As has been bemoaned on this blog many times, the state of cover art in the Fantasy and Science Fiction fields is often underwhelming. Sure, there are gems, and there are some publishers who’re taking risks and doing wonderful work, but the duds far outweigh the studs. The same can be said for videogame covers. I won’t go into the the Japan/North America debate (needless to say, it’s very similar to the UK/USA debate for book covers), but instead point you to a group of artists who are trying to right the problem, thanks to the removable sleeves found in videogame cases.

It’s no secret that videogame concept artists have some wonderful names among their ranks (Kekai Kotaki, for instance, and Jason Chan), but more often than not the covers for the videogames feature staid and boring computer generated figures doing boring things and looking generic. These artists on NeoGAF recognized the problem and have taken the gorgeous concept art from various games and used it to re-work the covers into things of beauty.

And aren’t they pretty?

And a few others that caught my eye:

I’ve included a few of my favourites, but many, many more titles can be found on the official NeoGAF thread. Kudos to all the wonderful artists involved.