(GB/GBC/GBA) 3DS Cases for Handheld Game Carts

[shenske]

@ Tyrannical
Download your covers as well. Will review them if you don't mind. If it doesn't have Shenske's name on the file name does that mean you did the cover or what?

My cover, his spine

[Head of Desserts]

Corrections & Suggestions
@ Rockin

Classic NES Series (Mario, Zelda) (GBA) and Donkey Kong Country 1 (GBA) = The black parts of the cover have like a grimy residue, is that because of the scanner?

Donkey Kong Country 2 (GBA) = The cover seems a little dull in color?

Game and Watch Gallery 3 (GBC) = The central spine is missing that look wavy-shadowy effect, the back cover’s text (font, color) just seems off with the nature of the cover.

Mario Golf (GBC) = The “ONLY FOR” text in the back doesn’t match with the rest of your covers.

Wario Land 2 (GBC) = The central spine is missing cool wavy-shadowy effect and  the GBC version of this game has a red background behind Wario not puke green

Tetris (GB) = Does it really need an “ONLY FOR” in the back? It plays on every Game Boy system!

Tetris DX (GBC) = Central spine is missing cool wavy-shadowy effect.

Pokemon Trading Card Game = Where did you get this cover? We only have one in the official database and it’s bad quality. Raise the text on the back cover, bottom right, a little higher, it’s too close to the edge. The Nintendo seal of approval on the back is not the right shape.

Some of the ONLY FOR text located on the back are too close to the edge

On some covers the “E” ESRB is fuzzy

On some covers the Nintendo Seal of Quality is not the right shape, mostly the ones located on the back.

[Head of Desserts]

Corrections & Suggestions
@Tyrannical

Why do you have duplicates 2a/2b of each of your Wario covers?

Wario Land II (GBC) (Both covers) = The central spine is missing the shadow-wavy effect. Why put the black Super Game Boy logo in the front? That’s not on the official box. The Nintendo Quality seal on the back is not correctly shaped like the front one.

Some of the "ONLY FOR" text located in the back of your covers are too close to the edge.

Mario Tennis (GBC) = Did you use the cover we have in the official database? It’s bad quality; the images and text come out fuzzy when printed. The front cover has a lot of color saturation.

Zelda covers, lots of traffic on the spine, Link on the bottom is great, and the name of the game in the middle just doesn’t look inside a box with borders. Too many color schemes in each section of the central spine. You can’t make out what is in the middle of the Triforce.

Zomg Pokémon Sapphire cover is purple, lol jk, we are already beat that topic to death.

Pokémon Fire Red (GBA) = Charizard on the spine is a dark orange compared to Charizard on the front.

Are all your Pokémon covers using that new fancy format that Shenske created?

Zelda Link’s Awakening (GB) = Same thing with spine as mentioned earlier. The first sentence in the back, why so much shadowing on that text? The Nintendo Seal of Quality in the back doesn’t look right. The KA ESRB logo looks bad.

Game & Watch Gallery 1 (GB) = Why did you decide to choose DK and Mr. G&W for the spine, looks good, just wondering.

[Head of Desserts]

@ Larry

Your Link's Awakening DX doesn't have the shadowy wavy effect on the central spine

Did you get your Game & Watch Gallery 2 (GBC) cover from the database because the one in the database is fuzz city.

[TyrannicalFascist]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll respond more in depth later where I'm at my computer. I'll reiterate though that my covers are merely adapted from available covers on the site, I only make the spines. So a lot of the little minor things you pointed out are not something I can fix myself. In addition some things are creative choice.  I make custom covers, not retail. As for the Zelda spines, I respectfully disagree. I made them to match my other series like Donkey Kong and Mega Man with the semi transparent gray bar behind the titles. I've printed them out and they look great to me.

[Head of Desserts]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll respond more in depth later where I'm at my computer. I'll reiterate though that my covers are merely adapted from available covers on the site, I only make the spines. So a lot of the little minor things you pointed out are not something I can fix myself. In addition some things are creative choice.  I make custom covers, not retail. As for the Zelda spines, I respectfully disagree. I made them to match my other series like Donkey Kong and Mega Man with the semi transparent gray bar behind the titles. I've printed them out and they look great to me.

