Atari 2600 Basketball cover art by Cliff Spohn

Artist Cliff Spohn created this awesome box art for Atari Basketball in 1978.

More of Cliff Spohn’s art here!

Atari 2600 Box Art Design vs Gameplay

"Somewhere in the subconscious regions of my brain, I think the graphic designer in me was born on that day in 1983, hooked on the visuals of that particular moment in time."

Here's an intersting article about the fantastic illustration and design of Atari box art. 

Here's some more, from this video, along with a fun comparison of box art with actual gameplay.

Cliff Spohn and Atari Game Manuals

Check out this Flickr set of manuals for Atari games. I wish more games nowadays used this hand-painted style for their covers!

It looks like a lot of those covers were done by Cliff Spohn. And I just found out he illustrated the cover for the recent satire documentary Computer Chess!