Jake]

A good list, enjoyed hearing what about them spoke to you personally. I know you limited it to adventures but man there are some winners in the rest of the catalog. Dark Forces, Rebel Assault, are both really iconic compositions that are representative of their eras of gaming in a very fast-moving time. The Outlaws box is a real stylistic outlier in the world of retail covers. Afterlife is one I’ve always respected more than loved, kind of like the game itself. Pipe Dream looks like an arcade game because it basically is - it’s effortlessly iconic in that arcadey way that’s actually hard to achieve. I dont think any of these hold a candle to the adventure greats, but there are a bunch of good ones in the mix. 

[TimeGentleman]

Oh yeah, I was going to give Outlaws and Dark Forces honourable mentions! Rebel Assault and Pipe Dream aren't in the Remasters thread so I didn't see them originally but looking at them now I agree, very effective too. 

[Laserschwert]

I'd like to add Rebel Assault 2 to the list, which is another of Eaken's greats. They could have gone for a 3D-rendered one, like the X-Wing/TIE Fighter games, but luckily they doubled down on the "live action" aspect of the game, giving it the full movie poster treatment, including the actors' likenesses.

[TimeGentleman]

I personally would have left the Rebel Assault II cover art off my non-adventure honourable mentions, for a reason you can probably guess from the rest of my list!

[Laserschwert]

1 hour ago, TimeGentleman said:

I personally would have left the Rebel Assault II cover art off my non-adventure honourable mentions, for a reason you can probably guess from the rest of my list!

Oh sure, I was referring to Jake's additions in this case.

[Vainamoinen]

The winner is no surprise. The only thing that matches Steve Purcell's cover art for LeChuck's Revenge ... is Steve Purcell's back cover art for LeChuck's Revenge.

 

Even though it's painted in oils to my knowledge, Purcell uses his perfected acrylic technique, building up color in washy layers. It was a truly daring concept to put the villain front and center. It's all about the eerie atmosphere for me. The only humorous element here is the dead bird on LeChuck's hat, and even that bird seems to be frozen in its last horrific seizures of agony. Also, I don't know if Purcell ever drew another monkey without a hat, pipe, eyepatch or at the very least a scimitar. The lighting is impressive, the composition is impressive, from the knowledgeable use of repoussoir to the usage of negative space (see how Guybrush is framed by the mast to the left and LeChuck's jacket to the right?).

[dognut]

yoda stories (game boy color cover) was robbed, btw.

 

otherwise great list!

[ThunderPeel2001]

On 6/1/2024 at 10:02 AM, Vainamoinen said:

The winner is no surprise. The only thing that matches Steve Purcell's cover art for LeChuck's Revenge ... is Steve Purcell's back cover art for LeChuck's Revenge.

 

Even though it's painted in oils to my knowledge, Purcell uses his perfected acrylic technique, building up color in washy layers. It was a truly daring concept to put the villain front and center. It's all about the eerie atmosphere for me. The only humorous element here is the dead bird on LeChuck's hat, and even that bird seems to be frozen in its last horrific seizures of agony. Also, I don't know if Purcell ever drew another monkey without a hat, pipe, eyepatch or at the very least a scimitar. The lighting is impressive, the composition is impressive, from the knowledgeable use of repoussoir to the usage of negative space (see how Guybrush is framed by the mast to the left and LeChuck's jacket to the right?).

 

It's a brilliant cover. So sinister. I had it as a postcard next to my Amiga growing up.