In the 1930s, people got their tawdry, dangerous, violent, and filthy stories from pulp magazine stories about hard-boiled detectives and deadly dames. Nowadays, we get most of that from HBO or video games, and the latter at least gives us the opportunity to do the depraved things ourselves, right? Generally, people don’t think of video games and pulp magazines in the same day much less the same argument, but an artist named Ãstor Alexander has joined the two together by taking some of the biggest franchises in gaming’s past and present and personifying them perfectly in the style of a 1930s pulp rag.
Alexander’s newest batch has the characters of The Witcher series looking straight out of a Mickey Spillane novel. The first one has Geralt sporting a pistol and Triss lighting her cigarette with magic; the next has Geralt going the magic fire route while Yennifer plays with her medallion and looks stoic; and the last one has Geralt investigating while the spectre of Ciri looms large behind him. These covers are incredible and make us wish the medieval sorcery game series was set in Los Angeles after World War I.
That’s not all you’ll find from Alexander either; he’s also got much more classic covers, both in terms of pulp magazines and video games. They’re subtle and totally on the money as he takes actual pulp covers and transmutes Metroid Prime, The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, and Super Mario Bros. onto them. The results are amazing. There’s even a super sweet Bioshock cover called “Burial at Sea” which is particularly gorgeous. You can find all the ones I just mentioned in the gallery below!
Nintendo movies might not be that far off:
Images: Astor Alexander
Kyle Anderson is the Associate Editor for Nerdist. He writes the weekly look at weird or obscure films in Schlock & Awe. Follow him on Twitter!
