Chinese Bootleg Red Alert Cover Art

Check out this old box art I found for Red Alert

Discussion about the game and its default mods.
Post Reply
User avatar
RadicalEdward2
Posts: 80
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 12:34 am
Location: NJ

Chinese Bootleg Red Alert Cover Art

Post by RadicalEdward2 »

Since the random discussions section is closed, I thought I'd post my little finding here since it's at least Red Alert-related.

A few weeks ago, I was in the Philippines and stumbled upon this gem when I was looking through my cousin's old PS1 games.

Image

It's a Japanese or Chinese bootleg of Red Alert for the PS1.

Lets take a moment to analyze this wonderful cover art.

So... we know that whoever made it took enough time to overlap the logo over the image of some random pilot. I'll give them credit for that considering this was done in like 1998 maybe even 2000.

Image

Photoshop wasn't exactly easy to come by. If you look a bit closer at the "E R " on top of the pilot, you can actually see that some of the letter's outlining was cut off. So someone made a copy of those letters and pasted them on top of the cutout of the pilot without making sure that none of the letters outlining was clean cut.

This is all a clear sign that this was not only not done in an editing software but, PIECED TOGETHER BY HAND using old-school graphic designing techniques (like with a lined cutting board)! One other reason I know this was all hand-made is because you can see a crease-line where the guy accidentally bent the leg of the "R" but, didn't bother to replace it.

The entire scene is littered with fighter jets. I kind of doubt the dude that made this even played the game because not only are none of these aircraft in the game,

Behind the centerpiece is a scene of an aircraft carrier with what appear to be F-15E Strike Eagles from the 80s (because they're as generic of fighter jets as you can get for the 90s) taking off from it.

As many of us know from playing the game, aircraft carriers and US jets don't appear ANYWHERE in the game. The only time they ever appear (as of the late 1990s) was in the FMVs and renders from Tiberian Dawn.

Also, of all the flags featured on the cover, only three of them actually participate in the game: Germany, England, and Greece (USA if you count their Allied affiliation and General Carville in the expansion). What's interesting it that it also includes Turkey and Spain which weren't playable countries until the expansions.

No clue as to how Australia, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and Egypt got involved but, they're apparently in the game according to this cover art.

Image

With that in mind, check out that sweet scene of jets flying over the Great Pyramids of Giza.
WHERE THE HELL WAS THAT IN THE GAME?!

I get they wanted to spice up the cover art by adding cool action shots but, that wasn't even in the game! What makes it even funnier is the fact that the Pyramids wouldn't appear in Red Alert until Yuri's Revenge. So this random bootlegger unintentionally predicted Yuri's Revenge maybe 3 or 4 years before it came out.
Yeah, sure, the pyramids could technically count as a scene from the original Command & Conquer but, lets not give these bootleggers THAT much credit.


And for a last bit of icing on the bootleg cake, how about that castle?!
You might say to yourself, "Hmm...I do not recall there being any medieval castles in Red Alert."

Image

That's because THERE AREN'T!
But, could you imagine how stoked you have been if your first exposure to Command & Conquer was this fake box art?

I mean, I would have been on the edge of my seat waiting for that final mission where I storm Stalin's secret castle lair! Screw the nukes! Stalin had a freakin' castle!

I wonder what the fake story about the game would have been about...

Russia isn't referenced once anywhere so, lets assume Japan or Egypt decided they wanted to take over the world using fighter jets. But the UN (in bootleg Red Alert 1940s) said, "Nah", and deployed aircraft carriers to storm the castle of the evil Egyptian/Japanese mastermind, Fukuroshi Tutankhamitsu. You also play as an ace US pilot named, John Westwood (the pilot on the cover), and command forces to build bases while you fly above the battlefield in your jet. Israel joined in too cause they wanted to get back at Egypt for making them help build the pyramids or something. I dunno.


The back isn't anything special since it's just a photocopy of the actual back cover.
Image

Don't mind the staggering $249.00, the exchange of the Filipino Peso to USD is about $4.98 USD.

Sadly, the actual disc for the game is long gone but, I can imagine it probably had an even crazier design (if it wasn't just "Red Alert" written in sharpie on a blank disc).

I know most of the stuff on this forum is supposed to relate to OpenRA but, I couldn't let this thing stay forgotten by time.

noobmapmaker
Posts: 1086
Joined: Wed Dec 10, 2014 11:59 am

Post by noobmapmaker »

Haha nice forensic graphical analysis :) Somewhere in the Philippines a guy is having a drink not knowing that people are currently paying in depth attention to his work of 2 decades ago.
Playlist with ALL games of the Dark Tournament Youtube.com/CorrodeCasts
Consider supporting OpenRA by setting a bounty or by donating for a server

User avatar
Smitty
Posts: 192
Joined: Mon Sep 26, 2016 1:33 am
Location: Oklahoma

Re: Chinese Bootleg Red Alert Cover Art

Post by Smitty »

RadicalEdward2 wrote: Behind the centerpiece is a scene of an aircraft carrier with what appear to be F-15E Strike Eagles from the 80s (because they're as generic of fighter jets as you can get for the 90s) taking off from it.
Hate to go all military fanboy on ya but those are all F-4 Phantoms.
"Do not trust the balance tzars (Smitty, Orb). They are making the changes either for the wrong reasons, for no reason at all, or just because they can and it makes them feel good." - Alex Jones

User avatar
RadicalEdward2
Posts: 80
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 12:34 am
Location: NJ

Re: Chinese Bootleg Red Alert Cover Art

Post by RadicalEdward2 »

Smitty wrote:
RadicalEdward2 wrote: Behind the centerpiece is a scene of an aircraft carrier with what appear to be F-15E Strike Eagles from the 80s (because they're as generic of fighter jets as you can get for the 90s) taking off from it.
Hate to go all military fanboy on ya but those are all F-4 Phantoms.
Huh... could have swore they were F-15s but, you're probably right.
If I knew how to mod beyond map making, I would love to go all out coming up with a BS story and campaign for this obscure piece of bootleg history.

User avatar
jaZz_KCS
Posts: 267
Joined: Tue Nov 10, 2015 4:46 pm
Location: Bremen

Post by jaZz_KCS »

Very sad that the CD itself is missing.
As a heavy collector of all sorts of game-related media, I would love to have that iso in my collection. There ought to be interesting stuff on the CD. Ah well. One can only hope that an untouched image has been taken at some point...
Image
RAGL -->Replay Archive<--

User avatar
RadicalEdward2
Posts: 80
Joined: Sat Feb 11, 2017 12:34 am
Location: NJ

Post by RadicalEdward2 »

jaZz_KCS wrote: Very sad that the CD itself is missing.
As a heavy collector of all sorts of game-related media, I would love to have that iso in my collection. There ought to be interesting stuff on the CD. Ah well. One can only hope that an untouched image has been taken at some point...
Yeah. I would definitely say this specific bootleg of the game (cover art included) is a rare one. I tried looking up bootlegs of Red Alert and the version I have doesn't seem to come up anywhere in the image results. There's bound to be other copies floating around but, as far as I can tell, I have the only known to exist version of this particular bootleg.

Next time I go to the Philippines, I'll try to look through my cousin's CD racks in case it got mixed in there.

Post Reply