Game On 05/90

Cover
Scantily-clad feminine robots were quite the thing during the eighties, popularized by the Japanese artist Hajime Sorayama's detailed illustrations of gynoids. 1989 saw the release of Blue Angel 69 (geddit?), a puzzle game that contained loads of chrome erotica clearly inspired by Sorayama's work. The game's C64 version was created by members of X-Ample Architectures who also worked on several titles released on CP Verlag's diskmags. It's no wonder then, that the subject matter also made it onto one of their diskmag covers.

The connection is tenuous at best, but the artwork is related to one of this issue's games: In Alien you play a female engineer who has to fight a worm infestation on an alien planet. However, in the game she's not a robot and she's not dressed as if she just got out of bed. I guess some false advertising was taken into account to sell some more copies based on the cover alone.

The artist did a good job reproducing the chrome style, though, and avoided any serious anatomical blunders, compared to previous efforts. Her left arm looks a bit longer than her right. But it's not an actual human anyway, thus unusual proportions could be on purpose.

The background is a bit of a hellscape and seems to be on fire permanently. The environment in Alien is more like a futuristic city and less like a sky texture from Doom. This is probably again a case where the artist only got a rough description of the game and just did their own thing.

Magic Disk 64 04/90

Cover
When I saw this issue at the newsstand, the cover art immediately reminded me of the docking bay from Star Wars: A New Hope. I suppose that was the artist's inspiration, even though it is not an exact copy from the movie.

Compared to last month's facial disaster, this picture is actually pretty good. For one, the perspective is quite accurate with a common vanishing point, and the only people depicted are either very far away or have their face obscured by a helmet. If I want to get extra nitpicky (and that's what I usually do here), I can point out one thing: Assuming the ship in the front is the same model as the ones seen further back, then the pilot in the cockpit must be a giant compared to the people you can see standing around the other ships.

In any case, the cover evidently fulfilled its purpose, as I found it quite captivating. It's a pity, though, that it somewhat oversells what is on the disk. None of the games feature any space stations or ships. One game has a starfield and some moons/planets in the background, but that's about all the similarities I can find.

Game On 04/90

Cover
Looking at this artwork, I just realized that it took me four issues of Game On to finally get to a cover involving a space battle. One would expect the subject matter to be much more prevalent, considering how often C64 games have you shoot lasers at flying enemies in outer space.

It's all the more curious, then, that none of the games in this issue feature any spaceships or anything science-fiction related. Up until now, the cover art always referenced one of the games on the disk. It's possible that the list of games changed at one point or that the artist didn't get enough time to create a fitting cover. In the end, it doesn't really matter, does it?

What matters, however, is me trying to come to terms with this scene's proportions: Either all the ships involved in this epic struggle are exceptionally huge or that planet is extremely tiny. Furthermore, the green moon looks to be so close to the blue planet, it might as well be attached to it. But, to be honest, I always liked this cover, and I still do. I find its colors quite pleasing, as well as the flashy lasers and the non-black space background.

Golden Disk 64 11/90

Cover
For the second time, Golden Disk 64 sports a medieval siege scene on its cover. Compared to issue 08/90, this one is a bit more grounded in reality. For one, it doesn't feature any trolls. Instead, there is a collection of actual siege weapons, like catapults and a mobile tower. Also, this castle's drawbridge is up which should help tremendously to keep enemies out.

The two knights in the foreground are in similar positions as the two knights seen in the 08/90 cover, and the one on the left is even wearing the same helmet, just without the historically inaccurate horns. The way he's waving his axe and shield at nothing makes me imagine that he's running down the hill and shouting something akin to "RRAAARGH!".

I'm not very impressed with the people defending the castle from within, though. Just look at the chaos of spears that poke out of the battlements at random angles. It's as if nobody in there knows how to hold their weapons. On the other hand, the occupants' siege tower is on fire, so the defenders must've done something right. Either that or the attackers severely misjudged the aim of one of their own catapults.

Once again, the cover suffers from perspective issues. However, many medieval illustrations display similar problems with architecture, so let's just say that the artist was trying to emulate that particular style.

