Video Game Collecting

I mentioned earlier that PedroGames.Com delivers and he sure does. He is certainly my favorite ebay seller. One of the games I got recently was Renegade. This isn’t a rare game by any stretch of the imagination but it would have become an necessary purchase eventually if my ultimate goal is to collect every licensed Nintendo game.

This game translated sorta well from the arcade version. About as well as Double Dragon translated to the NES. But I have this facinating obsession with videogame box art and Renegade for Nintendo is an interesting gem. In the actual game you look like a greaser taking on other greasers- sorta like a a deleted scene from the movie Grease. But this box art depicts a calamity that the game just doesn’t deliver.

For starters it says something like “the subway is no place to be at 2:00am”, well duh, why state the obvious? And I’m assuming the punk in white is supposed to be you, the hero. This guy is clearly a loser. At least the other thugs have weapons. They could have at least have penciled in a knife or a gun! What kind of badass picks fights in a subway at 2am but carries no weapon?

Also the title makes no sense. Isn’t a renegade like a rebel? Someone who fights “the establishment”? Is he rebelling against a street gang? Or is he rebelling against society by disturbing the peace?

One last thing that disturbs me is that huge drop off to where the subway tracks are. Someone should post a “watch your step” sign… or something.

There was an old TV show called Renegade with Lorenzo Llamas (which someone compares Billy Mitchell to in the documentary Chasing Ghosts) but this clown on the cover is certainly no Lorenzo.

I know I know… you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover, but in the case of Renegade for Nintendo, it’s too damn fun!

If you could pinpoint the most significant contribution the Nintendo Entertainment System had done for the video game industry it was clearly the influence of color and style in the characters you played. Especially if it was a two player game. For instance….

POW: Prisoners of War. Two players. Two Bandanas. One wears Red, the other wears Blue…

The Ikari Warriors. Two players. Two Bandanas. One wears Red, the other wears Blue…

Guerrilla War. Two players. No Bandanas. One wears Red, the other wears Blue…

POW: Prisoners of War. Two players (VS Mode). Two Bandanas (on the box art only). One wears Red, the other wears Blue…

Contra. Two Bandanas. One wears Red, the other wears Blue…

And on a completely unrelated topic, I knew the boxart to Contra (and well, part of the story of the game) was loosely based on Predator, but in looking at the game and the poster the only difference is the face. However the face on the dude on the Contra box looks more fitting for a Kool, New Port, or some other fruity cigarette brand’s ad as featured in Better Homes and Gardens.

I’ve been reading “Racing the Beam” which discusses in intimate detail what it took to design games for the Atari 2600. It’s moderately technical and probably would lose many readers due to it’s jargon.

However there are a couple sections that I found to be particularly interesting that dealt more with marketing than programming. The book repeats the well known story that some of Atari’s finest programmers left Atari and created Activision after they felt they were not receiving the recognition publicly and financially that they felt they deserved. The book provides an example of two games: Indy 500created by Atari and Grand Prix created by Activision. A photo shows the box art and screen shot for both games. The caption points out to the reader that Indy 500′s box art features an “intricate, realistic painting of the game’s subject” where as the game is more abstract than what the art alludes to.

The Activision box art (and not-coincidentally most of Activisions boxart for the Atari 2600) closely resembles what the actual Grand Prix game looks like.

I’ve always been a fan of box art and I believe that the art on many of the Atari 2600 boxes are some of the finest ever created. Although true, some people may have been convinced in buying a sub-par game because the art alluded to an experience that just wasn’t going to happen, it brings back to full circle my belief that less is often more in a video game. And although Indy 500 doesn’t feature the in-game thrills that the art implies, to a child of the ’80 with an endless imagination the game did feature what the art implied plus more, but not simply represented on the screen.

Now that I’ve been made aware of this interesting concept of Activision representing their box art as a close resemblance to actual game play it got me to thinking about the black label Nintendo games that got me interested in collecting Nintendo games in the first place. There is little dispute that Nintendo was very careful in releasing the NES in the United States alleging to go so far as to sanction games with their Seal of Quality. Almost all of the initially released games for the NES feature a pixelated representation from the game on the label and box art. Typically it was almost an exact representation and in some cases there were a few exaggerations but all in all there was little question as to what the game looked like. This quiet possibly was genius marketing from Nintendo.

Popeye Box Art

Close up of screen shot

Actual NES screen shot