Terran Trade Auhority ~ Official Shmups Thread

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Thu May 22, 2008 7:59 pm

Do you know what is the Terran Trade Authority?

http://www.khantazi.org/Rec/TTABooks/TTABooks.html

When I was a kid, I received "Spacewreck" as a present from my grandparents. It was crucial to sparkle my interest in science fiction and probably my love for shmups too. Only later I discovered it was part of a series and got the others. (the fourth was never published in Italy)

The four Terran Trade books features some of the most beautiful and inspiring sci-fi illustrations I've ever seen. If you like Roger Dean, Celal Kandemiroglu, John Berkey, Dieter Rottermund, Oliver Frey, Peter Andrew Jones and in general amiga game covers (think "Psygnosis" look), you'll love these books. In fact, Tony Roberts, one of the artists involved in the TTA series, later painted Agony's cover.

I hope I'm not the only TTA fan around these parts!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terran_Trade_Authority

http://www.bisbos.com/rocketscience/tta/

http://www.niflheim.net/tta/

Sly Cherry Chunks · Post by **Sly Cherry Chunks** » Thu May 22, 2008 10:54 pm

Yes - when I was in hospital aged 10, a friend bought me Stewart Cowley's The Space Warriors which, according the the google search I just did, was the same sort of thing by the same author but aimed at a younger reader.

I never got the other stories, but this lead me to investigate other SciFi artists from the same era, most notably Tim White, who has a bunch of psygnosis covers under his belt (Amnios, Infestation).

There were a lot of similar books around at the time, all which aimed to compile all this artwork by these artists who were around and put stories and meanings to them. I remember Space Wars, Worlds and Weapons and something about a trip to New Mars.
Definite influence to euroshmups. Out of all the Amiga ones, I think Disposable Hero manages to replicate this artstyle the best.

Turrican · Post by **Turrican** » Fri May 23, 2008 1:32 am

Disposable Hero's cover was from the famous John Berkey:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Berkey

http://members.fortunecity.com/lioncourt77/berkey.html

Interestingly enough, the very same illustration was used as a cover for Star Control 3 (Mac).