The Cover Project

General Category => FAQs, Guides, Templates and Vector Logos => Topic started by: rich2k4 on November 02, 2012, 12:46:59 AM

Title: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: rich2k4 on November 02, 2012, 12:46:59 AM
I do not like the spines that are on this site.  Don't like the red border around the N64 logo.  What can i do to get rid of the red border to make the spines look like how they did in retail?
Title: Re: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: JDavis on November 02, 2012, 01:13:45 AM
Short version: Photoshop and heavily modifying your game cases  :P

Long version:

The dimensions of the case spines don't match those of the original boxes. That red border helps fill in the difference while simultaneously creating visual uniformity between the front in and the back (connecting the red stripes).

On something like the SNES where the box spines were just black, this difference in dimensions isn't a big deal because you can just add more black and it looks the same.

But since N64 spines were all pictures, you either have to stretch the picture (making it hideously distorted) or fill in the difference in some other, obvious way.

Since the red stripe connects the front and the back it looks natural and inconspicuous.

The only other option would be to fill in the extra space with some similar shade of green/blue (depending on which spine you choose), which would look obvious and awful.
Title: Re: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: wiggy on November 02, 2012, 10:46:57 AM
Wow, that couldn't have been explained more precisely or clearly :D
Title: Re: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: mariocaseman on November 02, 2012, 09:07:53 PM
I would really love retail N64 spines..  I never knew it was impossible :(
Title: Re: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: games-go-round on November 03, 2012, 07:20:17 AM
I gotta be honest, I edit nearly every cover that I download off of this site before I print them.  Don't get me wrong - I love the site, and I appreciate all of the hard work that everyone's put into building the archive of game covers!  Still, for the sake of uniformity / color timing, almost every cover of mine has gotten a good run through the ol' Paint.NET  ;D

The N64 covers are a bit tricky, though, and I've been experimenting with ways to better edit and print them.  A lot of the scans here on TCP have colors that vary wildly between covers, with some having hues that are too vibrant or too washed-out, while others have mismatching green or blue spines.  I'm wanting to, at some point, make my own template with uniform colors for the spine and rear, but that's a project that's still a ways away.

The bottom line - if you want a clean, uniform, retail look for your N64 covers, you'll have to put some time into them.  The vertical covers here on the site are pretty great, though, so if you can live with your covers not being retail, that's a great option!
Title: Re: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: rich2k4 on November 21, 2012, 11:57:14 PM
I figured out a way to do it using GIMP's "Resynthesizer" tool.  This is similar to Photoshop's "Content aware Fill"   remaps textures based on surrounding pixels.  It works pretty well.
Title: Re: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: wiggy on November 22, 2012, 12:09:05 AM
Any pics?  I can't imagine how that would work since it's not a pattern that needs to be replicated so much as an image :-\
Title: Re: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: rich2k4 on November 22, 2012, 12:41:31 AM
it's not 100% identical to the original but it at least gets rid of the red border.  I think it looks ok

http://imgur.com/0GB4t
Title: Re: How can i get retail N64 covers?
Post by: rich2k4 on November 22, 2012, 12:55:49 AM
here is doom 64

http://imgur.com/hNqQa