Colecovision US Retail vs. CBS Retail Boxes

[ckchapman]

Hey all.  New member, love the site, can't wait to start contributing...

I'm a Colecovision collector and am getting ready to scan a bunch of my US Colecovision boxes and upload them.  The main reason is the site seems to have a lot of the CBS variants of the boxes, and few of the original Coleco variants.  Is this mainly because the guys doing the Coleco work are Europeans?  Looking for a great hi-res scan of the US release of Star Trek BTW.

[KaiserWAVE]

Welcome to the site. The reason we have more covers for one variant is simply the scarcity of scans. So the cover artists here work with the scans they have themselves, find online or get from people like you who want to upload their scans.

Any box scans of games from the NES era and before are quite rare, especially in good shape. So the people here work with what they can get their hands on and are more or less dependent on people like you, who are willing to scan their boxes.

A word of advice to save anyone any trouble:

Always scan at aat least 300dpi (600dpi are preferred), use the derasterize/descreen/remove moire effect option of your scanner and when you scan cardboard boxes put a heavy book on the top of the scanner for best results.

Read Doom's scanning guide for the best results. You can find it here:
http://www.thecoverproject.net/forums/index.php?topic=1305.0

[ckchapman]

Thanks for the info Kaiser.  UL's on the way soon!

[ckchapman]

Okay, I'm a clueless noob.  I get it.  Since Raw scans have been disabled, is the easiest thing just to UL the scans to one of the other media hosts and then post a link to that?  Are there any certain tags or groups on the other servers that we should use?

[Seraph Man]

Best bet would be to upload to Box.net or something similar and post a link. As long as it's accessible and the quality isn't compromised, you'll be fine, and people will start to do their magical tweaking.

Oh, and try to avoid double posts. If you need to say more, edit your last post instead.

And welcome to the site!

[Arseen]

Best bet would be to upload to Box.net or something similar and post a link. As long as it's accessible and the quality isn't compromised, you'll be fine, and people will start to do their magical tweaking.

Yeah box.net or Mediafire.

Oh, and try to avoid double posts. If you need to say more, edit your last post instead.

Ten days between posts, don't be so tight. I'd say the accepted time is 24 hours or so, if the posts are otherwise OK. 

And welcome to the site!

THIS! 

[ckchapman]

Thanks guys.

[jeffsgames]

I would be happy to start helping put together real US boxes.  I have several already and would love to contribute. 

I'll work on one this week and let you know what I come up with.  I love the arcade games on the box art much more than the illustrations.

[redsox2012]

I'm a U.S. Colecovision collector too, and I've been able to use only a few of the cover scans here.  I've been doing Google image searches for U.S. box fronts, then printing them at 5X7 (which will fit into a UGC).  Then, I use the side and back of the CBS covers here to make a decent looking cover.  The backs of the CBS covers here are pretty similar to the U.S. retail backs, although the sides are quite different.

I did find high quality scans (front, back, and side) of U.S. DK, DK Jr., and Carnival at:

http://www.colecoboxart.com/index.html

Unfortuantely, they're not sized for printing for UGC's, so it takes some trial and error to get them right,  As you can see, mine aren't all quite the same size.  But, I'd rather have the U.S. covers that I like even if they're not perfect.  The Zaxxon was my fault - I missed a step when I printed it.  I'm going to re-do that one soon.

Since I don't own any CV games in their original boxes, so I can't scan anything to add to the database.  Also, I noticed that the Popeye CV cover here has a picture of the Intellivision version of the game.

[jeffsgames]

Yeah I saw that site and asked the guy that runs it for permission to use his art to start working on these.  I haven't heard back yet.  I'm hoping he does let me, or I'll have to make my own. 

[jeffsgames]

I did a couple during lunch today.  I did one to match the original box, then another to add a Colecovision logo to the top middle.  I like the second for a row of games on a shelf!

I used the art from the Colecoboxart page to do this to see what it would look like.  I'll upload them officially once I get permission

Here's what they look like:





What do you think about the colecovision logo at the top?  I tried to do something similar to the NES covers, but I never liked how large the block was on them.

[redsox2012]

I'm not too crazy about the Colecovision logo, but that's only because I'm a sucker for 100% original art whenever possible.  Good job though.