Cover artists

[Rorthron]

Miami Cobra GT - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature
Per instructions:

Programmed By: Nigel Speight
Cover Illustration: Peter Austin

Note SC/ZXDB has a credit to Peter Frith not mentioned in the instructions.

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[Rorthron]

Power Play - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature

Other credits:

Music by HOUSE MASTER MIKE BROWN
Performed by AY
Engineered by ANDY SEVERN
Art Direction & Graphic Design by JABBA
Original Concept and Production SIMON 'FAX' DANIELS
Music by HOUSE MASTER MIKE BROWN
Performed by AY
Engineered by ANDY SEVERN
Art Direction & Graphic Design by JABBA
Original Concept and Production SIMON 'FAX' DANIELS
PRODUCED FOR PLAYERS SOFTWARE
BY RICHARD PAUL JONES

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[Juan F. Ramirez]

Wow! Great work, [mention]Audionautas[/mention] & [mention]Rorthron[/mention] !

[Rorthron]

Shanghai Warriors - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature

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[Rorthron]

Street Gang - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature

Other credits per instructions:.

Concept and original design: THE SOFTGOLD TEAM
Spectrum coding: KEVIN PARKER
Graphics: COLIN 'JB2' SWINBOURNE
Production, textuals and shots: SIMON 'BHR' DANIELS
PRODUCED FOR PLAYERS SOFWARE BY
RICHARD PAUL JONES

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[Rorthron]

Sword Slayer - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature

Other credits in instructions:

CODE: KEVIN PARKER
GRAPHICS: JABBA SEVERN
MUSIC: MIKE BROWN
SOUND: ANDY & SONJA
PRODUCED BY RICHARD PAUL JONES
©1988 PLAYERS

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[Rorthron]

Tanium - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature

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[Rorthron]

Thing! - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature

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[Rorthron]

Turbo Kart Racer

Per instructions:

Cover Illustration: Allsport Picture Library
Titling: Peter Austin

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[Rorthron]

Xanthius - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature

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[Rorthron]

Assault Course - Jon Clark
Per Jon C signature

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[Rorthron]

Moving Target - Peter Austin
Per PJA signature

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[Rorthron]

Outlaw
Partial (?) signature reads "GRAB"

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[Rorthron]

Prison Riot - Jon Clark
Per partial Jon C signature

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[druellan]

good work!

[Juan F. Ramirez]

I see lockdown sits well to Rorthron!

[Audionautas]

Hi all!

More cover artists uncovered. Today reviewing Level 9.

LEVEL 9

* SNOWBALL (1983). On the ZXDB we have Godfrey Dowson credited as the artist. However this refers to a re-release of the game in a proper box, not to the amateurish first release of the game. According to the instructions manual on the DB the original artwork is by Tim Noyce and Peter Sherwood. I think this information should be added.

* RETURN TO EDEN (1984). According to this blog, the cover artist is Godfrey Dowson. Link: http://ifguide.if-legends.org/essays/Level-9.html

The same text is also referred on the Return To Eden Wikipedia entry for Silicon Dreams trilogy. Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silicon_Dreams

The game's first cover depicted a robot fighting a monster plant in Enoch. The robot resembled a comic book character, so to avoid legal troubles, Level 9 commissioned Godfrey Dowson to do a new cover. Dowson's illustration depicted another robot in the jungle looking towards Enoch. Level 9 was not satisfied with the result and asked Dowson to do it again. They liked the third cover so much, they hired Dowson to do artwork for the re-release of their old games as well as for their future titles.

* EMERALD ISLE (1985). Cover artwork: Godfrey Dowson. His signature is clearly visible on the cover as G. Dowson and he is credited on the instructions manual.

* THE WORM IN PARADISE (1985). Cover design: Margaret Austin. Cover picture: Godfrey Dowson. According to the manual.

