In October 1987 the letters page of CRASH was still sorting through what it called the “Barbarian backlash”. Readers had argued for a month about a cover. One correspondent complained that the magazine had started putting games on the front that were not its top-rated Smashes, such as Renegade and Barbarian, because “the images they presented were better for selling magazines”, and that Enduro Racer had been featured instead of The Sentinel. The same page cleared up a rumour about the Renegade cover’s model: it was the editor, Roger Kean, “well his arms anyway”, with the reviewer Robin Candy supplying the stomach.
That reader had the commercial logic right. A magazine on a newsagent’s shelf had to be picked out from dozens of others, and the games inside were small, blocky figures on a television screen. A painting could show what the game was meant to be.
Fast facts
- The painters: Oliver Frey for Newsfield’s CRASH, Zzap!64 and Amtix!; Bob Wakelin, Ocean’s inlay artist, for occasional covers of Computer & Video Games and Sinclair User; Robert Tinney for BYTE.
- Selling the art twice: BYTE sold Tinney’s Bicentennial cover as a poster in 1976; Newsfield sold four Frey covers as posters in 1986.
- The cover line: cover-mounted tapes and disks became selling points in their own right; see Cover Tapes.
Before the games magazines
Painted covers came to the computer press before there were games magazines to carry them. From its December 1975 issue BYTE, the American hobbyist monthly, ran many covers by the artist Robert Tinney. For July 1976 the magazine “commissioned Robert Tinney to do an oil painting for the Bicentennial cover”, an 18th-century patriot sitting at a hard-copy terminal. BYTE then printed the painting without its logo as a “Computing 1776” poster, 20 by 24 inches, for $2.95 in a mailing tube, with a first run of 2,000 copies.
Oliver Frey and Newsfield
In Britain the best-known covers were Oliver Frey’s. He painted the first cover of CRASH in February 1984 and was still credited in 1992, and he painted Zzap!64’s and Amtix!’s too. His covers often illustrated one of the month’s games. Roger Kean recalled that from the first moments of playing Elite there was “never any doubt” it would be Zzap!64’s first cover, in May 1985: “now an iconic image, painted by Oliver Frey”.
Newsfield knew the paintings had a life beyond the issue. In April 1985 CRASH offered as a competition prize a jigsaw made from “Oliver Frey’s artwork for the March CRASH”. In the summer of 1986 it began advertising “OLIVER FREY POSTERS FOR YOUR WALL!”:
A superb series of famous covers by Oliver Frey can be yours in poster form.
Four were offered, Kepler of Mars, Metro Force 1, Red Moon and Zombies of the Night, each 80 by 57 centimetres (“about eight magazine pages”) and rolled in a postal tube, at £2.50 each or £7.50 for all four, with cheques payable to Newsfield. The advertisement appeared in CRASH in June, August and November 1986, and in Zzap!64 and Amtix! as well.
The same artists on the boxes
Magazine covers and cassette inlays were often the work of the same hands. Bob Wakelin, who painted nearly all of Ocean’s inlays, was credited with the covers of Computer & Video Games in June 1984 and February 1985 and of Sinclair User in March 1986, for Imagine. Frey painted for games as well as magazines. When CRASH ran its Genesis competition in 1986 to find a reader’s game design for Domark to publish, it promised that the winner’s inlay would be “produced by our very own Oliver Frey”, and that November it reported the game’s designer making a trip to Ludlow “to discuss the inlay artwork with Oliver Frey”. The game became Kat Trap. For Thalamus, Newsfield’s own software label, the artist Mat Sneap recalled that the Sanxion loading screen was “an overnight job, I just copied the Oliver Frey artwork as best I could!”
Nintendo Power: models and photographs
Not every cover was painted. Nintendo Power, Nintendo of America’s own magazine, credited the cover art of its first issue, in July 1988, to Joan Gratz, and by its third issue in November 1988 it was crediting “Cover Photography”. Its second cover went further than its readers liked. Looking back in its 100th issue in 1997, the magazine said that more people had complained about it “than any other cover”: “Severed heads and an actual cow heart just weren’t as palatable back then.”
Covers as history
The paintings outlived the magazines. In April 2012 Retro Gamer put Wakelin’s Great Escape painting on its own cover, and in 2014 the Bitmap Books collection Commodore 64: a visual Commpendium reprinted a selection of Frey’s Zzap!64 cover paintings alongside the machine’s pixel art.
Sources
- CRASH issue 45, October 1987, p. 33: the Forum on the “Barbarian backlash”, the Renegade cover’s model, and a reader’s letter on covers chosen “for selling magazines”.
- BYTE issue 4, December 1975: cover by Robert Tinney. BYTE issue 11, July 1976: the commissioned Bicentennial cover, and the “Computing 1776 Poster” advertisement (size, price, first run of 2,000).
- CRASH issue 15, April 1985: competition prize jigsaw from Frey’s March cover.
- CRASH issue 29, June 1986; issue 31, August 1986; issue 34, November 1986: “Oliver Frey Posters for your wall!” advertisement. The same advertisement in Zzap!64 issue 17, September 1986, and Amtix! issue 14, December 1986.
- CRASH issue 29, June 1986: the Genesis competition and the promised Frey inlay. CRASH issue 34, November 1986: the Genesis game’s designer visiting Ludlow to discuss the inlay artwork.
- Computer & Video Games issue 32, June 1984, p. 3, and issue 40, February 1985, p. 3: covers by Bob Wakelin. Sinclair User issue 48, March 1986, p. 4: “Bob Wakelin for Imagine”.
- Nintendo Power issue 1, July/August 1988, masthead (“Cover Art: Joan Gratz”); issue 3, November 1988, masthead (“Cover Photography”); issue 100, September 1997, “Thanks for the memories” (the second issue’s cover).
- Retro Gamer issue 101, April 2012: “Cover Illustration: Bob Wakelin” (The Great Escape).
- Commodore 64: a visual Commpendium (Bitmap Books, 2014): introduction (Frey’s Zzap!64 cover artworks); p. 32 (Roger Kean on Elite as Zzap!64’s first cover); p. 59 (Mat Sneap on the Sanxion loading screen).
- Frey’s and Wakelin’s careers: see the reviewed Oliver Frey and Bob Wakelin entries and their sources.