Thanks for your response, and yeah never apologize for your work for it is yours and yours alone.

[TyrannicalFascist]

No worries. I may make alternate versions of my spines at some point, since I have the DK/G&WG/Mega Man/Zelda/MMPR style with the gray bar, and then the simpler stand-alone ones like Pokémon and Star Wars.

For any of the problems with the fronts or backs, I can redo them if there's a better cover or scans available. Like I said, most of them are taken from covers on the site. For the ones that are customs that I have adapted, I add the creator's name to my file, like Shenske for his Pokémon covers.

Corrections & Suggestions
@Tyrannical

Why do you have duplicates 2a/2b of each of your Wario covers?

Wario Land II (GBC) (Both covers) = The central spine is missing the shadow-wavy effect. Why put the black Super Game Boy logo in the front? That’s not on the official box. The Nintendo Quality seal on the back is not correctly shaped like the front one.

The 2a version features "Wario Land II" on the spine, and 2b features "Wario Land 2". It's to give an alternative if you don't like the random switching between arabic and roman numerals when lined up. Apparently the "2" version is what they used in Japan. The Super Game Boy logo was part of the PAL cover that I used for the red-orange version. I may replace that with the US version of that logo. What shadow-wavy effect are you talking about?

Mario Tennis (GBC) = Did you use the cover we have in the official database? It’s bad quality; the images and text come out fuzzy when printed. The front cover has a lot of color saturation.

Yeah this was one of the first I did when making 3DS case covers, so I'll be redoing it with a custom spine once a better cover is available.

Pokémon Fire Red (GBA) = Charizard on the spine is a dark orange compared to Charizard on the front.

Thanks for catching that, I'll add that to my to-do list.

Are all your Pokémon covers using that new fancy format that Shenske created?

Yep! I really liked his new covers because they were essentially re-created as a fusion of the original box art and the style of the newer Pokémon entries. I'll most likely convert all of them. (I'll be adapting his Emerald and more GBA hacks when he does them)

Game & Watch Gallery 1 (GB) = Why did you decide to choose DK and Mr. G&W for the spine, looks good, just wondering.

Well I found that art of all the characters for the series and lined it up so that it would showcase them on the spines while minimizing their faces being split in half by the separation of cases. The area next to DK was pretty bare, so I added Mr. Game & Watch, since they are Game & Watch games, and he's essentially featured in all of them in Classic Mode.

[Head of Desserts]

Look at the spine where it says Game Boy Color, compare Wario II with Super Mario Deluxe for example, see how Super Mario Deluxe has shadowing and grey blotches on the spine, Wario lacks that.

[TyrannicalFascist]

Look at the spine where it says Game Boy Color, compare Wario II with Super Mario Deluxe for example, see how Super Mario Deluxe has shadowing and grey blotches on the spine, Wario lacks that.

Oh you're talking about the actual "Game Boy Color" part at the top of the spine. That's actually intentional. Larryinc64 created two versions of the Game Boy Color logos in the template - one for the black cartridge Game Boy Color games that are backwards compatible, and one for the regular non-backwards-compatible games. The backwards compatible games use the Game Boy background with the faint lines on the front, back and spine bars. All the games I've made covers for have been made with that in mind - see Game & Watch Gallery 2 and 3, and Link's Awakening DX. Take a look at the first post in this thread and you'll notice the 2 GBC images he posted. Subtle, but I think it's pretty clever of him.

I've added Shenske's Pokémon Emerald, and updated Pokémon FireRed with the Charizard on the spine color corrected to match the front. Just need to do "Frigo Returns" to complete all the covers he's done so far (which Pokémon is on the front? I'm not familiar with a lot of the newer ones).

I'm also going to be doing some cleaning house in my Box folder to better reorganize things, so if anyone finds any of my links in any thread to be broken, please let me know.

[DarrienEmerald]

Megaman World is the Japanese version of the US Mega Man GB games.

Speaking of that, I have the font Nintendo used on most GBC and GBA games, maybe you could use that.