* GNOME RANGER (1987). Original graphics: Godfrey Dowson. Taken from the instructions at Gamesdatabase (although it is an Amstrad CPC url, it is a multisystem manual). Link: https://www.gamesdatabase.org/Media/SYS ... puting.pdf).

* KNIGHT ORC (1987). Although Atari Legend website credits Steve Weston as the cover artist (Link: https://www.atarilegend.com/games/games ... me_id=3408), according to the instructions manual the game credits on the art department are as follow:

Original Paintings: Godfrey Dowson
Additional artwork: Neil Strudwick and Stuart Lee
Poster: Paul Human

* INGRID'S BACK (1988). Cover picture. Godfrey Dowson. Ingrid design: Pete Austin, Peter McBride, Godfrey Dowson as it is credited on the instructions manual.

* TIME AND MAGIK (1988).Pictures: Godfrey Dowson, Neil Strudwick as it is credited on the instructions manual.

* SCAPEGHOST (1989). Cover picture: Godfrey Dowson as it is credited on the instructions manual.

Thank you! and stay safe!

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[druellan]

CCS

* DESERT RATS (1985). Illustrator. John Berry (1925-2009). Painting: 25 Pounder Gun and Team in Action on the El Alamein Front (1942). Reproduced by permission of the Impresial War Museum. Link: https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks ... front-7105

* GALLIPOLI (1986). Illustrator. Norman Wilkinson (1878-1971). Painting: The Base Camp under Shell Fire. August 1915: The SS 'River Clyde' Aground. Reproduced by permission of The Trustees of the Imperial War Museum. Link: https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the ... round-6450

The use of historic paintings on the inlays is certainty an interesting challenge. We were discussing this situation recently with Einar. We called it "The Mona Lisa dilemma", we picture the situation on where a game has The Mona Lisa as the cover art, and a graphic designer composed the inlay. We credit Leonardo da Vinci? The designer? Both?

So, for now I'm crediting everyone, and adding a note about the name of the original painting.

* YANKEE (1987). Illustrator. Oliver Frey. His well-known signature is not included on the canvas, but I was sure it was his, so I asked Mr. Frey himself by email and this was his answer.

"Your bet is correct, this is one of mine – though I had all but forgotten it, probably one of the last I did for CCS."

Thanks for taking the time and contact the author!

[Rorthron]

The use of historic paintings on the inlays is certainty an interesting challenge. We were discussing this situation recently with Einar. We called it "The Mona Lisa dilemma", we picture the situation on where a game has The Mona Lisa as the cover art, and a graphic designer composed the inlay. We credit Leonardo da Vinci? The designer? Both?

So, for now I'm crediting everyone, and adding a note about the name of the original painting.

Personally I can't see any defensible reason for treating what you call "historic" paintings differently from others. Why does the age of a picture matter? Are pictures from the 1980s not "historic", anyway? Or are you considering how famous the artist is, and if so, how do you determine how famous an artist needs to be to get special treatment? And what benefit is there from going through this whole process? This seems to me to be introducing complications that aren't really there. If the art is by Leonardo da Vinci, then it's by Leonardo da Vinci.

The issue of graphic designers is a separate one. The main difficulty is that we rarely know who the designer is. Of course, that does not stop SC/ZXDB including the information, and there are plenty of other cases where its information is partial. But even if we include the information, I doubt it has much impact.

So it probably makes sense to credit both, but the graphic designer should have a different role from the artist. To describe them both as artists seems wrong to me. They are very different creative roles. Including graphic designers with artists obfuscates the artist information.

[Audionautas]

The use of historic paintings on the inlays is certainty an interesting challenge. We were discussing this situation recently with Einar. We called it "The Mona Lisa dilemma", we picture the situation on where a game has The Mona Lisa as the cover art, and a graphic designer composed the inlay. We credit Leonardo da Vinci? The designer? Both?

So, for now I'm crediting everyone, and adding a note about the name of the original painting.

