The Art of Hiro Kimura

[The Professor]

Hiro Kimura is an accomplished artist who did some of Atari's most notable box art, such as Centipede and E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Hiro Kimura was born in a Buddhist temple in Kyoto and studied art in Hawaii and California. He's done work for Atari, Warner Communications, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, HP, IBM, Intel, Anheuser-Busch, Universal Studios, and even designed a USPS Postage Stamp!

 

I've always found Hiro Kimura to be an incredible talent, and felt that despite the game's reputation, the artwork for E.T. may have been the best of them all.

 

The Verge thought so highly of Hiro's artwork that they included E.T. in their profile "How Atari box art turned 8-bit games into virtual wonderlands". Andrew Weber included these warm thoughts about Hiro's work:

 

 

E.T.: The Extraterrestrial is the Atari’s most infamous game: it was so bad and sold so poorly that rumors persist that truckloads of unsold copies are buried somewhere in New Mexico. Someone is even making a documentary about it. But as notoriously bad as the game is, the cover is actually quite wonderful, capturing the feeling of the film in a way the game failed to do. It was the handiwork of Japanese artist Hiro Kimura, whose work has been featured by everyone from Coca-Cola and General Electric to the NFL and The New Yorker.

 

 

Hiro Kimura remains to this day one of my favorite Atari artists and I'd like to share with you some of his work:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This last one could have been a good contender for SwordQuest AirWorld

 

 

 

 

 

For more on Hiro Kimura: http://www.hirostudio.com

 

 

[AlamoAtari]

Sure that last one could have been for air world. That basketball one looks cool as well. Going to check out his stuff for sure.

[Doctor Octagon]

I never knew he had made a stamp. That's really cool.