1. Rare
Rare chief: “we felt now was the time to have a new image
more in keeping with an innovative and creative
entertainment company which aspires to be around for at
least the next 25 years!” But oh, how we pine for their N64
days.
2. Sega
Before they made video games, Sega made mechanical
arcade cabinets, although their old logo looks more like
something you’d see hanging on a banner over a medieval
great hall.
3. LucasArts
Back when LucasArts was called “LucasFilm Games,” it had
yet another logo, but the golden sunshine man that you
remember from the side of your Rebel Assault game back in
the day has persevered since 1991. At that, he got a facelift
with a less crunchy look in 2005.
4. Valve
Which is creepier: A red valve in a thinly moustached man’s
eye, as we saw in the first Half-Life, or a red valve plugged
into the brainstem of a scary bald wrestler man? The jury’s
out.
5. Square-Enix
When Square and Enix merged in ’03, Square’s color
scheme won the day. Here’s hoping the castle in the
background is some sort of EarthBound revival clue that no
one’s yet decoded.
6. Namco-Bandai
Without getting into how Namco’s pre-merger gaming legacy
was vastly superior to Bandai’s (sorry, Mighty Morphin Power
Rangers for SNES, but Pac-Man and Galaga got you beat),
how oh how did two red-and-white logos merge into a
freakish, ugly love story between a red and a yellow
amoeba?
7. Blizzard
Yes, Blizzard used to be called “Silicon & Synapse” and
have a grumpy, anthropomorphic brain wearing shoes as its
mascot. But its current logo is still pretty old-school: It’s
been basically unchanged since 1994.
8. Funcom
Age of Conan developer Funcom traded its kooky ’90s
trapezoid for a red circle that vaguely reminds us of LG.
9. EA
Apparently, EA’s old logo confused people.Wikipedia: “Many
customers mistook the square/circle/triangle logo for a
stylized “EOA.” Though they thought the “E” stood for
“Electronic” and “A” for “Arts”, they had no idea what the “O”
could stand for, except perhaps the o in “Electronic.” An
early newsletter of EA, Farther, even jokingly discussed the
topic in one issue, claiming that the square and triangle
indeed stood for “E” and “A”, but that the circle was merely
“a Nerf ball that got stuck in a floppy drive and has been
popping up on our splash screens ever since.” It’s still
enough to induce waves of nostalgia in anyone who’s
playedStarflight.
10. Epic Games
Back when it was called “Epic MegaGames,” Epic’s logo
definitely had swagger, declaring itself “the new name in
computer entertainment” with a decidedly ’90s box array;
today, it rocks a badge that isn’t out of place alongside the
shooters and action games that are its trademark.
11. THQ
As much as I would like to objectively compare these, the
presence of Ren and Stimpy in the logo to the left shifts my
allegiances irreversibly in that direction.
12. SNK
Since the modern SNK’s removal of serifs is not particularly
earth-shattering, here, have a cool, possibly true story about
the origins of SNK vs. Capcom, the fighting game which took
the maybe-too-bold-but-still-fruitful step of assuming that
rank-and-file gamers had any idea what “SNK” was.
Street Fighter Wikia: “The supposed origin behind this series
was an issue of Arcadia magazine in which there were
articles covering both The King of Fighters ’98 and Street
Fighter Alpha 3, both of which were released at around the
same time. Readers had misread the cover, which said KOF
vs. SF, to mean that there was a fighting game that would
pit characters from theStreet Fighter and The King of
Fighters series.”
13. Bethesda
Can’t say I’m crazy about the current logo for the company
behind The Elder Scrolls and Fallout 3, but it beats
something that looks like it was designed by the Terminator
himself.
14. Ubisoft
Left: ’90s overload. Right: ’00s overload. (It was rolled out in
2003.) What will the dawn of the new decade bring?
15. Nintendo
As you may well be aware, before Nintendo did video
games, they did playing cards. One translation of the
original kanji is “work hard, but it remains in the hands of
heaven at last”; accurate or no, that seems like a pretty apt
description of the gaming experience in more than one
Nintendo game.
No comments:
Post a Comment