VG Box Art Dejavus

[Ninja Spirit]

I'd like to put a new twist to this topic.

VG box art that rips off movie posters


Snake vs. Kyle Reese


Goonies 2 / Jewel of the Nile



Contra III JPN version / Raw Deal

[Keranu]

There is an AWESOME Japanese site that documents a crap load of these, but I don't know the address off hand! I think I might've posted it here before, but I'll try looking for it again because there are so, so many.

[Turbo D]

wow, those are cool. I never even knew, haha.

[esteban]

Holy crap, those are awesome.

I'd like to categorize them as "inspired by" instead of "rip offs" ...

[CrackTiger]

Bloody Wolf seems to also be inspired by Raw Deal-

[Alt-Nintega]

I'd like to put a new twist to this topic.
VG box art that rips off movie posters

Snake vs. Kyle Reese

Contra III JPN version / Raw Deal

Wow 

Where did you find these comparisons?

[Joe Redifer]

There is an animated GIF somewhere that shows the Contra box transforming back and forth between Alien, some Arnold movie and a Rambo movie.  It's awesome!


facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10203158126143387

[Alt-Nintega]

Bloody Wolf seems to also be inspired by Raw Deal-

Too me it looks a bit like the poster of the Dolph Lundgren movie Red Scorpion with the choppers in the desert background.

[Ninja Spirit]

Ehh yeah but what I speak of, is when two different pictures have the same identical pose.


NAM-1975/Full Metal Jacket

[Joe Redifer]

I can't find the animated GIF I spoke of earlier, so here is a limited JPG of what I was talking about (Alien not shown):


I wonder why they did this so often?  Did they lack creativity?  Was it a form of subliminal advertising?


facebook.com/photo/?fbid=10203158126143387

[termis]

Hah, interesting stuff for sure.  And the ratio of Arnold movies that got turned into game art covers seem quite high.

[CrackTiger]

It looks like the artist Konami hired to do early NES covers loved to 'rip off' famous films.

Its not unusual to draw poses based on other images, but it is surprising just how much some of these artists tried to almost completely recreate some of these famous scenes.

There's an 'artist' doing covers for games like Call of Duty(?)and such right now who basically airbrushes over photos of celebrities like Russel Crowe an Pierce Brosnan very shamelessly.

[SignOfZeta]

Just about any artist that does art like this (box art, fantasy book covers, etc) and is going for a realistic anatomically correct look is going to use a reference of some sort. Now, the more professional ones like Michael Whelan, Boris Vallejo, Rowena Morrill, etc etc will hire their own models, and either paint using the models as a reference, or shoot photos of the models, and use those photos as a reference. Its extremely rare to paint hyper real stuff from memory.

Now, in high school art class since nobody can afford any of that pro stuff, the class just usually goes to the library and finds photos in magazines and books to crib from. Obviously with these game box artists here that method never went out of fashion, or it could be just that it was the only financially viable way of doing this.

It certainly doesn't have anything to do with lacking creativity.

BTW, there is no way that Bloody Wolf cover used the Arnold pic as a reference. Other than the fact that its a strong dude in a tank top holding a weapon, there is no relation. It was probably stolen from one of the posters of one of the thousands of other shitty macho 80s action flics

[TR0N]

I can't find the animated GIF I spoke of earlier, so here is a limited JPG of what I was talking about (Alien not shown).



I wonder why they did this so often?  Did they lack creativity?  Was it a form of subliminal advertising?

I was about to compare, that even the ending for the japanese version of contra is like the ending to the predator.

[Buyatari]

Outlaw Jose Wales



Outlaw Atari 2600

[Ninja Spirit]

Spotted another one...
"Dark Adventure" Japanese arcade flyer/Return of the Jedi theatrical poster

[Tatsujin]

wow..lol.. nice

[Ninja Spirit]

/PP31426-EU~Rambo-First-Blood-Part-II-Posters.jpg

[Keranu]

Check out this site my little bro found the other day, it lists a bunch of video game look alikes. http://thor.mirtna.org/oddities/lookalikes/a-m.html

I love how there is a David Bowie page exclusive.

[guyjin]

Check out this site my little bro found the other day, it lists a bunch of video game look alikes. http://thor.mirtna.org/oddities/lookalikes/a-m.html

I love how there is a David Bowie page exclusive.

Give your little bro a cookie, this site is AWEOME! 

[Keranu]

I really wish I could find this one Japanese site I found a couple years ago. It listed hundreds of these kind of similarities, it was incredible.

[Keranu]

Oh and here's another similar site I found a couple weeks back that deals specifically with Capcom rip offs. http://fightingstreet.com/folders/variousinfofolder/ripofffolder/ripoffpage1.html

[Sparky]

this is a great thread!!!... so many good comparisons !!!  i am not worthy <<bows down>>

[Tatsujin]

Ninja already posted it at the beginning, but it seems to be a dead link now:



out of those i made this:

/snakereeseff2.jpg

[TR0N]

Ninja already posted it at the beginning, but it seems to be a dead link now:



out of those i made this:

/snakereeseff2.jpg

Dead on with that even when gametrailers had the metalgear retrospective it,was stated as so.

[NightWolve]

Bloody Wolf was more "inspired" (AKA ripped-off) from Arnold's 1985 Commando. I honestly didn't make this exact connection all this time, I figured general 80's action muscle-bound movie star influence, sure, but that they literally stole the EXACT pose/copycat from a movie poster/promo I really didn't expect!



I made this one for fun, sized-up side by side after reviewing these threads some more and patching a few lost images. I'm not sure there was a fuller poster of Arnold where his arm isn't clipped off or I would've used that instead.

A more extensive collection happened in another thread by @Tatsujin:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=8501.0

And HG101 has the most here:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing.htm

[cho_aniki]

That's interesting, I had never made the connection between Bloody Wolf and Commando before.

But it makes sense that the people at Data East would have loved a movie such as Commando.

[NightWolve]

Bloody Wolf was more "inspired" (AKA ripped-off) from Arnold's 1985 Commando. I honestly didn't make this exact connection all this time, I figured general 80's action muscle-bound movie star influence, sure, but that they literally stole the EXACT pose/copycat from a movie poster/promo I really didn't expect!



I made this one for fun, sized-up side by side after reviewing these threads some more and patching a few lost images. I'm not sure there was a fuller poster of Arnold where his arm isn't clipped off or I would've used that instead.

A more extensive collection happened in another thread by @Tatsujin:
https://www.pcengine-fx.com/forums/index.php?topic=8501.0

And HG101 has the most here:
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing.htm

Before I forget, I asked a very talented Bloody Wolf fan to make this for me to illustrate the point because he made some similar animated Bloody Wolf covers in the past. This was supposed to be included in the original post, I waited until I could try/learn to do the animation better, but I guess I didn't find the time/motivation to try, so might as well share his original before it's lost/forgotten. I compressed it to the modern/superior .avif format which is a high-color GIF alternative to animate images (a GIF would be 1.7MB while this is only 62KB!):



Thanks again to castle_zotz.

Loading: twitter.com/castle_zotz/status/1772722941995749842

When there was confusion about the source of Arnold's pose being either from Predator or Commando, he made this too (but it's Commando, so this mockup is inaccurate):



Henceforth let it be known as "Bloody Predator".