Growing up, one of the best parts of getting at new game was pouring over the cover art on the trip home. It was like a little window into the experience you were about to undertake and helped your imagination to run wild with the possibilities. That particular experience has more or less gone away in the age of digital gaming, but good cover art nonetheless retains its abilities. More than that it can serve as a fun reminder of all your favorites, calling back all those good time through nothing more than a glance. With that in mind, somethign great you can give your gamer friends is some great cover art for their walls! Here are some ideas!

Banjo-Kazooie

This one is just a straight-up classic! It’s Banjo with Kazooie stuffed in his backpack, grabbing a golden jiggy and just booking it away from all sorts of baddies. The background: Gruntilda the Witch looming insidiously over everything. It’s bright, it’s colorful and it promises exactly what the game delivers: a fun-filled adventure of collecting jiggies and defeating an evil witch. It’s classic artwork for a classic game, and it’s a great fit for anyone who was around for the N64 era of gaming.

Kingdom Hearts (PS2)

Before Square Enix completely lost the plot with the series, Kingdom Hearts was actually a fairly straight-forward story about dreams, friendship, good vs. evil…and Disney (just because). It was light and breezy, heartwarming, and often wistful, talking often about things like drifting apart from friends, growing up and maintaining our connections. Sure, there was all kinds of fantasy adventure in famous Disney settings too, but these ideas formed the heart of it.

Such is exactly what’s on display in the game’s original PS2 box art too. Sora and friends are hanging out on a rooftop parapet in the midst of a dark and foreboding city. They don’t seem to notice each other though and are instead looking out at the night sky in contemplation, as if they were actually all alone with worlds between them and those they care for. It’s thought-provoking artwork of the sort that’s certain to bring back your whole experience with the game, an experience that sure to be filled with all sorts of warm memories, I’m sure.

Halo 3

Certainly, Halo 3’s cover art isn’t as expressive or detailed as those of the previous two games, but there’s still a lot going on. We see the Master Chief marching forward among what looks like some ruins out in some far-off desert. We don’t know what’s going on, but between th color scheme and the Chief’s resolute posture and the sun setting in the distance, we can tell that it really is the end that he’s marching toward. Is it the end of the war? Is it his own? We didn’t know at the time, but we did know that it was going to be one heck of a finale (which it ultimately was).

As a fan who played the game back during its glory days on the Xbox 360, this one dredges up all those fond memories of hanging out online with the guys and getting up all kinds of shenanigans in co-op and online. By itself though, this is still a cool piece of art, one that holds a significant place in gaming history and is sure to look cool on any wall you put it on.

Bloodborne

Fromsoft’s more action-oriented departure from the Souls series keeps things very simple with its cover art. It’s just the Hunter, both hands grasping the tools of his trade, walking resolutely along a darkened and foggy gothic avenue. We don’t know exactly what’s going on with this city, but there’s just enough detail to invite speculation. For one thing, the fact that he’s the only one on that street is pretty telling. The whole image has a chilling quality t it too, the kind that usually asserts itself whenever something reminds you of a recent nightmare.

Considering the setting of Bloodborne and what you actually end up doing in it, this cover actually does a pretty good job of conveying what the player is going to be in for. It might not be ideal to have potential nightmare fuel hanging on your wall, but there’s no denying that it’d prove to be a great accent in a dedicated gaming room.

Metroid Dread

As much as I wanted to go with the classic box art for Super Metroid, eye-catching and outright cool as it is. I still wanted to give this one a shoutout because I think it actually does a better job. We’ve got Samus doing her iconic pose while clad in some mysterious new armor. She’s looking all kinds of awesome and ready to take on anything, including, say, all those creepy, hulking creatures with glowing eyes behind her. Combine that with the stark black and red of the middle- and backgrounds, and you’ve got one striking piece of artwork!

As cool as each of these are in terms of artwork, how much mileage you actually get out of them will of course depend heavily on your (or your friend’s) experience with them. Memory and emotion are what take art from just cool pictures to something more meaningful after all. Still, you can’t go wrong with any of these, and with all the custom poster services out there, it should be quite easy to get exactly what you want as far as a good print.

---

What are some of your favorite cover arts? Got ’em in poster form? Let us know below and then make sure to hang around for the rest of this week and beyond as Listmas 2023 continues!

All images shown here are official promo or cover art for their respective games