Recently I set up an instagram account in order to post images, art, and promotional materials for Dakota the RPG and anything else I made. I tasked myself with creating nine images, and here are the first six. Some of them were made with the help of an AI image generator called PICSART. Back in the Boxpunx days I would make all kinds of promotional images, and working on these made me very nostalgic for that time. Ah, the good old days.
This one of course is based on the Nintendo black box style, with some alterations to the color palette. For the unaware, "Spectrographx" is an imaginary game console inspired by the Turbographx, hence the spelling.
In the eighties there was a company called IMAGIC that made games for the Atari and the Intellivision. This box art is based on their iconic design. The artwork was created in PICSART, but I added the little cowboy and dog. It represents Dakota and Idaho at the world's fair, an event that happens much later in the game. The MX-98 is an imaginary computer inspired by the MSX and PC-98 Japanese computers.
The classic Atari 2600 style. I don't know why I find the orange version of this design so striking, but I do. Again, the artwork was created with PICSART, with very little modification. The scene depicts Bolt Town, a location in my game that is basically a village of robots. It's not an exact representation, but it's fairly close.
Spoiler alert! So, in Dakota the RPG, there is actually a fully complete RPG based on oldschool games from the 80s. It has a different visual style and plays a bit differently than the main game. It's supposed to be a surprise kind of thing, but I figure if you are reading this, then you deserve to know. Dakota must complete Bitstream Saga in order to progress. The primary reason I released my game early is because I finished the Bitstream Saga portion. So yeah, each segment of the game that I release will have a sort of mini-rpg in and within. My intent is to release three segments.
I love how this box art turned out, btw. I added the knight in the corner. Bitstream Saga is about a flooded world and yes, there is a scene with a rainbow at the top of a mountain.
Box art from the 1800s? I really just wanted to make an advert for the Worlds Fair that takes place towards the end of the game. I drew the font for the exposition logo. Yes, the Crystal Palace appears in the game. Will it burn to the ground? Maybe. This one was a lot of fun trying to get just right. The Mega-drive and Super CD-ROM logos really complete the image, I think.
Lastly, we have an imaginary Dungeons & Dragons module from way back in the day. What if Dakota the RPG was a tabletop RPG from the 70s? The image depicts a scene from Bitstream Saga. This one was also fun trying to get it to look just right.
Anyway, That's all I got for now. Thanks for visiting my site! If you want to check out my instagram, you can do that here:
https://www.instagram.com/harlancore/