The artwork obviously refers to the text/graphics adventure The Yawn, which is the only game on the disk that takes place in a medieval setting. There is no siege going on in The Yawn though, and the game is way goofier than this depiction of castle warfare might suggest.

Magic Disk 64 03/90

Cover
Any self-respecting treasure hunter knows about the Golden Key and the curse that is connected to it: Legend has it that any man who lays eyes on the mystical door opener will have his countenance changed to that of Indiana Jones. However, that does not mean he'll become a Harrison Ford look-alike, no. Instead, he will morph into the unpleasant proportions of an off-brand Chinese-manufactured Indy action figure. His face will forever be marred by lopsided, sloppily painted-on eyes, a nose that looks unfit for breathing, and a mouth completely devoid of an upper lip. He will eternally wield an oversized knife and a whip, without knowing why, and he will be damned to replicate famous poses from the movie posters.

On the plus side, he'll make it onto the cover of Magic Disk 64 03/90.

Not everybody can have an Oli Frey to do the artwork for their magazine, but deary me, this is quite the car crash. I like to imagine that the first draft of the cover was such a perfect rendition of Harrison Ford's features that somebody at CP Verlag strongly suggested changing the face in order to avoid a potential lawsuit. At that point, the original artist was unavailable, so the alterations were hastily done by a hapless staff member who barely knew how to hold a pencil. That's not what happened, but I like to speculate.

Aside from the dodgy art, the subject matter is also a bit strange, especially if you're familiar with Keyfinders, the game this picture is trying to represent. There is no golden key in the game. The protagonist does not use a whip or a knife. He is wearing a hat in the game, true, but it is purple, and so is the rest of his outfit. Ok, the color discrepancy can probably be forgiven. I wouldn't expect the cover to depict a guy dressed completely in purple unless it is a Prince album. On the other hand, that'd probably make for an epic image, if done right.

The rest of the picture is actually fairly decent, and I remember, as a kid, I found the combination of warm and cool colors on the pillars quite striking. It sort of reminds me that orange/blue would become a very popular color scheme for game box art (and movie posters) decades later, at least for a while.

I know it's hard to take one's eyes off the disastrous cover image, but it should not go unnoticed that the magazine's logo, the disk image, and the spiky price tag underwent some alterations. They now look a bit more stylish and less like they were drawn on an Amiga.

Game On 03/90

Cover
In the distant future, dinosaurs will roam the Earth again, and mankind will celebrate their return by using them as race animals. Because that's just how we roll.

It's not hard to guess that this cover relates to the game called Dinorace 64, even though it isn't a very accurate depiction. The artist was probably told that Dinorace 64 is a game about racing dinosaurs, but nobody clarified that the prehistoric lizards compete in an individual time trial and run without riders. Inadvertently, this resulted in a cover where the subject matter was presented in a cooler way than how it actually looked in the game.

As with previous covers, the perspective doesn't quite work. The lizard in the back was probably intended to seem further away from the camera. Instead, it just looks like a smaller dinosaur with an equally smaller jockey is overtaking the larger one. Also, the front dinosaur's right leg kind of freaks me out, as its upper thigh seems to go right up to the lizard's arms without any torso in between. Try to imagine how the dinosaur would look like half a second later when the position of its legs would be reversed.

I like how the race is shown to take place on a circular race track in a huge, well-attended stadium. There are even some birds in the background, which I assume are doves the organizers released during the opening ceremony. Let's hope there isn't a huge open fire nearby where half of them get roasted to a crisp, like what happened at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul.

Last but not least, I have to commend the artist for their decision to have the dinosaurs run from right to left, which isn't something you see very often in western illustrations.

Magic Disk 64 02/90

Cover
Up until now, each cover I've looked at illustrated one of the games found on that issue's disk. Not in this case, though, as what we have here is an exciting glimpse into the future. At least, it was at the time when this issue came out.

As far as I can tell, this cover is a loose interpretation of Anti, a game that would appear one month later on Game On 03/90: In Anti you are indeed flying around in a (VTOL) jet. However, you are not attacking a military base, but instead defending a nuclear power plant from incoming missiles.

