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...?

The Koshan Conspiracy (1992) 🔗

Die in The Koshan Conspiracy, and be greeted by none other than thrash metal legends Megadeth' mascot Vic Rattlehead from the cover of Peace Sells... but Who's Buying?.

Discovered by corsair from the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums.

Turrican title screen (1990) 🔗

Turrican is about as metal as a video game character gets, so it makes sense for him to evoke the energy of a classic heavy metal album cover. It does a little bit more than just evoke, though, stealing not only the barbarian warrior's pose but also the general composition and feel of Ken Kelly's cover for Manowar's Kings of Metal.

Moonshadow title screen (1988) 🔗

Don't worry if you've never heard of Moonshadow—on top of being an obscure C64 game, it was never actually released with that title. After the originally intended publisher Ocean dropped it, it was finished up by another company called cascade and released as Zone Trooper. The original title screen was entirely ditched in the process, not sure it was because someone noticed that the cool skull planet was totally ripped from the cover of Time Tells no Lies by Praying Mantis.

Info about Moonshadow was documented by Fabrizio Bartoloni and the image source identified by Hoagie on Games That Weren't.

Dungeon title screen (1983) 🔗

Among one of the first CRPGs made in Japan, KOEI's Dungeon cannot bost very refined gameplay, but it does feature quite evocative graphics for the various monsters you meet in its hallways. Not sure how original most of these are, but apparently the artist was into Greenslade's first album while drawing the title screen. (Prog rog is a documented important influence on the early Japanese RPG crowd.) No direct comparison this time, cause the pose and proportions were changed up quite a bit so they don't fit across each other nicely, but the similarities in the sitting magician's hood and magicking hand are still quite obvious. The title font is also more than just a little bit inspired by the Greenslade logo.

Bedlam cover (1983) 🔗

Rock music album covers are not the most common source for game art, but among the earliest, like this early ZX Spectrum title Bedlam. In the game, your enemies are fairly goofy stick figures, but on the cassette case you're greeted by the nasty undead from Iron Maiden's album covers (although that one is also a somewhat crude representation).

Discovered by corsair from the Hardcore Gaming 101 forums.