Retro Website of the Month: BOX=ART

Welcome to the first in a new monthly series that brings you great retro gaming websites from around the internet.

We are starting with a fairly new site that celebrates box art in all it’s glory – BOX=ART (www.boxequalsart.com).

As founder Adam Gidney states on the site:

Once there was a time when box artists and their cover art were relied on to sell games. Now the ever popular digital download services are slowly putting an end to physical retail games – and with them, the importance of box art. This won’t mean the end of artwork being created to promote games, of course, we just won’t have those beautifully adorned boxes any longer.

So BOX=ART is here to acknowledge a part of art and video game history that is in the slow throws of decline and within a console generation could die away.

You can browse various box arts by Artist, Decade, Region or Publisher making it easy to draw comparisons between different periods of gaming and see how things have changed over time. Adams love for video game box art is abundant and we hope that it will grow into one of the biggest repositories of gaming art on the web.

Barbarian Box Art by Roger Dean

Outer World Box Art by Eric Chadhi

Manufacturer page (Sony)

Interview with Adam Gidney, founder of BOX=ART

When did you become interested in video games?

Adam: It started in the late 80’s with the Spectrum +3 and a little known game called Cavern. It had a nice piece of artwork on the instruction manual by an artist called Jenny Tylden-Wright. From there I was firmly in the Amiga camp before falling in love with Nintendo starting with the N64.

What is BOX=ART?

Adam: BOX=ART is a site dedicated to the artists who have been involved in creating video game box arts since the early 70s. It also allows the reader to check out artistic fashions by cataloging box arts across areas such as the decade in which they were released and the region they came from. Finally, exception box arts are highlighted and reviewed.

What inspired you to start the site?

Adam: I’ve always been a retro collector, but collecting box arts came about after a trip to Japan and seeing all the great artwork that never made it to Europe. I bought up a load and started to look into the artists who created them only to find there wasn’t a dedicated site to them or box art history. I was also surprised that a lot of these artists never got the recognition they deserved and believe that they should, especially seeing how as gamers we’ve been staring at their art for so many years!

Do you own all the games you feature?

Adam: Not all of them, but most so far have been. Its an expensive game collecting games! I do try to only use quality scans and this has meant there are a lot of box arts I haven’t been able to post as there just aren’t the scans online.

In your opinion, which era of videogaming features the best box art?

Adam: Late 80s through to the early 90s, the 16bit era and just before computers started to become the artists’ favoured tool. In Europe we had artists such as Peter Andrew Jones, Celal Kandemiroglu and Alfonzo Azpiri cutting their box art teeth, in North America, Boris Vallejo, Julie Bell, Glenn Fabry and Steve Purcell, while in Japan, Katsuya Terada, Jun Suemi and Shinkiro amongst many others.

Who is your favourite videogame box/booklet artist and why?

Adam: As a kid growing up in England, Psygnosis’ box arts played a big part in those early gaming days so I’d have to go with Roger Dean. His art really does speak for itself.

What is your favourite box art and why?

Adam: While in Japan I picked up Yoshitaka Amano’s Final Fantasy for the Famicom. The colours he used along with his perception of depth are perfect, but the sadness he depicted in the girl’s face is spell binding, a true work of genius!

What are your plans for the site going forward?

Adam: Firstly I would like to get more artists and people who have been involved in art direction within the industry involved. Secondly, I’d like to bring further recognition to the fact that there is an incredible amount of quality art out there that because of its attachment with video games is possibly being over looked by the larger art world.

How can people contribute to the site?

Adam: BOX=ART has got to the stage where article contributors would be great. I would like to be more frequent with posting and help would be appreciated! Also anyone that believes in what the site is offering and thinks they could help in anyway feel free to contact me.