Thanks to the efforts of the Video Game History Foundation, high-quality promotional artwork files for the original PlayStation release of Breath of Fire III have been unearthed from old GamePro magazine press discs.
Dragnier has also converted and properly renamed the artwork in the newly-established Breath of Fire III artwork page!
According to the foundation’s YouTube video, GamePro magazine, which ran from 1989 to 2011, would log promotional artwork provided from video game publisher press kits on organized CDs for ease-of-access. These CDs (over 700 in total!) have since been donated to the foundation, who have been carefully archiving and hosting the content in their digital archive.
Breath of Fire III’s artwork in particular can be found on CD 130 and CD 165 of the GamePro press CD collection.
The artwork contained within the CDs includes a lot of familiar pieces by Breath of Fire series’ artist Tatsuya Yoshikawa. Those of you who have perused a 90s gaming magazine, Breath of Fire III instruction manual, or Breath of Fire III strategy guide with definitely recognize some of them. One of these pieces, a suit of armor, is actually one we’ve been unable to dig up anywhere, even in Japanese sources, so we’re not 100% sure which armor is being depicted!
The file names of some of the artwork files are pretty funny; clearly whoever was in charge of the artwork in 1997 and 1998 was a wee bit mistaken, or flat-out guessing the names of the characters and items. Highlights include “BIRDMAN.TIF” for the artwork of the gargoyle-esque Garr, “NEENA.TIF” for Nina, “MARSH.TIF” and “PEPPER.TIF” for Momo’s robot companion Honey, and “CATBALL.TIF” for the Midas Stone accessory.
The aforementioned video mentions the donated GamePro press CD collection includes artwork archived from 1995 to 1998. Nevertheless, Breath of Fire II, which released in late 1995 and was indeed covered by GamePro in early 1996, remains curiously absent. Darn!
It’s been a good week for Breath of Fire artwork preservation, as Gaming Alexandria has also come forth with high-resolution scans of Breath of Fire: Ryuu no Senshi‘s Super Famicom box art, instruction manual, and other contents!