The Cover Came First: Games Based on Famicase Art

August 13th, 2010 by: Lambert Varias

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While a lot of games probably started out with just a sketch of a landscape or of the main character, I doubt there’s many games out there where its cover art inspired the actual game. But that’s exactly what the members of TIGSource did, turning Famicase art into actual games. For those of you not familiar with Famicase (JP), it’s an annual exhibition held in Japan, where designers make up cover art for fictional Famicom (NES) games. Now we’ve come full circle. Take this cover for example:

The German blurb on the lower right of the case says, “Let’s touch a cat! And make some friends!” Not exactly your everyday game idea is it? And yet here it is, a game about trying to touch a cat:

To be honest with you I can’t quite figure out the rules of the game, but I am enjoying the music. Here’s one more, a candidate for Best Video Game Title Ever:

I bet you my future children that the person who made the Famicase art for Color Space Beaver never thought that the game would actually be made. You can find all of these games at the home page for A Game By Its Cover, which as you may have guessed is all about making games inspired by art (thus, not all games there are from Famicase). Fortunately for us, we can play or even download all of the games for free! Just look for the individual links or the torrent link to download them all. God bless indie developers and their weird tastes.

[via Tiny Cartridge]