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.

Nodes of Yesod cover (1985) 🔗

Nodes of Yesod is a 2D arcade adventure of the type that was popularized on the ZX Spectrum by Jet Set Willy, starring an astronaut in a space suit exploring an enormous cave system inside the moon. But while the space man in the game is fictional, the one on the cover by Gerry Fisher is... let's say: based on a true story. The pose is a dead ringer for Buzz Aldrin on the famous photo of his moon walk, and even the objects mirrored in his visor are quite similar, barring the absence of photographer Neill Armstrong. Interestingly, a rare version for the Enterprise 128 was graced with original art instead, but the 30th Anniversary Edition that was released exclusively on tvOS with updated graphics, reinstates the - perhaps stolen but also more iconic - original cover.

Sherwood cover (1993) 🔗

This Slovakian-made Robin Hood game sure tries to cover all the Robin Hoods. Besides Kevin Costner on the title screen, the cover adds Patrick Bergin's interpretation from the British production that amazingly came out the same year as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and even reaches all the way back to 1938 to bring Errol Flynn from The Adventures of Robin Hood back from the dead. The smaller scenes at the bottom are a bit harder to determine, but the Sherriff of Nottingham in the sword scene clearly shows features of Alan Rickman's portraial of the villain. The (presumably) Maid Marian is unidentified so far, but she definitely isn't from any of these films.

Sherwood title screen (1993) 🔗

I know. I get it. If you're making a Robin Hood game, you'll probably end up borrowing from iconic Robin Hood movies here and there. But just digitizing Kevin Costner's mug from the poster of the most recent and most famous of them all, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, as the makers of this ZX Spectrum title from Slovakia did, might be a bit much. And this isn't even the only Robin Hood this game has stolen: The cover art features several more.