R.I.P. Bob Wakelin

It seems we have some sad news here as Graphic Designer and artist Bob Wakelin has passed away.  For those who didn't know and that includes me in this, Bob did the Box Art to most of Oceans and Imagine Games back in  the 80's.  So all those cool conversions of 80's arcade games and film licenses where graced with his art, that and Wizball.

My favourite art apart from the aforementioned Wizball has to be Rainbow Islands and Comic Bakery, with New Zealand Story and Mikie as a runner up.  I do have a soft spot for Comic Bakery as it just looks like a chef being set upon by marauding raccoons which is always a bonus. That and the tape is one of the few I have out that hasn't been packed away in the loft.

Rainbow Islands is a pretty good conversion of the coin op by Graftgold and the box art reflected this, with Bub running away from a cute spider with some bees looking on. Also this was replicated  to some degree on the C64 version and I guess other versions too.

The Amiga version and most of the 8 bit ports were actually quite amazing, though its a multi load for all tape versions (and quite liable to fail back then as well). The exception being the rubbish US NES version which looks like a bad children's book. Though Fami version is nice.

Wizball and its style is so western and clean it reminds me of a story books or video artwork back then.  Pretty good C64 game with it too.