Okay, finally got them all redone.  Had a migraine for a couple days, and couldn't look at the computer screen longer than a few minutes at a time.  On the plus side, got a lot of old-fashioned reading done that I'd been putting off for a while, and some writing for other stuff as well.  Anyways, uploaded all the "fixed" ones to my Box.  I changed the background gradient map a little, then dropped the exposure to -1, and added a little more stroke to the background text, all to make it stand out a little better.  Also, the font I used is actually heavily based on the font used in-game in the NES Mega Man games (specifically the latter half), so I kinda like it, but if others don't and you'd rather use the retail styled one, just send it my way or point me to a link.  I also put the Capcom logo on the side, changed the text color for the copyright, and updated them to match the retail box for each one, with the exception of 5.  I believe 5 was actually published in the US by Nintendo, but I went ahead and added all the stuff to make it appear as a Capcom-published game anyway to match everything else.



Clicking the picture link will take you to a bigger preview you can zoom in a little.  All five covers are up on my box, here.

As for the title choice, personally I hate when two games that are different share the same name, so it's always bugged me that they were just called "Mega Man II" etc.  There is also evidence that Capcom at least considered calling them Mega Man World officially, as you can find graphics tiles to spell out "World" in the old time "Mega Man" NES logo style in the game's code.  So I went with it.  If it's really bothersome, I can prolly easily enough drop the World part, but I don't plan on using any other logo, so if someone wants to do so, I can upload my Photoshop files (which are a mess, by the way, but functional at least... I don't like working linearly, I guess)

Anyways, let me know if I missed anything that I didn't catch, I'm sure there's something missing or just plain off, but I can't find anything off hand.

[Nacho3]

I see a bunch of GBA covers here but when I put them in a 3DS case it doesn't seem to fit very good. It either doesn't close at all or bulges badly. Does anybody have a pic they can show me what I'm doing wrong or are you leaving them with the bulge?

[AxelSteelBMX]

I see a bunch of GBA covers here but when I put them in a 3DS case it doesn't seem to fit very good. It either doesn't close at all or bulges badly. Does anybody have a pic they can show me what I'm doing wrong or are you leaving them with the bulge?

I checked my own cases, because I'm now curious myself about this new cover process.

I've only got 3 3DS games thus far (Ocarina of Time, Resident Evil Revelations, and Kingdom Hearts, in case you were curious), and all three of them are in their original cases. These cases are the ones with the 3DS cartridge slot offset from the center, not like the 3rd-party ones with centered cartridge slots. As has been shown before, original Game Boy carts can be rotated sideways and put on top of the 3DS cartridge slot, although putting inserts around it is a good idea due to the cart sliding around on the inside.

Anyway, at first it seemed like I was running into the same problem you were. I couldn't find a spot to put my GBA carts without experiencing major bulging problems. But it turns out that rotating the GBA carts sideways and placing them to the right of the 3DS cartridge slot (with the top of the cart on the outside) right between where the two instruction manual clips on the opposite inside cover are is a nearly perfect fit, and seems to work. I also tested this with a GBA manual inside, with positive results. The hooks keep the instruction manual positioned away from the bulgy part on the top of the cartridge perfectly. It should be noted that when closed it feels like there is some minor bulging, but it isn't noticeable to my eye.

However, "special" GBA carts will have problems. I have Boktai 1 and 2 on-hand to test with, and there is NO place that these carts will fit without major bulging. I don't even think that cutting away the 3DS cartridge slot will fix this problem. I think the 3DS cases are just too thin for them, and I'll just have to use old DS cases. I'd imagine that any other oddly-shaped cartridge would have similar problems, so keep that in mind.

To keep things looking nice and uniform, I will probably make a custom template for my own purposes based on this one for use with regular DS cases. The idea of not needing to warp the original cover art is very appealing. Cheers to everyone that's put in all this hard work so far.

[Nacho3]

Well, that worked perfectly thanks. Now I need to order some cases for these since I am not liking the cassette cases they are in now.

[TyrannicalFascist]

I've had no problem putting GBA games in the 3DS replacement cases from genesysDTP.com.

[TyrannicalFascist]

Added Shenske's Pokémon Frigo Returns Version cover, which completes his Pokémon set as it currently stands! Thanks to Shenske for the character art for the spine!

The lineup:


While Shenske is only planning to make covers for other GBA hacks at this point, since at least rockinroller91 has made some DS covers for 3DS cases, I think I may make matching spines for Pokémon Diamond, Pearl, Platinum, Black, White, Black 2 and White 2, if there's enough interest.