Video game cover art has been around for just about as long as video games themselves. If anything, back in the early days of video games, it was even more important than it is now. This was because that was the best way of conveying the game designers’ vision of what the game itself represented. This was because the early video game graphics had to be very basic, so the players themselves perhaps needed to use their imagination a bit more than they have to now.

I remember the first-ever game I owned which was Midnight Resistance on the Commodore 64 and I thought it was amazing. It was in a box with 3 other games and I can still remember the box art, but I used to look at how good the graphics were on the back of the box.

The cover and graphics on the back of the cassettes that I got for my C64 had to look good for me to buy them. “Wow! Mum! Can I have £2.50 to buy this game for my new Commodore 64? The graphics look amazing!”

But now I’ve been playing games for a good 20 years, does cover art now sway my opinion on whether to part with my cash for a game? It can’t help for the cover to be aesthetically pleasing as developers/publishers want to show off their game before you even play it.
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I don’t think you’re an open book to people just from the type of video games you play, I mean just because I, Simon Barker play a Grand Theft Auto game, that doesn’t necessarily make me a threat to society, does it? Despite what certain people would have you know about games such as these. What does playing certain video games say about me?

However, that said if people were to play the following games they could perhaps get an insight into who I am as a person and therefore get to me know on a certain level — or at least I can interpret what I think playing these games say about me. I mean, if you were to play them you’d take your own personal experiences away from them which may not be what I would, don’t you think?
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New Year’s Resolutions? Are they actually worth anything? I’m normally someone who believes that if you need an excuse like New Year to make a change, then it is probably doomed to failure.

That said, I’m not normally one for making them, but I’m thinking that it is perhaps time that I outlined some “general gaming objectives” that I’ve come up with over the past few months, since in recent years I’m having real problems with gaming, mostly around the “not finding the time to play” all the games that I buy!
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Blog Banter is an idea from Hawty McBloggy where she gives a bunch of gaming-related blogs the same post title and a brief. We then all go away and write what it means to us – it sounds like a pretty cool idea, so here’s the first post of Blog Banter which is about Memorable Gaming Moments, from both past and more recent games.

I’ve already written about various gaming moments during the course of some of my previous posts such as Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe on Xbox Live, Ghostbusters 3 Game and Football Manager Demo, so I thought I’d approach it from a new angle this time around – from a series of games I’ve liked for around 17 years, namely Sid Meier’s classic Civilization games, where you must ‘Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time’!
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