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+--- Thread: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! (/showthread.php?tid=71)
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - BobVP - 11-13-2025
Hm.. I'm weirdly drawn to the semi-naive but coherent composition of the Larry box cover. It's also garish, but that's what makes it pop.
The Space Quest cover has way more attention to detail, but to me it feels a little cramped.
I guess there's a first for everything: I'm voting Larry.
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - gary - 11-14-2025
I think its the best LSL cover. Any past LSL votes have been "I hate the other cover more" but I like the cover for the first one. Its a play on the 80s corperate memphis aesthetics of its time, but doesn't go too heavy on the toon look. I mean a new corperate memphis has been in vogue lately, and people rightfully hate it - I don't think modern corperate memphis is inherently ugly, I just think people rightfully put their guards up and hypercritical visors on when they see cynical art made to sell shit. Modern corperate memphis also relies on vector graphics, flat design, and more abstract less specific human designs. LSL's design is proper retro by now, an look that's now been changed by digital art technology forever. I think its interesting.
SQIII has a very cool scifi cover. I think its a bit playful chucking a parody of Maccas in there - cute way to have the straightforward cover while also suggesting the game's comedy elements.
I don't need to give long answers. Voting LSL.
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - Guyra - 11-14-2025
The LSL box uses very basic center composition as the basis, but then they've placed the very visually calm illustration of Larry on the left, and they've tried to balance it with the very chaotic photo mashup of dollar bills, a yellow cab crashing through the box, and a wedding cake topper rocketing through the air. The problem is that while they balanced the space of it, what they balanced it with has a lot stronger colours, natural light and shadow, a lot more detail, and a ton more movement. The end result is that the complete picture is extremely unbalanced, being very heavy on the left side. This isn't a parody of anything, it's an incompetence and the result of the company trying to save money and/or time on not having to commission a complete art piece for the box. This is the kind of thing you get when the boss gets their "talented nephew" to do the job. Even my most lenient art teacher back in the day would've given this box at most a C, and mainly because the typography work is pretty damn good, and essentially the only thing that makes this box look decent.
The SQ box is pretty damn good, but it has one big issue: I'm willing to be that whoever decided the main title text should have a completely different vanishing point than everything else on the cover was not the artist, nor was it the box designer. It was someone above them telling the designer to "fix" what was a better design than the end result, because they wanted the main title to take up more space. Even the subtitle follows the correct vanishing point, just not the main title. Instead it feels like it blocks the rest of the movement happening, resulting in a rather jarring effect. But the typography itself is awesome, as is the art! Want to know why the big, bright red space station on the right of the cover doesn't make the entire pic feel like it's unbalanced and leaning to that side? Because the artist has put red light on the left side of the spaceships, masterfully balancing the strong red on the right with less obvious red on the left! And sure, it's "just a Star Wars parody", but first of all: That's a big part of Space Quest's identity, and this game came out in 1989 - just two years after Spaceballs, the epitome of SW parodies. It was very much in the zeitgeist.
TL;DR: Aside from the great typography design, the LSL "art" is one of the worst offenders in this thread thus far in my opinion, while the SQ box would've been one of the best boxes in this thread if not for the really weird choice of the main title text. My vote goes to the latter.
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - Legerdemancy - 11-14-2025
Guyra, That's officially the best commentary I have read thus far in this entire thread. Brilliant observations!
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - Guyra - 11-14-2025
(11-14-2025, 03:30 PM)Legerdemancy Wrote: Guyra, That's officially the best commentary I have read thus far in this entire thread. Brilliant observations!
Haha, thanks! That's quite the compliment, coming from you!
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - Beau - 11-14-2025
Love these deep analyses! I'll vote for SQIII begrudgingly. I'd give LSL1 credit for daring to use an actual still shot from the game, but since it's solely to provide an example of the titillation, I won't. Not that I'm saying it's a bad marketing decision. But design wise...
Does anyone know why on this cover of LSL1, it looks like Eve is a woman of color? Because in the game she is definitely not. And I've seen other versions of this cover where her skin tone codes white.
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - Melendwyr - 11-14-2025
Alas, my very favorite cover -- of the QfG1 VGA release -- doesn't appear in this tournament.
It's the one that's a stained glass window image of the Fighter facing a dragon (and losing).
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - chrissie - 11-14-2025
Space Quest III is my choice.
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - Beau - 11-14-2025
(11-14-2025, 09:46 PM)Melendwyr Wrote: Alas, my very favorite cover -- of the QfG1 VGA release -- doesn't appear in this tournament.
It's the one that's a stained glass window image of the Fighter facing a dragon (and losing).
Except it is, and it's already made it to the 2nd round
RE: The Sierra Box Art Grand Tournament – Vote for the Greatest Cover! - Melendwyr - 11-14-2025
I was mistaken. Thank you, kind sir or miss, for the correction!
Yeah, I vote for the QfG1 cover.