Professional artwork started to legitimise games as an entertainment medium, and even turned some products into objects of desire – something to buy for the packaging as well as the contents.

On platforms such as the ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 the crude pixel graphics of the games could never deliver what the fantasy land on the cover promised, but it did propel kid’s and their imaginations into the valley of quarrelling kings, the manager’s seat in the dugout, or behind the controls of a space-bound star fighter.