Perhaps there were plans to publish Anti on this issue, but then the game had to be postponed for one reason or another. Admittedly, this is pure speculation on my part. Maybe they were just in dire need to put something exciting on the cover because the games listed on it were pretty much the antithesis of excitement.

The artwork is of the magazine's usual quality. It has some nice color gradients, but everything looks a bit lopsided, thanks to various perspective errors. The jet's exhausts, for example, are so deformed, they seem to be melting from the sheer heat that's coming out of them. The jet also appears to be shooting a laser beam at an awkward angle that caused some structure in the background to catch fire. It could also be a very distinct heat trail of a missile that already hit its mark.

Starting with this issue, the cover lines do not have solid colored backgrounds anymore, which makes some of them a bit hard to read, but allows for the picture to be more visible.

Golden Disk 64 09/90

Cover
Do you like adventure movies? Do you like Indiana Jones? If so, we've got him, or at least some other guy dressed up very much like him, right here on the cover! He's just found the treasures hidden within the walls of some ancient king's tomb, and, judging by his dumbfounded stare, he's also discovered that he is being filmed.

Of the three games on this issue's disk, the cover is clearly referencing Gordian Tomb, even though the burial chamber depicted here looks decidedly Egyptian. There is also a mummy emerging from its sarcophagus, but the game does not feature any bandaged tomb-dwellers. Furthermore, if you're hoping to play a whip swinging and gun-toting archaeologist, you'll inevitably be disappointed to find that Gordian Tomb's protagonist is a slight, unarmed guy wearing a sombrero.

I could be generous and call the apparent lack of common vanishing points in this picture an intentional depiction of non-Euclidean geometry to make the tomb feel unsettling and wrong. Alternatively, I could just assume the more probable case, namely that the artist either didn't much care for or wasn't very good at drawing stuff in proper perspective.

As it is usually the case, the cover image is not meant to be an accurate representation of the title it's referencing, as it was probably created long before there even was a playable version of the game.

Compared to the previous issue, the Golden Disk logo underwent a slight facelift: It's still shiny, but it now has horizontal metal gradients in the style of those chrome text effects prevalent in the 80s. The label of the disk was changed from the English NEW to the German NEU, which I find kind of amusing. I imagine someone working at CP Verlag complained about there being too many English words on the cover.

Despite its somewhat amateurish look, I remember liking this cover image when I saw the magazine at the local kiosk. The promise of a treasure hunt inside a tomb was tantalizing enough that I forked over the 20 bucks, which was a hefty sum for a twelve-year-old. In the top right corner, you can see a scan of that very issue with literally decades of smudges and scratches all over it. Click on it for a larger and potentially more disgusting view.

Game On 02/90

Cover
In a post-apocalyptic world, Manbat will rule over the ashes of civilization. He probably won't be able to enjoy his reign for long, unless he's developed a special diet consisting of rubble, molten steel, and fire.
Despite his savage looks, he was decent enough to put on a loincloth. It looks like it's made up of leaves, though, which aren't that well-known for being fire resistant.

The image is obviously trying to depict the fourth game mentioned on the cover, which is simply named Bat. The thing is, Bat is nothing else but a Pong clone, and a particularly boring one at that. It is so crazily misrepresented that I get the impression the artist didn't know anything about the game except for the name. Either that, or it's just really hard to paint an interesting picture for a game that consists of nothing else than a ball and two paddles.

Magic Disk 64 01/90

Cover
Meet Maze-Man, the C64's official* nineties mascot! He's the fastest dot gobbler around the electronic circuits! He's dexterous, he's clever, he's a pointy-eared troll with a toothy smile that puts your average ice hockey player to shame!

* by which I mean not official at all

Once again, the creator of the cover took some extensive artistic license. Neither the player sprite nor the maze looks anything like what is depicted here. I'm not complaining, though, because replicating the game's actual look would've resulted in something resembling a color vision test with an off-brand Pac-Man in the middle.

