Game package illustrators

[A-Yty]

Is there any way to find out the names of the people who made such awesome covers as Gradius and Castlevania? Seems that most of the time the staff behind the games are known, but no one ever talks about cover/box/cart artists. 

[Bloodreign]

They don't get much credit unless they are well known. THE Japanese have a ton of great game boxes from back in the day, but I couldn't tell you who did them. Some  games listed the box illustrators sometimes in the credits, but often times they went by pseudo names.

[A-Yty]

Here's an example of a crappy game with an awesome cover:



I hope that however made that, had/has had a long, lucrative career in the cover art business 

Is it just me or are hand-drawn covers very rare nowadays?

[Bloodreign]

Game covers seem rather sterile these days, nothing that screams "hey I'm cool looking but have little to do with the game" anymore.

[A-Yty]

Game covers seem rather sterile these days, nothing that screams "hey I'm cool looking but have little to do with the game" anymore.

After game covers became less cool, they started lying with doctored game-play footage 

Another cool feature of illustrations in the 80's and 90's was the imminent sense of danger. Or the cover even giving the impression that the protagonist(s) is/are completely outnumbered and/or doomed. Examples:

http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/9/93770/2361171-nes_bioniccommando.jpg
http://olliraa.mbnet.fi/knightmare.jpg
http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/tmnt/tmnt_files/tmnt3-nes-us-cover.jpg

This applied to movies as well:

https://lunkiandsika.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/the-goonies-poster-01-1985.png

[Ananaz]

Box=Art did an interview last year with Tom duBois, the guy responsible for many of most iconic Konami boxarts of the eighties and early nineties. Shame he hasn't worked on videogame stuff since, but his Disney stuff is pretty gorgeous too.

http://www.boxequalsart.com/tom-dubois-interview-page.html