The thread of AtariBuff regarding the Atari 2600 game covers and my post in the latest acquisitions threat brought me to the idea of opening a new thread regarding game covers in general. Here is my quote from the lates acquisitions thread:

The Atari games have really nice artwork. I remember that the cover artwork had a much higher significance back in the 80s than today. Today, when collecting retro video games, I don't look at the covers most times. But back then, we sat in front of a Niedermeyer or Hartlauer catalog and stared at the cover photos of the games for hours, imagined how the game could be. The actual graphics of the game, that we often saw only after we bought it, was not that important, because we had the cover artwork in mind, and our imagination somehow connected the cover artwork with the actual game graphics. That was great and I miss this feeling somehow with today's video games, where the cover artwork doesn't count, but only the in-game graphics.

How do you think about game covers? Were they more important in the early years of video games, where the on-screen graphics were pretty simple and the artists drew great scenes for the game covers to animate the imagination of the players? Or is cover art for today's video games (Wii, Xbox 360, PS3) as important as it was in the early days?