A future without game boxes means no more weird, wonderful and terrible box art. Let’s celebrate our favourites while we still can…

It’ll happen sooner or later - boxed games will be phased out and you’ll be downloading everything.

In some ways it’s good. After all, there’ll be more room in our homes and we wouldn’t have to hide anything embarrassing away.

On the other hand, a good bit of gaming box art is timeless. We’ll miss the days of perusing through game shops, trying to find the most macho/stupid box we could find.

So here are some of the best, worst and most curious. There will be no soldiers angrily aiming a gun at you by the way, which automatically disqualifies… well, quite a lot of games.

Turrican

There are a few excellent bits of box art for this early 90s shoot-‘em-up classic, but the best/worst/funniest by a mile was this masterpiece by Julie Bell.

Yes, that’s a chrome super-soldier built like Conan and looking like the T-1000 from Terminator 2.

It’s the coolest looking thing ever, when you’re about nine years old. Look at his grimace! Grrr.

Tomb Raider II

Historians will never ever explain it, and future generations will look back at us and shake their heads in disbelief and despair, but people used to find mid-90s era Lara Croft sexy.

Looking back at the box art from Tomb Raider II (when the original series was at its peak) we find it quite hard to explain ourselves.

Just look at it. That front cover just reeks of 90s lad. That’ll be the smell of Lynx Africa and weak lager then.

Crack Down

Not to be confused with the Xbox 360’s Crackdown, Crack Down was a Mega Drive release.

Just look at it. It doesn’t even matter what the game is like. It’s the front cover that has everything: two gurning meatheads, a Stormtrooper from Star Wars, a goatman, and a monkey. And fire.

If this doesn’t prove the supremacy of video games over all other mediums, then nothing really will.

Doom

Doom’s front cover just screams ‘I am a videogame and you are going to have a hell of a time playing me’.

It’s fitting that a classic game should get a classic piece of box art. Everything about it is nigh-on perfect, although the demons look sort of clumsy and a bit goofy with their tongues lolling about.

Maybe they’re just thirsty.

Resident Evil 4

Now this is a good one. Resident Evil 4 has had numerous ports and iterations, but it never made a bigger impact than it did upon its initial release on Nintendo’s GameCube.

It was a peerless game, and the package was ably completed by a comparatively subtle front cover, with the game’s infamous chainsaw crazyman silhouetted amongst the trees against a blood red background.

The American front cover was terrible in comparison and disappointingly on the nose.

Strider

We recently reviewed the cracking new entry in the Strider series, so what better time to revel in the glory of the box art for the Mega Drive version?

It was notoriously brilliant/terrible, a piece of art that featured a man who looked nothing like Strider himself, wearing a vest, camply jumping and flailing a tiny sword.

Phalanx

We have never played Phalanx, and judging by its box art, that’s something we now regret.

Nothing says ‘Hyper Speed Shoot Out in space’ more than an old man sat in a chair playing a banjo with a look of confusion on his face.

We wonder what he’s thinking. Maybe he’s wondering what a computer is! We will never know now, he’s probably dead.

Ninja Golf

Oh blimey.

BONUS ART:

Pro Wrestling

A decapitated wrestler giving a head (possibly his own) a headlock against a plain white background. Salvador Dali would love this.

[UPDATE: The actual artist on the Turrican artwork has been corrected (Julie Bell, not her husband Boris Vallejo) - thanks, Dillinger!]