MS-DOS / PC · 1993 · North America · Art: Don Ivan Punchatz
A lone marine on a rock, firing down into an infinite horde while demons claw up his legs — painted by a Playboy and National Geographic illustrator, using John Romero as the body model.
id Software commissioned Don Ivan Punchatz — a science-fiction and fantasy illustrator whose work had appeared in Heavy Metal, National Geographic, Playboy and Time — to produce both the Doom logo and the box painting. The composition is a single, brutally efficient idea: the player character stands on high ground, chaingun blazing into a demon at point-blank range, torso and leg already torn open, one arm seized by a creature below and another clawing at his leg while more swoop in from a horizon that has no end. It communicates the game's actual experience — permanent, escalating, unwinnable-looking odds — better than any screenshot of 1993 could have. To get the pose right, Punchatz visited id's Dallas offices, where the team built a prop plasma gun and supplied a male body model. John Romero, unable to resist, took his own shirt off and stood in for the model himself, adjusting the weapon's position to sell the stance. GameSpy would later name it the second-best video game box art of all time.