What if Shenmue had been made for the SEGA Master System?
Did you ever imagine if...?
Though often collectively looked upon poorly due to a few less-than-stellar examples, the SEGA Master System‘s style of box art exudes a certain charm which feels very reminiscent of its era in the ’80s. Black grid lines across a white background (which would later be inverted somewhat for the early SEGA Genesis branding) beheld an almost uniform use of Times New Roman for the logo, and the main variation from package to package was the art which was used to fill out the rest.
Sometimes the results were uniquely good. Other times, they were very much not (while still somehow retaining some of that charm).
But let’s focus on the positive. That’s what freelance artist Kohji Nakazawa did on Twitter, when they asked:
It’s a reasonable thought to have, given that the Shenmue series takes place during the Master System’s heyday of the mid-’80s. But what if…
What if we could somehow make it even more ’80s?
Ah, now that’s what I’m talking about! That’s the stuff, right there!
(Oh, and in case you were wondering: Since the image is of a fake game, Kohji went with a fake company name on the box — specifically, “SECA” from the 1998 Windows title Rent-a-Hero.)
If you’d like to see more of Kohji’s art, Shenmue-related and not (here is a nice Phantasy Star piece as an example), you can find them on Twitter at @kohji_nakazawa.
