Tracing the Influence - Stolen Images in Games

[corsair]

May 6, 2017 13:04:38 GMT -5 drpepperfan said:

Made in Spain 5 Estrellas and the Anthony Michael Hall film Out of Bounds

Cap and 'Eternal Champion'


SMT and Crying Freeman...maybe


Tough Turf and 'Grande Odalisque'


Vic Software Ad and Reb Brown point/xenomorph



Legend of Faerghail and Keith Parkinson:



Gambler Jiko Chushinha and E.T./Terminator:



Wizard War and John Buscema



The Wacky World of Miniature Golf and many painters:

[Woody Alien]

Jun 3, 2017 2:32:14 GMT -5 corsair said:

Gambler Jiko Chushinha and E.T./Terminator:

I also spotted Tezuka's Black Jack (top right corner) and the Baltan alien from Ultraman (purple thing right below him). The girl with the purple afro could also be from somewhere but I cant put my finger on it.

[moran]

Found a few while looking at some Amiga cover art. Theres lots more that probably deserve to be here, but these stood out to me.

Blade Warrior - Frazetta



Random art that I's sure are traces but can't place the exact source off the top of my head.

Rick Dangerous is very Indiana Jones. Especially the natives.



These two look like they may have been pulled from some Frazetta or Vallejo

Ghouls 'N Ghosts


Assasin

[andykusanagi]

Hello there, I joined the forums because I love the site and its in-depth analysis of lesser-known games, but also because I felt I could contribute to this article.



Well, I looked at the Super Monaco GP section (a game I've been playing again out of sheer nostalgia) and, while I had the conviction for a long while that all drivers' pictures were touched-up real pictures of F1 drivers, the parallels to actors threw me a curveball (particularly the River Phoenix one).


Although I still think G. Alberti is actually a carbon copy of Riccardo Patrese. If anything, the designers might have mixed some of de Niro with him - besides, isn't that picture of de Niro too recent for the game's time (1989/1990)? Same goes for Emilio Estevez, he looked much, well, slimmer back then.

Still, there are more pictures derived from real drivers. For instance:




R. Cotman here is undeniably Nigel Mansell with his mustache erased (er, shaved off?). Note how the mouth doesn't quite look natural. Also, sorry for the size of the picture on the right - it was the closest I could find on Google.





This one might be a stretch, but I'm hardly convinced that M. Hamano doesn't look like Satoru Nakajima.





On a similar note, A. Picos just looks a lot like Nelson Piquet to me, rather than being just an expy. But again, I may be pushing the envelope here.





G. Ceara, the new driver that shows up to challenge you in the title defense season, pretty much is supposed to be a younger Ayrton Senna, who would supervise the sequel to SMGP.



Speaking of the sequel, some of the new drivers there also could qualify for the section, but I don't have screenshots to use here, so I'll leave that for another post.

Oh, and by the way, the race queen from the main menu was also traced over from a real picture (NSFW):



Again, sorry for the size, which I picked up from a story on a gaming site commemorating this game's 25th anniversary by citing some curiosities about it.

On the left is Mercy Rooney, Playboy Playmate in the issue of December '72. On the right, the touched-up picture. She is also seen in the attract mode of the Arcade version.

[barbrawlian]

Man, it's been years since I've been here, luckily Firefox saves logins/passwords.

Anyway, I saw the Buscema picture:



And it looked really familiar, so this might have been covered already, but it was definitely used as the basis for this image in Final Reality by Future Crew:


Maybe that's not too video game related, but it reminded me of another possible permutation of the sinister man, Igor from Persona!



Lots of picture of him, especially as he became animated and a bit redesigned in the later games, so it's hard to pin down a clear "gotcha", and "sinister man with his head down looking at you" is not the most original of concepts. But still, there's some similarities in the pose, the brows, the pointed ears, the baldness, wicked smile and, uh, prominent nose(very prominent in the case of Igor).
Future Crew's picture is absolutely no doubt "very inspired" by the Buscema drawing, Atlus' visual design for Igor... maybe, it's possible it's a coincidence, but even if it weren't they've certainly done enough to make the character their own.

[Woody Alien]

The Buscema picture also appears in Rings Of Power for the Genesis:

[Preki]

(Oh) SHIT! for the MSX has one of the boxarts blatantly ripped off The Howling III: Echoes book cover.

  

Why would they do that for a Pac-Man clone (with profanities!) of all games?

[Woody Alien]

It's not exactly on topic, because it's not a "trace" per se, just an amusing reference/coincidence... I stumbled upon this image seemingly from a City Hunter artbook, probably from the late 80s/early 90s:



And this Metal Slug cover immediately came to my mind:

[BdR]

Just saw this tweet/article. It seems two of the Street Figher II backgrounds were inspired by the movie Hard Times (1975) starring Charles Bronson as an illegal prize-fighter during the Depression Era. The background in question are Ken's Battle Harbor and Zangief's Big Factory backgrounds.

Escpecially the boat scene is very similar to the movie.

[Woody Alien]

Someone on Twitter pointed out that the cover of NAM-1975 features a tracing of Mark Hamill in "The Big Red One":

By the way, will the feature about tracing ever be updated and ported over to the new site?

[Discoalucard]

Jul 18, 2018 17:03:14 GMT -5 Woody Alien said:

By the way, will the feature about tracing ever be updated and ported over to the new site?

The answer will always be "yes", but these features require a lot of work because it needs a lot of manual formatting, so they're being left until last.

[Woody Alien]

Jul 19, 2018 11:26:15 GMT -5 Discoalucard said:

The answer will always be "yes", but these features require a lot of work because it needs a lot of manual formatting, so they're being left until last.

Thanks, I didn't want to nag, by the way. I understand that this one, the one about women in games and the one about games/consoles inside games are very time-consuming, but it would be a shame if all that work became lost for whatever reason.

[Discoalucard]

In the meantime, I've uploaded all of the Tracing feature onto the new server, so at least you can view it without the broken CSS:

www.hardcoregaming101.net/tracing/tracing.htm

Most of the other features are uploaded too, even if they aren't linked anywhere directly.

At least when it's ported, it'll make it much easier to add new entries. There's a LOT of stuff in this thread (and I've seen elsewhere) that hasn't been added.

[BdR]

Wild Pilot by Jaleco 1992 has an interesting level selection screen.
I'm not sure but it looks like they are traced from celebrities photos, singers, movie stars etc.

[lurker]

Why hello, totally-not-Warcrafty troll