Jim Power Amiga cover (1992) 🔗

Sure was a choice from Loriciel to take a tough martial arts movie star like Jean-Claude Van Damme and stick him in the game protagonist's super dorky outfit. The game isn't even horror themed, but they complemented that with the body horror image of one of the thugs from Robocop grossly melting away after getting doused with toxic chemicals. The rocket powered guy to the upper right is from yet another kind of source, a painting by sci fi illustrator Peter Elson, apparently originally commissioned for Harry Harrison's short story collection Prime Number (but also published on a variety of other books). This is incidentally also the only element this cover has in common with the otherwise very different PC Engine version. I'm sure all the other elements on here are also adaptions, but this is what we know so far.

The Peter Elson connection was discovered by ‪'just hangin around' (that's the screen name) on Bluesky.

The Kung-Fu / China Warrior title screen (1987) 🔗

There's many photos showing Bruce Lee doing his famous flying kicks, but this one is by far the closest I could find to the guy on the title screen for the PC Engine action curiosity China Warrior. Seems like it would have been easier to use a photo from a movie where he appears already shirtless with the more traditional pants and shoes, like Way of the Dragon or Enter the Dragon, but the original Japanese cover already stole a pose from Game of Death, so maybe that was just what they had at hand.

The Kung-Fu cover (1987) 🔗

Bruce Lee was such an iconic presence in martial arts media that almost every other fighting game series has a character mimicking his looks, mannerisms, or fighting style. This brawler is about nothing but running around and beating up dudes as a Bruce Lee clone, so why not also cloning one of his actual poses for the cover? It's kinda funny that the depth of the angles he's pointing his fingers don't really translate to the imitation, so he kinda looks like he's missing a joint on his index finger. It also seems like the fact that you can't really make out Bruce's hair against the pitch dark background has given the artist license to go a little bit wild with the hair (which isn't really mirrored in the actual game).

Discovered by drpepperfan from the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums.

Dragon Power cover (1987) 🔗

When the first Dragon Ball game for the Famicom was released in 1986, Western publishers had no clue whatsoever that this weird new style of cartoon would have appeal outside of Japan, so one year later in place of Akira Toriyama's iconic character designs, North American players where targeted with a generic karate dude. Turns out the unwitting model for that kick was an actual real life karate dude, martial arts legend Joe Lewis.

Discovered by drpepperfan from the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums.

Wrath of the Black manta cover (1990) 🔗

It doesn't take a master detective to guess that the main inspiration for the North American cover variant for Taito's Wrath of the Black Manta was probably a Ninja movie. And lo and behold, the ninja's attacking pose was lifted directly from the ninja movie of the 1980s, at least from a Western awareness of the genre standpoint.