German / European - Covers (Pokemon, Zelda, etc...)

[PX0]

Hey,

This thread features german and european (multi-language) PAL covers.

I have started this thread, because The Cover Project mostly collects english (US) covers and I could not find good enough images for my own collection of german games elsewhere either.

I will use the first post as a gateway to showcase my own work.

Still EVERYONE else is invited to share their work here as well.

[PX0]

My Covers:

Download: EU Size (MediaFire.com) Download: US Size / Shadowfox / CustomGameCases (MediaFire.com) - EU size covers (27,85cm x 11,6 cm) fit european Nintendo DS cases. - US size covers (27,6cm x 11,6cm) fit amarican Nintendo DS cases, Shadowfox cases and CustomGameCases.

Template:

Download: MEDIAFIRE  or  BOX.com - for GameBoy, GameBoy Color and GameBoy Advance - vector based - PAL logos - Size: 27,85 cm x 11,6 cm (Spine: 1,9 cm) - Some logos are salvaged from NeoRame's pack of templates. (See credits!)

Spines:

Download: MEDIAFIRE This PSD-File contains the spines for all the covers I have made. Use this file to modify the spines as you see fit.

Credits:

I have used several templates, existing (englisch, french) covers, scans and other images as resource material for my work. I will try to name as many sources as I can remember. thecoverproject.com nintandbox.net andydecarli.com ebay.com / ebay.de vgmuseum.com vizzed.com dorando.emuverse.com mariouniverse.com neorame.deviantart.com

Pokemon Series

Pokemon - 1. Generation - Blaue Edition Pokemon - 1. Generation - Rote Edition Pokemon - 1. Generation - Gelbe Edition Pokemon - 2. Generation - Silberne Edition Pokemon - 2. Generation - Goldene Edition Pokemon - 2. Generation - Kristall Edition Pokemon - 3. Generation - Saphir Edition Pokemon - 3. Generation - Rubin Ediiton Pokemon - 3. Generation - Smaragd Edition Pokemon - 3. Generation - Blattgrüne Edition Pokemon - 3. Generation - Feuerrote Edition Pokemon - Trading Card Game

Zelda Series

The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening DX The Legend of Zelda - Oracle of Ages The Legend of Zelda - Oracle of Seasons The Legend of Zelda - A Link to the Past The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap

Donkey Kong Land & Donkey Kong Country

Donkey Kong Land 1 Donkey Kong Land 2 Donkey Kong Land 3 Donkey Kong Country 1 Donkey Kong Country 2 Donkey Kong Country 3

Other

Asterix Asterix & Obelix Darkwing Duck Mario Kart - Super Circuit Mario's Picross Mario's Picross (Custom) Die Schlümpfe Lucky Luke

[Hironiemus]

Hi PX0,

Ah great, finally someone else picked it up. I asked for some scans of Euro boxes a while back but hardly got a response. I did not know about nintandbox.net it seems very resourceful, thanks for sharing.
Funny thing I should come by here just now as I have not done so for a while.

Anyway I also did some covers but was not completely satisfied with them since they were only lookalikes. They are floating somewhere around here, must look for the thread, did you see them?

Overall I think you did a great job, Here are just some things I noticed on glancing through (or that I would have done different)
– Personally I dislike the spines (mainly the Gameboy logos) – would you care to share the sources so I can rearrange them for me or make some alternate ones?
– Aspect ratio: If you use the wider sidebars from the forum template, you can keep the aspect ratio as or closer to the original.
– Speaking of the sidebar: Your advance logo has the “®” and the “™” with the latter being black instead of blue.
– Oracle of Seasons: There is a typo in the english part (a hero foR all seasons). How did you fix the white part of the scan? Did you combine the NA and EU version?
– Four Swords: She is a pain to descreen but maybe she could use some more?

Sorry for being nitpicky about some things, but I figured since you are german you must be a perfectionis too. Otherwise why even bother with euro covers 

Cheers,
Hironiemus

[PX0]

– Personally I dislike the spines (mainly the Gameboy logos) – would you care to share the sources so I can rearrange them for me or make some alternate ones?

By ditching the background for the logo, I tried to give the spine a cleaner look. Closer to the original game boxes.
I'm not sure about them myself, but I'm gonna stick with them for now. (Since I have already printed quite a few covers for my own games.)

I don't want to upload all my psd-files, since they are quite huge (some of them are over 100 MB).

