Lee MacLeod (b. 1953)

Interviewed by Adam Gidney in January 2021

Lee MacLeod is a Santa Fe, New Mexico-based plein air and studio painter that began his career in commercial illustration for book covers, game boxes, and film posters.

Lee often combined traditional illustration with photography, noticeable in many of his early game illustrations, including for his first game box art in 1989, Death Bringer, for Cinemaware’s secondary label Spotlight Software where he was prompted to emulate Boris Vallejo. In fact, the pose of the woman on the Death Bringer box is a direct reference to Boris Vallejo’s cover art for Edgar Rice Burroughs’ 1975 novel I Am a Barbarian.

Lee employed a similar style in his box art for Cinemaware’s The Kristal, an approach also noticeable in his Super C poster for Volume 12 of Nintendo Power (May/June 1990). Lee went on to contribute several interior pieces for Nintendo Power magazine: posters and spot illustrations, including the iconic Street Fighter II, Castlevania III and Final Fantasy posters. He did not produce any magazine cover art for Nintendo Power.

Beyond his Nintendo Power work, Lee’s most visible game projects include many of the North American box arts for the NES, SNES, and Game Boy releases of the Ultima series. Lee also did several projects for Sega. Alien Storm for the Sega Genesis was among Lee’s earliest Sega titles, but he did other several projects for Sega, including for the Genesis (Out of This World, Rolling Thunder 2 and 3), Sega CD (Rise of the Dragon), 32X (Tempo), and even Sega's Pocket Arcade series of LCD games.

Lee integrates the vivid colors of New Mexico, Colorado, and the American west into his work, so much so that game art collectors have come to know that game covers exhibiting vivid purple and/or pink mountainscapes stand a good chance of being Lee’s work.  Prominent examples include Lee’s Castlevania III poster for Nintendo Power, many of his Ultima titles, and King’s Bounty for New World Computing, Inc.

While rarely visible, Lee MacLeod signed his illustration work with his “LM” initials surrounded by a circle. Fun Fact: Lee included several of his game illustrations in a 1994 Cardz trading card set, in which each card includes on the back a brief commentary from Lee on the illustration or project details.

OVGA staff favorites include Lands of Lore: The Throne of Chaos, RPG Maker, and Saturday Night Slammasters.

OVGA has included below Lee MacLeod's full known box art catalog:

Lee has commented that no single original painting exists for Paladin’s Quest (1993) and that it was cobbled together digitally, mixing elements done by Lee with those from another artist. While only Lee’s box art for Enix’s Paladin’s Quest is included in his catalog above, Lee may additionally have been involved with the box art for Soul Blazer (1992), also by Enix. Lee’s art for Paladin’s Quest was done for Work House USA, the same firm through which Lee did a lot of his Nintendo Power work, including a Soul Blazer illustration—with similar composition to the box art—in the August 1992 issue. Like Paladin’s Quest, Lee recalls the Soul Blazer box art as being a composite image, possibly using or based on his work. However, no elements between the two images appear to be a one-for-one match, and given the uncertainty, OVGA has omitted Soul Blazer from Lee’s box art catalog. As a side note unrelated to Lee: the U.S. box art for ActRaiser (1992) from Enix was also almost certainly the product of the company’s early digital hijinks, making it unlikely a true original exists.

Tempo for the 32X was released with separate box arts for the Brazil and U.S. releases, both of which OVGA has credited to Lee MacLeod. The Brazil TecToy release features what has been regarded as an earlier version of Lee’s art (and how he recalls it leaving his studio), with subsequent revisions having been made for the U.S. art. While Lee doesn’t remember making the revisions himself, speculating that they could have been atop his original painting by Greg Winters (who was responsible for the preliminary art/layout upon which Lee based his painting), the final painting for the U.S. Tempo box art is collector owned and was purchased from Lee. Only one painting exists.

Lee MacLeod is additionally responsible for a handful of box art images that went unused:

Year information listed above corresponds to the year Lee painted the art, not the year the game would have been released. Aztec: Empire of Blood appears to have ultimately been released in 2000 in Europe for Windows under the name "Theocracy"; however, given that Microprose was not the ultimate publisher, OVGA has listed it as unreleased. Tower Assault was presumably intended to be a console port of the Amiga/DOS game Alien Breed: Tower Assault; however the intended platform and publisher are unknown. As a fun twist, Mick McGinty would end up illustrating the final box art for both Dig & Spike Volleyball and Pitball!