Ikari III: The Rescue cover (1989) 🔗

This was not the first time SNK's Ikari Warriors series borrowed famous templates, but the sources they went to this time are a bit surrising. I guess the logic would have been Arnold Schwarzenegger played a lot of muscly military dudes, he also played Conan the Barbarian, so go to fantasy illustrators who also drew Conan.

The Boris Vallejo reference discovered by Trickless from the Insert Credit forums.

Breach 2 cover (1990) 🔗

Breach is a series of hardcore tactics game by Omnitrend Software. Publisher Mindraft brought artist Bruce Eagle on for the cover art, who is no stranger to borrowing from Boris Vallejo. His alien seems quite original to me, but the poor space man it shoots down holds a quite familiar pose.

Sindibad: Chitei no Daimakyū cover (1990) 🔗

Sindibad is neither the fanciest nor the most high-effort of RPGs on the PC Engine. As the game jumbles together elements from many different stories from the tales of 1001 Nights, the cover art jumbles together various works by Boris Vallejo. It’s funny to see the closest thing of Vallejo as an anime character, as I believe the center piece was one of the paintings he posed for himself.

The spear boy was identified by Trickless from the Insert Credit forums.

Metal Morph cover (1994) 🔗

Another cover that borrows several of Frazetta’s fall guys from various black-and-white drawings. The origin of the bald hero in the center is still unknown, looks more like a movie still to me.

Discovered by corsair from the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums.

Garrison cover (1987) 🔗

Rainbow Arts was a prolific German publisher of “we have famous game X at home” products, from Katakis (we have R-Type at home) and Great Giana Sisters (we have Super Mario Bros. at home) to Thunder Boy (we have Wonder Boy at home). This one is “we have Gauntlet at home” with a cover presumably painted by “we have Frank Frazetta at home”.

Thunder Boy cover (1988) 🔗

This Amiga platformer is just a cheap knock-off of Wonder Boy, but the cover art sure tries to make it look like something more. Several works by Frank Frazetta serve as sources for the human characters, but I’m fairly certain the animals and the flame guy around them are not original, either.

Duel (1989) 🔗

Kure Software Koubou isn’t exactly a famous name in the West, but in Japan their line of fantasy strategy games enjoyed some influence, most notably being cited as an inspiration for the Fire Emblem series. The evocative cover art by no one lesser than Yoshitaka Amano probably helped them quite a bit with that, but it seems the covers were as far as the budget took them, cause for the in-game graphics of their 1989 title Duel they plundered the Frazetta chest like few others. The first screen of the title sequence only incorporates one character from a black-and-white illustration featured in some editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Swords of Mars, but his pose seems to have been cloned and increasingly modified for the entire warrior party of four.

This is followed by a collage of different scenes, all of which feature elements from at least one Frazetta painting. The only character I couldn't find in a Frank Frazetta original is the soldier jumping for the head kick in the big center piece – that comparison instead comes from an anonymously credited cover painting for the first issue of Spanish fantasy and sci-fi comic magazine Cimoc. I’m sceptical about taking it for the direct influence of the Japanese game, though, especially as the rest of the art leans so heavily on Frazetta, so there might be a lost(?) work of the master that forms the missing link for both of them.

Finally, the panel signalling your loss in a battle takes two fallen Mongol warriors from one of his heavily fictionalized depictions of Kubla (sic) Khan, omiting their mourning sovereign and putting them closer together instead.

Many elements here were discovered by corsair from the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums.

Moulin Rouge Senki: Melville no Honō (1992) 🔗

I don't know the name of the artist who painted the cover for this Japan only Famicom strategy game, but I know for a fact that they're Boris Vallejo's biggest fan on earth. Somehow they managed to fit bits and pieces from no less than nine of the master's paintings on the box. (Well, they're a bit cropped on there, actually, but luckily Famitsu printed the full image in their coverage of the game.) From popular pieces such as The Eternal Warrior to obscure erotica like the Snake Women and Vallejo's dreamy painting of a demonic hookah, it has just about everything. I feel the central woman character's hair (and possibly facial features) might have some other source, and maybe the castle...?

Prince of Persia Sega Genesis version cutscenes (1993) 🔗

After Jordan Mechner's Prince of Persia made waves on the already outdated Apple II, it got ported to a lot of different platforms over several years. When it finally made its way to the Sega Genesis, the graphics were updated quite a bit, adding new full screen art for the intro and ending sequences. The artist must have liked Boris Vallejo quite a bit, cause practically all the scenes originate in the master's paintings. My favorite of them all has got to be the ending where the hero finally gets to embrace he princess, but in the original he was a fearsome winged demon.

These sources have been discovered by barbarus from the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums.

Tunnels & Trolls: Crusaders of Khazan cover (1990) 🔗

Crusaders of Khazan was not only the sole CRPG adaption of the Tunnels & Trolls role-playing game in it’s time, but also a rare collaboration between US-based New World Computing and the Japanese CRPG publisher StarCraft. The cover was painted by Akira Komeda, who in his early career seems to have had a bit of a tendency to get overly inspired by famous artists. The cover for Crusaders of Khazan is a proper who's who of fantasy illustrators: A dwarf by Clyde Caldwell, a warrior by Michael Whelan, a kneeling rogue by Frank Frazetta, and a wizard by Larry Elmore. The towering sorceress they’re all facing is a Chimera cobbled together from various paintings - the wings come from Boris Vallejos Incubus, her left forearm from his Snake Women. The model for her overall posture seems to come from Frazetta's A Fighting Man on Mars illustration (including the positioning of her legs, although those have been modified just enough to make them not match close enough for an overlay), as well as her necklace. The origin of her staff arm (and possibly her hair) is still shrouded in mystery.

Some elements discovered by drpepperfan from the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums.

Ultima II: The Revenge of the Enchantress cover (1982) 🔗

Ultima is one of the foundational works of fantasy CRPG history, so no wonder its production was inspired by two of the giants of fantasy illustration at the time. The demon's torso and parts of his pose come from a Frazetta paintign aptly titled Swamp Demon (sorry about the rough cutout for the comparison - it kind of blends in with the shadows, so it's hard to tell where the monster ends and the background begins), whereas the adventurer is teleporting in from Boris Vallejo's futiristic Behind the Walls of Terror. Ironically, it wouldn't be long before Origin System found themselves at the other end of such a "transaction" - and reportedly weren't amused.

Castlevania cover (1986) 🔗

Frank Frazetta's The Norseman is one of the most frequently copied influences among games illustrators, and his appearance on the original Castlevania cover is already fairly well known. There's a few changes to his gait and left arm, and of course Simon Belmont is holding a very different weapon, but the influence is unmistakable. What's not talked about often (yet) is that Dracula's floating head apparently also taps another secret text of video game artists, namely John Buscema's How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, although it seems to be an amalgam of different images. While the grin and overall head shape comes from that grinning dude, the dark lord's hairline and ears more closely resemble Namor, who's sketched in the same book a couple pages earlier.