Fans of classic rock and fantasy art will no doubt be familiar with the name Roger Dean. The British artist is as synonymous with 1970âs prog rock (especially the band Yes) as epic guitar tracks, and his bold, unique art style means youâve probably seen and remembered his work, even if youâve never remembered his name.
He also, if thatâs not cool enough, drew some of the most badass video game covers Iâve ever seen. And then, just for good measure, came up with one of the strangest (yet most fascinating) ideas arcade gaming has ever seen.
Dean was born in England in 1944, and is a man of many talents: while a graduate of the Royal College of Art, heâs also received training in furniture design (with props featured in A Clockwork Orange) and architecture.
But itâs his fantasy and science fiction art that defines Dean, often focusing on alien landscapes with long, sweeping features and using bright colours that stand in stark contrast to the grim tones many other artists in the genres employ.
Having become somewhat famous with his work providing such pieces to bands for use as album covers in the 1960s and 1970s, Dean teamed up with British publisher Psygnosis in the mid-80s, and would be responsible for the iconic box art featured on games like Chrono Quest, Shadow of the Beast and, my personal favourite, 1987 fighting game Barbarian
You can see the covers for those games in the Psygnosis gallery I published last year
https://lastchance.cc/the-most-awesome-pc-box-art-in-the-world-5603933%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
When arcade gaming was first taking hold in the 1980s, the cabinets the games would be played on all looked the same: drab brown boxes. Itâs a big reason awesome art had to be used to help differentiate them!
https://lastchance.cc/the-beautiful-art-of-arcade-video-games-5802100%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
They came up with two designs, one a giant alien bug head, the other an enormous ârobot knightâ, which were sculpted to fit over the top of Taitoâs Space Invaders cabinets of the time. They were certainlyâŠunique, the bug coming off as maybe a little much while the robot knight, while looking much cooler, looked absolutely terrifying at the same time.
These two designs became known as the Taitans (owing to the publisher they were working with), and while it was hoped theyâd be manufactured en masse and used all over the world, by the time the Deans had finished work on them Taito had changed the design of their Space Invaders cabinet and they could never be used.
Today, a few units survive. Since youâll likely never see one in the flesh, take a look at the images in the gallery above instead, with all pictures courtesy of jamesg22âs great site
Total Recall is a look back at the history of video games through their characters, franchises, developers and trends.
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