Fond memories of my old girlfriend

Ok. Before we start wondering what the hell i'm on about now, id like to clarify. Way back in the mists of video game history, when computing power was still measured in bits, Commodore released the 16-bit computer that changed the way I viewed the world, the Amiga. For some largely unexplained reason they called it Amiga (spanish for 'girlfriend') and I fell in love with it immediately. Besides being able to save the universe from invading aliens, the Amiga came bundled with Deluxe Paint, a basic art package that paved the way for me to tread the route into digital art on the mac and Photoshop. What really drew me in though, were the gorgeous boxes for the games, especially those by Liverpool based software company Psygnosis. Using a huge back catalogue of Paper Tiger artists work such as Roger Dean, Tim White and Peter Jones, the gloss black boxes all featured evocative typography and wonderful colour illustrations, some of which even found their way into the game graphics too - albeit in a much simplified fashion. Ive still got almost all the boxes of my games and the games themselves and a small pile of Amiga computers too, which are dusted off periodically to give the old Xbox, Wii and PS2 a run for their money.

Artwork originally used on 'Cities in Flight' series of books

Artwork for 'Forever War'

Robbie the Robot on steroids - also appeared in the game!

Psygnosis early game - almost unplayable

Blue Oyster Cult!

Meanwhile, heres a selection of the artwork. Some of the games were utterly awful and near unplayable in the early days, but some were classics and led Psygnosis to become one of the biggest developers in the UK and still in flourishing business today.