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.

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.