Box Art Part 1

Here we have 4 fine examples of box art... I don't have much time here so ...straight to the point.... old box art ROCKED!! It had little to nothing to do with the game and it would usually only elude to what the designers wished the game would look like ... but somewhere along the way, it went downhill. Check out the difference between the Defender cover and the Street Fighter Alpha one... Defender has a chick in all her late 70's glory running from an alien invasion. SO COOL. Then flash forward a number of years to Street Fighter Alpha.. what the hell happened. The box art was obviously done by someone's kid, certainly not a professional artist... and this was for a game that was renowned for it's art!! Plus the Japanese and arcade versions had great art!! At least they learned a few things when the same game was released as part of a collection, finally caught on to the fact that paying more than $5 for cover art might be worth it. I'll post more examples and stuff another time, but for now just know that American box art peaked with the Atari.. and is just now catching up, there are some rare examples of good stuff in between but WOW.... it's rare.