Really neat to see the shift in orientation from how it was painted to how it was published! That slight rotation and how they cropped it was a good design choice

According to the Spectrum Computing forum, the SW'87 signature can be seen over the cockpit's window, on the left side of the framed picture. We are pretty sure that this signature is from Steve Weston, great artist that worked for Hewson and British Telecom (Firebird and Rainbird labels), and 21st Century Entertainment.

Thank you!

Best regards

10 hours ago, Pablo said:

According to the Spectrum Computing forum, the SW'87 signature can be seen over the cockpit's window, on the left side of the framed picture. We are pretty sure that this signature is from Steve Weston, great artist that worked for Hewson and British Telecom (Firebird and Rainbird labels), and 21st Century Entertainment.

Thank you!

Best regards

Exceptional! Thank you! Hard to see in the photo of the painting, but yep right on the German magazine ad I see the initials. Plus apparently MobyGames credits Steve Weston for the box art and I clearly see the same "SW" initials on another Firebird box art he did: Rasputin. I'll work on adding Steve to the OVGA database! @Ibrahim_UK

Hi

Yes, Steve was a great artist located in Oxfordshire who sadly passed away more than a decade ago (1948-2010). He worked mainly for Hewson and Telecomsoft, but it seems that for other companies too. https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/8857403.steve-weston-graphic-artist/

He was the artist behind Hewson's golden age with cover art for games such as Uridium, Firelord, Exolon, Impossaball, Nebulus, Gun Runner, Zynaps, Ranarama, Cybernoid, Cybernoid II, Marauder, Eliminator, Netherworld... You can check his contributions to the Spectrum's software here (albeit the list is a work in progress and the addition of Ring Wars has not been revised by administrators yet): https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/list?label_id=18120

On Spectrum Computing we have a project running right now to try to track down every single cover artist we can to add them to each game entry on the database. On the last few years we have credited a lot of games and we continue to do so. There's a couple of threads devoted to this task. Maybe you can track down a lot of useful information in there:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=674#p674

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?p=39680#p39680

Best regards

9 hours ago, Sanford_US said:

Exceptional! Thank you! Hard to see in the photo of the painting, but yep right on the German magazine ad I see the initials. Plus apparently MobyGames credits Steve Weston for the box art and I clearly see the same "SW" initials on another Firebird box art he did: Rasputin. I'll work on adding Steve to the OVGA database! @Ibrahim_UK

Steve Weston used different signatures over the years. For instance, sometimes his signature was part of the illustration itself, that's the case with the sublime cover for Starglider 2 or the 16 bit version of Hewson's 5th Gear and sometimes is quite difficult to track down.

This is my personal list of credited Steve Weston covers at the moment.

- Rasputin (Firebird).

- Uridium (Hewson).

- Runestone (Firebird).

- Firelord (Hewson).

- The Comet Game (Firebird).

- Impossaball (Hewson).

- Ranarama (Hewson).

- Gunrunner (Hewson).

- Alleykat (Hewson).

- Exolon (Hewson).

- Zynaps (Hewson).

- Nebulus (Hewson).

- The Pawn (Rainbird).

- Cybernoid (Hewson).

- Marauder (Hewson).

- Netherworld (Hewson).

- Eliminator (Hewson).

- Cybernoid 2 (Hewson).

- Ring Wars (Cascade).

- 5th Gear (Hewson - 16 bit).

- Astaroth (Hewson - 16 bit).

- Custodian (Hewson - 16 bit).

- Onslaught (Hewson - 16 bit).

- Starglider 2 (Rainbird).

- Fish! (Rainbird).

Probably, there are several more covers done by him, but we have been unable to track down his signature, so at the moment they remain uncredited.

- Eagles (Hewson).

- Morpheus (Hewson - unreleased cover).

- Magnetron (Hewson - unreleased cover, but very similar to the Firebird release that was probably his too).

- Steel (Hewson - 16 bit).

- Evening Star (Hewson).

And several more.

Thanks for the enlightenment Pablo! I always much enjoyed this painting, and realizing it was created by the memorable Steve Weston 'knights" it, so to say.

10 hours ago, Eric Metalic said:

Thanks for the enlightenment Pablo! I always much enjoyed this painting, and realizing it was created by the memorable Steve Weston 'knights" it, so to say.

Thank you Eric! I love Steve's covers for Hewson since my teens without knowing who the artist behind them was, and many years later thanks to the Internet it was great to find out that he was a well-known artist that worked with very different techniques (oil painting, 3D imagery, airbrush, etc.). Thanks to the labour of love of the retrogaming community we are discovering more and more of his covers for the UK videogame industry in the '80s/'90s. For instance, the fact that he worked for British Telecom (Firebird and Rainbird) it wasn't a complete surprise to me because in some sites you could find work listings and several Rainbird covers were listed. However this Ring Wars cover was a very pleasant surprise because I always loved the composition, the use of perspective, the fierce action that depicts that cover. I hope one day more and more covers could be credited to him.

Best regards

Pablo

PS. The attached picture is one of my favourites that I'm pretty sure is one of Steve's, but it hasn't been credited yet. Probably his signature is hidden in there somewhere. Simply amazing cover!

Hi guys!

Three more Steve Weston covers credited a while ago on the Spectrum Computing forum but not registered on the ZXDB database yet, including the SW signature that we already know.

- Jewels Of Darkness (Rainbird Software, 1986). Compilation.

- Silicon Dreams (Rainbird Software, 1986). Compilation.

- Knight Orc (Rainbird Software, 1987).

Great finds, Pablo! I will add them to Steve's bio. All three are great works and its good his initials made it onto the spine.