But I could upload the psd for the spines. That schould be enough for you to rearrange them.

– Aspect ratio: If you use the wider sidebars from the forum template, you can keep the aspect ratio as or closer to the original.

I disagree with you on that part. 

I did try to preserve the aspect ratio as good as possible and personally, I don't think the covers look as stretched out as many of the others do.
The sidebars from one of the templates are way to wide and I feel they ruin the look of the front cover.

– Speaking of the sidebar: Your advance logo has the “®” and the “™” with the latter being black instead of blue.

You are right about the “®”. I will remove this in future covers.
I'm not sure about the “™”. It does look pretty dark on the original boxes. But you are right. It might just be a very dark purple / blue color, instead of black. I will work on that.

– Oracle of Seasons: There is a typo in the english part (a hero foR all seasons). How did you fix the white part of the scan? Did you combine the NA and EU version?

What do you mean by "white parts"?

I happen to own the game (EU version). So the front cover is a scan of my own, edited with photoshop. (There are varios ways to improve "white parts".)

The backside of the cover is NOT a scan, but a complete reproduction.
The background I got from the manual of the game (manuals often have the same background as the box, but unobscured by logos or text.)
The text I typed in myself. (Sorry for the typo!^^)

– Four Swords: She is a pain to descreen but maybe she could use some more?

Yes, it was a pain and no, I don't think I can improve it much more.
At least not without reproducing the background.

[PX0]

PSD FILES of the Zelda and Pokemon spines:

-> https://app.box.com/s/fgg31ubxkh43pxq9zubkgsxvoie83o2n


For the Zelda-Logos on the spines I used two different fonts. They are called "Triforce" and "Charlemagne".

You can get them for free on the official european Zelda page:

-> http://www.zeldaeurope.de/multimedia/fonts.php

[Hironiemus]

Just to say it again, I like what you have done, and most of it is probably better than I could do, all of what I said are rather minor things.
You are right that the aspect ratio of your covers is better than most others; personally I probably would never have noticed it was off, had I not compared four swords with my own version.
Just thought you might be interested to have them exactly the way they were.
On a sidenote: most music album covers on the net are squeezed as well because CD booklets are not square, but then again LP sleeves might be and some CD covers might be squeezed, who knows …

Just looked on some boxes: Gameboy / Gameboy Color have a black ™, Gameboy Advance has the same purple–blueish as the logo.

I thought you were using the scan of OoS from nintandbox which has a missing bit on the front, which is why I was asking about the white part.

Anyway thanks for uploading the spines (and the covers of course) although it seems I must open it in Photoshop (only have Gimp here). Yes, I dig the idea of having the spines look more stock. I used the b/w-logos for the sake of simplicity.
(There are not always enough clean parts on the box to fill the complete spine.) I would have used the silver backgrounded ones but they were partly only available in the US version.
Have you seen wiggy’s covers? I like the way his logos look, however I am not sure if that would work on differently colored spines, maybe if it was only b/w.

Thanks, for pointing out the Zelda-Fonts, I am always picky about using the right fonts. Oh and while we are at it, I did go through quite some effort to track some of the fonts down Nintendo used on the boxes. I have vector graphics of the Seal of Quality (EN/DE) using the right font (the ones floating around all use the wrong one, the sidebar of the NES-Classics series (I think the number on the d-pad is not 100% right but very close might only be stretched a bit.) Also the font on the OoA/OoS covers. Just in case you are interested …

[PX0]

Yeah, it seems you loose all the layer-effects, when you open psd-files in gimp.
If it is just the GameBoy logos you want to change, I could upload the spines (as png), without the logos.

I do like wiiggy's logos as well.^^
Maybe I will try and see, what I can do with them.

I am interested in fonts.
As far as I now, Nintendo often used "Futura round" for the text on the backside. Unfortunately that is a commercial font and I could not bring myself to pay the €30 for it, yet.
So I used fonts that look somewhat similar.

[PX0]

So I have worked on the spines for a bit.



The GameBoy logos are much smaller now and have a solid background.
They are the same size as the ones from the various templates, so they can easily be swapped, if people prefer to use those.

The text is now aligned to read from top to bottom.

I am going to post the updated covers soon.

[starfetcher]

Wow, your covers (and especially the new spines) look absolutely awesome! I'm going to use them as soon as you upload them. 

