@tylerbgood: Thank you and I appreciate your input! This was a tricky project to do for reasons I’ll detail below. And I have to say, I have a newfound respect for the time and effort you guys put into these covers.
This was the only loose game in my small, personal Genesis collection where I could not find a cover, here or elsewhere. And this is one of those games that ONLY came in cardboard boxes, making finding/purchasing one harder and more expensive. I figured the cheapest way to do this was to buy the UGC from retrogamecases.com with the intent to scan and edit the insert and then print it for a clone Genesis clam shell.
A couple of issues quickly became apparent: unfortunately, the cover was not of very high print quality and it was cropped; missing a precious amount of the badass artwork which bothered me. Also, the scanner I used gave me an error if I tried to go higher than 600 DPI nor did it give me the option to descreen for some reason. I had to do that the best I could post scan without making it TOO blurry. For the missing artwork, I found some lower quality scans online and tried to blend them as seamlessly as possible. You might notice some discoloration, blurriness and clone stamping at the edges, but for the most part, I think it looks better with more image. Here is the raw scan I had to work with. Anyone else is free to take a crack at it if they wish.
•The Playmates logos on the front, back, and spine as well as the Mutant Chronicles logo could be replaced with crisper images. I have a Playmates logo I made some time ago that I'd be happy to share, and I found a Mutant Chronicles logo online that I cleaned up a bit that should help as well. Both are linked below.
I agree. I actually made the Playmates logo blurrier on purpose. I guess for consistency. But thanks for finding those logos! I'll change that and see how it looks.
•To the left of the Sega Seal of Quality on the front cover there are some faint vertical lines crossing the red stripes. if I remember correctly this may be an issue with the template, but I may be mistaken.
D'oh! You're right! After printing it I felt like the Sega seal was too close to the spine so I moved it literally minutes before uploading it and I didn't scrutinize it closely enough. Good catch.
•The "Licensed by Sega Enterprises" text on the bottom of the front cover is pretty blurry and should be replaced. I believe the template has a text box with that blurb that should line up pretty well over the existing text. If not, I'd be happy to lend a hand finding the right font and various character properties to make it fit.
•Lastly, The screenshots are pretty poor and look discolored, maybe sun-faded? This is a tough one, as recreating screenshots is both time-consuming and difficult. There's only a few folks here in the forums that have the skill to remake a screenshot from scratch. An easier solution would be to locate a better scan. Hopefully another member has a copy they can upload. Or maybe that's just how they were printed, I don't own a copy so can't say for certain. Either way, I'm not sure if the current screenshots would be a deal breaker or not if submitted to the main site, perhaps a Cover Admin could way in on this?
Yeah, like I said, the source scan wasn't great, IMO. If you look at the raw, you can see how messed the bottom front white text was. I used the paint brush to thicken the white text as best I could. I suppose I could also mess with the levels further to improve the washed out appearance, but when I did printed it out, it was darker and all-in-all looked quite passable and fits with the other scans from cover project well enough for me.
I am a bit of a perfectionist so I will be working on this further this weekend to improve it. Thanks again for your critique!