Personally I can't see any defensible reason for treating what you call "historic" paintings differently from others. Why does the age of a picture matter? Are pictures from the 1980s not "historic", anyway? Or are you considering how famous the artist is, and if so, how do you determine how famous an artist needs to be to get special treatment? And what benefit is there from going through this whole process? This seems to me to be introducing complications that aren't really there. If the art is by Leonardo da Vinci, then it's by Leonardo da Vinci.

The issue of graphic designers is a separate one. The main difficulty is that we rarely know who the designer is. Of course, that does not stop SC/ZXDB including the information, and there are plenty of other cases where its information is partial. But even if we include the information, I doubt it has much impact.

So it probably makes sense to credit both, but the graphic designer should have a different role from the artist. To describe them both as artists seems wrong to me. They are very different creative roles. Including graphic designers with artists obfuscates the artist information.

I agree with you [mention]Rorthron[/mention] and [mention]druellan[/mention] that more information the better. In my opinion if we even have only the name of an advertising agency we should include it on the ZXDB, that's better than nothing and a starting point to research for others or ourselves in the future. The perfect scenario on the ZXDB would be to have to every contributor to the game credited as it deserves; programmer, graphic artist, musician, cover artist, cover designer and so on. That would be great, but for the moment I think we should include the most accurate information possible and even go beyond if we can.

Let explain myself. I have the intention to make a post later today about some things missing on Hewson titles on the ZXDB. One of the games I want to talk about is Pyracurse. On the ZXDB are only credited the two Hewson in-house coders at the time; Keith Prosser and Mark Goodall. At the moment I don't know who the cover artist was for that game (I'll find out), but I know that Dominic Robinson took part on that game but remained uncredited. When he talked on Retro Gamer's magazine issue 77, page 55 for the From The Archives section covering Hewson story he said exactly:

"In the end I was hired on the strength of the Spectrum code I had showed them. I ended up doing a wide range of jobs -code, graphics and level design- for Pyracurse before I eventually moved on to write Uridium".

My point is that we must include as much information as possible about any game, even if we have been aware of that detail or that little data 35 years later thanks to a Retro Gamer feature or we know the title of such painting or illustration. In Pyracurse's case, it was Hewson's first original game developed by its in-house team and had a really long development process (more than a year, in part because Goodall and Prosser weren't really games coders, they were more application developers). I think that Dominic's help in finishing the development of the game was absolutely crucial and at the moment we haven't that information on the ZXDB and obviously is not included on Dominic's softography (we did include it on El Mundo del Spectrum Plus book, which I contributed to: http://www.elmundodelspectrum.com/libro/). But well, I'll post about Pyracurse and other Hewson games later today in another thread.

Thank you! and stay safe!

[Rorthron]

The Byte Back rerelease of ATF is signed OZ91 (I think). Does anyone recognise the signature?

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[Rorthron]

Tintin on the Moon - Georges Prosper Remi ("Hergé")
Per signature

Other credits in the instructions contradict the information in SC/ZXDB:

Graphics: Didier CHANFRAY
Program: Daniel CHARPY, Philippe NOTTOLI
Music: Charles CALLET
Marketing: Veronique GENOT

I think the authors need to be changed in SC/ZXDB. (Note SPOT/SPEX also contradicts SC/ZXDB and agrees with the instructions.)

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[Rorthron]

Monty on the Run is signed DB.

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[Rorthron]

Sam Stoat Safebreaker also has the same DB signature.

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[Ersh]

Other credits in the instructions contradict the information in SC/ZXDB:

Graphics: Didier CHANFRAY
Program: Daniel CHARPY, Philippe NOTTOLI
Music: Charles CALLET
Marketing: Veronique GENOT

I think the authors need to be changed in SC/ZXDB. (Note SPOT/SPEX also contradicts SC/ZXDB and agrees with the instructions.)

David Perry and Nick Bruty handled the Spectrum port of Tintin, the credits in the instructions are most likely from the original Amiga game.