Oh, and one thing: Could you possibly make a cover of the (black) DX version of Link's Awakening? Only if you have the time, of course.

[starfetcher]

Oh, I just saw, you uploaded the updated Pokémon covers to your box yesterday. Printing now

[Hironiemus]

Hi,

thanks for reworking the spines, I think they look a lot more professional now.
Swapping the reading direction was the other thing I’d have wanted, so thanks for that.

I would still change the new Gameboy-logos a bit which is swap the  „Nintendo“-lettering for the one from the logo or leave it out altogether (or only use it for the original Gameboy like Nintendo have done on their devices). I uploaded the lettering as vector in case you don’t have it.

About the fonts, yes, I got as far as Futura, but couldn’t figure out an exact match (especially from the scan), so thanks for pointing out Futura Round, seems you knew than me here.
To me it seems a bit absurd to buy fonts to do these covers, since they are reproductions of copyrighted material and thus only good for personal use anyway.
Personally for anything original I create I try to use only free fonts or where I have the licence – most standard fonts have an open source variety available. Another thing to consider if you buy the fonts is that usually the 30€ will only buy you one font not the whole typeface. In this case you would have to buy the condensed version and the bold condensed version fonts – both of which are pretty much useless on their own for anything else. Anyways I’m veering off so enough of that. For smaller things there is also the technical possibility to use the webfonts they are easy to obtain, because they are used to render the previews in web fonts shops and are downloaded by your browser – if you get my meaning. Or you can use screenshots of the rendered text, which can be changed.

So here are the bits I told you about in my previous post:

Seal of Quality using Adobe Helvetica Condensed.
NES Classics bar: Linotype (sic!) Futura black oblique.
NES Classics D-pad: DIN1451 Mittelschrift obtained from here.

The last one is not a 100% match but it is pretty darn close for these small numerals.
I uploaded these bits to my box (or will in a minute).
Edit: Box link

As I stated above most standard font families have an open source variety available, a Futura one goes under the name of „Universalis“ and can be obtained from Arkandis.

So long …

[PX0]

The updated covers should be online now.

Oh, and one thing: Could you possibly make a cover of the (black) DX version of Link's Awakening? Only if you have the time, of course.

Thank you, I'm glad you like the covers.

I mostly do covers for myself - for the games I own. But I think I will add the DX-version of Link's Awakening simply to complete the series.
Can't tell you when though, just check back here fromt time to time.

I would still change the new Gameboy-logos a bit which is swap the  „Nintendo“-lettering for the one from the logo or leave it out altogether (or only use it for the original Gameboy like Nintendo have done on their devices). I uploaded the lettering as vector in case you don’t have it.

[...]

As I stated above most standard font families have an open source variety available, a Futura one goes under the name of „Universalis“ and can be obtained from Arkandis.

I chose to add the "NINTENDO" to the Color and Advance logo also, to make it look more symetrical and less empty. (I have tried out a few other variants, including the ones you mentioned. But they just did not look right to me.)
Of course those are rather small details everyone might feel different about.

If it does bother you, I'm afraid you will have to adjust the logos yourself. Which should not be that difficult though, now that they are on a solid background. (The background is just white with a small grey gradiant coming from the top left corner.)
I might even upload my templete later, so you would just have to fix this one specific text-layer and then put your modified logo on top of mine.


Thank you for the resource material.
Logos and stuff I have already salvaged from various templates or created myself.

The "UniversalisADF" font was new to me and I think I will use that for future covers.
Although I would question wether that font is indeed legal, since on the first glance it looks absolutly identical to Futura... but that should not be of my concern, I guess.  

[PX0]

The Legend of Zelda - Link's Awakening DX
Size: EU NDS Case
High Quality Source (MEDIAFIRE.com): Click image!
High Quality Source (BOX.com): https://app.box.com/s/mg7c2szsalyfpyfm0fdji6j4z4mtaclw



Tetris
Size: EU NDS Case
High Quality Source (MEDIAFIRE.com): Click image!
High Quality Source (BOX.com): https://app.box.com/s/mg7c2szsalyfpyfm0fdji6j4z4mtaclw

[PX0]

Lucky Luke
Size: EU NDS Case
High Quality Source (MEDIAFIRE.com): Click image!
High Quality Source (BOX.com): https://app.box.com/s/mg7c2szsalyfpyfm0fdji6j4z4mtaclw

[larryinc64]

Nice work, great to see my PAL template parts be put to work.