Hit the jump for the full run.

Aperture Science Rocks: The Top 12 'Still Alive' Cover Versions [GameSetWatch]

Over at our favorite mainstream gaming news site, 1UP, Kurt Kalata has put up just an excellent history of video game cover art, from the bizarre imaginings of early cover artists attempting to extrapolate a four-pixel sprite into an incredibly detailed painting to the modern disparity between American, European and Japanese cover designs.

I have to admit, I really love those old covers. You can just imagine some random cover artist just pouring the booze down his throat as he tries to do the impossible: take all of Pac-Man's abstraction and trying to sum it up in a picture that tells some kind of story. "Okay, so there's this floating yellow pizza, and he has to eat dots and fruits, and he runs around a maze, and ghosts chase him! Wait! I got it! What if he's a deformed, buck-toothed jogger, the dots are hamburgers, and ghosts are chasing him around a castle? That makes sense, right?" Well, I'm sure it does when you've got a 9am deadline and you're on your third bottle of scotch. Florian Eckhardt

Judging A Game By Its Cover [1Up]

As I've somewhat shamefully admitted before, I'm a big fan of Eric S. Nylund's Halo novels. Just superlative toilet reading. So I'm pretty psyched by his upcoming Halo novel, Ghosts of Onyx. And now the cover's seen the light of day.

It's actually a fascinating image for Halo geeks like me: anyone notice how odd that one Spartan looks? Is she a prototype Spartan, or an advanced model of the armor, or some other type of battle armor entirely?

Here's the plot synopsis:

The Spartan-II program has gone public. Tales of super-soldiers fending off thousands of Covenant attacks has become the stuff of legend. ... Master Chief defends a besieged Earth, and the myriad factions of the Covenant continue their crusade to eliminate humanity, an ultra-secret cell of the Office of Naval Intelligence known as "Section Three" devises a plan to buy the UNSC vital time. They're going to need hundreds of will soldiers though ... and one more Spartan to get the job done. The planet Onyx is virtually abandoned and the perfect place to set this new plan in motion. But when the Master Chief destroys Halo, something is triggered deep within Onyx. Ancienct Forefunner technology stirs, and fleets of UNSC and Covenant race to claim it to change the course of the Human Covenant War. But this reawakened and ancient force may have plans of its own...

That makes it a bit vague as to when this takes place in the Halo universe, or which Spartans are sent to Onyx. At the end of Halo: First Strike, there's four Spartans left alive. Which Spartans are we looking at? Florian Eckhardt

Cover Art for Halo: Ghosts of Onyx Revealed [Team Xbox] (via Destructoid)

I love this little picture of Samus rocking out with her 8-bit guitar. What is she thrashing? Metroid tunes gone metal, naturally.

MetroidMetal.com is a place to celebrate the mysterious and hypnotic melodies from Nintendo's classic game series, Metroid.

These songs beg for more energy, so I've created this site to experiment with the genre that would suit these songs the best... metal.

Now if only we could get Torokun to do an image of a bikini-clad Samus climbing out of her mech-armor, sticking out her tongue and flashing devil horns. Florian Eckhardt

Metroid Metal (Thanks, Vincent!)