All in all, this cover image is not too bad. There are quite a few things wrong with Maze-Man's upper body proportions. I mean, try imagining him without the shirt. Actually, don't. I'm sorry I even suggested that.

I like how his spiky hair and ears line up with the mountain backdrop. Whether this alignment is on purpose or not, to me it conveys that he is a part of this world. While faces aren't the artist's strength (as you'll eventually see when I get to issue 03/90), this one's done well enough to bring the guy's opinion of the maze behind him across.

Golden Disk 64 08/90

Cover
This was the first Golden Disk 64 issue I ever bought. It was NEW, because it said so on the cover. As you can see, it was about double the price of Magic Disk 64, with the reasoning that Golden Disk games were of a higher quality. This wasn't always the case, but the content of issue 08/90 isn't too shabby.

The cover illustrates the game Krieg um die Krone. It shows a scene where humans are battling a horde of trolls. Well, horde is maybe not the right term when there are only three of them visible. I assume there are more trolls coming from the left side. Otherwise, they'll soon be completely outnumbered once that army of knights in the background joins the battle.

I don't quite understand why the castle's moat and interior seem to be violently ablaze, even though the trolls haven't reached the drawbridge yet. Maybe setting one's own castle on fire is a valid medieval defense strategy I'm simply not familiar with.

On second thought, I just remembered the reason for random stuff burning. Once you play the game, you'll get a good idea why it's not improbable for a castle in Krieg um die Krone to be aflame. The scorched trees to the left might already clue you in.

Even the odd circumstance that two castles were built almost next to each other on precariously craggy terrain is just in keeping with the game's world.

Game On 01/90

Cover
Game On's logo is quite a stylish affair which makes Magic Disk 64's computer-generated version from the same time period look somewhat dull in comparison.

I think from a distance the cover art looks fine. The colors are quite striking, and the elements are easily recognizable. But as soon as you take a closer look, the picture falls apart.

Obviously, those are two ninjas locked in a sword fight, because ninjas are cool, right? The image also suggests that one of the games on this disk is a fighting game, which is very much true for Wastelands.

But what is the ninja dude in white doing with his left hand? Did he want to grab his sword with both hands, but then had a change of mind in mid-motion? What's more, the back of his right hand is rubbing against black ninja's blade. That can't be healthy for long.

The more I look at this scene, the more I get the feeling that this depicts a photo shoot with two unwilling subjects dressed up as warriors. Both of them are looking at something or someone off-screen, giving the impression that they'd rather be somewhere else. The weird angles of the shadows on the ground only support my theory that this illustrates a photo shoot at a studio.

As for the white ninja's left hand, I think I have a good idea what happened there: The artist wanted the ninja to hold the sword in both hands, but then realized that the pose made it impossible for the left arm to reach the hilt without looking unnaturally long. At that point, it was probably too late to start over and change the pose, so the artist drew the ninja's left hand as if it were awkwardly touching the right arm's sleeve.

Not that I noticed any of this when I bought the magazine as a kid. I thought it looked simply awesome.

Magic Disk 64 12/89

Cover
Magic Disk 64 was two years old when this issue came out, and it still used the same metallic logo from the very first installment. Unlike the airbrushed cover image, the logo was created with a graphics program. The resolution wasn't quite high enough for print, though, and there are visible dark fringe pixels where the letters meet the blue backdrop. Back then I thought it was kind of cool that the logo was made with a computer.

This issue sports one of Magic Disk 64's better cover images. The artist likely took some inspiration from the sci-fi movie TRON (1982), in particular the "solar sailer" sequence.

Most of the time, each issue's cover art was meant to illustrate one of the games on the disk. In this case, Electra was chosen, as it features a spaceship that flies over futuristic platforms. The actual game looks totally different, but at the time it was pretty common for the cover art of any game to be an artist's loose interpretation and not an accurate representation.

I remember being fascinated with the cover picture's cool colors and the mysterious futuristic world it conveyed. It was probably the main reason why I bought this issue. The overall perspective might be rather dodgy, but I still like this one.