Kotaku ‘Shop Contest: Master System Cover Winners

Owen Good November 21, 2010 9:30 AM

The Master System/Mega Drive debuted before the advent of home desktop publishing, so the design choices of its ridiculously minimalist covers seemed somewhat sophisticated at the time. We gave modern games a retrofit in last week’s ‘Shop Contest.

razzbarry (15) and Zinger314 (20) had different takes on similar themes. BuckThunder (5) was so, so cruel … but so on the mark. Buck, it would have been GOTY back in 1986. berd (1) and BigDikJohnson (2) offered swell clip-art homages to modern game covers. RealmRPGer, like DoubleFine, wanted to be sure his title could be classified by every game series out there.

SPECIALciaNAPKIN (18) was one of those “this was too easy, but it’s pretty damn funny” entries. Dits (7) had another simple concept but followed my advice of giving a game a completely insufficient piece of clip art. bubonicyeti (4) and ralphtm (13) both went the 1980s TV route and left me wondering why “227″ wasn’t made into a video game.

My personal favourites though, are xerokitsune’s (19), a great ‘Shop job of what Sly Cooper would look like 25 years ago. And the overall winner, RandMan612 (14), who probably took less time, but still offered an awesome callback to a two-year-old joke.

Thanks again to all who entered. See you in here tomorrow morning.

Given the nature of the assignment, we saw, by far, more entries for this contest than any other in its 10-month history. Adding to the difficulty of judging is that sometimes a simple idea didn’t need a complex ‘Shop job, and sometimes a complex ‘Shop job compensated for an OK-but-not-great idea. Here’s the 20 best from the past week – realizing I had to whittle these down from 57 legit finalists.