Worth Reading: 1UP’s Marty Sliva on Atari Box Art

We recently recorded an episode of Co-Op Critics about gaming culture (that will air the week of 2/14), and one of the topics of discussion was games journalism and how games are covered right now. We bemoaned a lot of what we currently see on mainstream gaming sites, and talked about the types of coverage we’d like to see.

We also talked a bit about the fact that there is some great stuff out there, but it’s often lost in the shuffle of the PR-driven “game of the moment” coverage that defines most gaming outlets.

One of the things I need to do more of here, on twitter and on the podcasts is give shout outs to interesting articles and games discussion that I’d like to see more of.

Today, I was reading through some of 1UP’s Cover Stories from the past several weeks, and stumbled across a fun article from Marty Sliva called “The Deceptive Beauty of Atari Box Art.” The article pointed out some examples of creative marketing with 2600 games and the box art, and there are some pretty insightful comments on the article from members of the 1UP community as well.

I grew up on the Atari 2600, I always approached the box art the same way I approached the cover art for all my Dungeons & Dragons books–as a starting point for my imagination. Things are different now, as the games we get to play can visually represent the ideas of the creators in a much more accurate way. Back then, you were getting a glimpse of the creators’ vision through the box art, and your imagination had to map that to what you were actually seeing. In that way, I think a lot of the early games were more participatory, as they required you to imagine as you played. Maybe that’s why I gravitate much more toward RPGs now, as it’s one of the last bastions of required imagination in gaming.

Anyway, props to Marty Sliva for a fun post that inspired some great discussion and a bit of nostalgia.