Playstation One: Jewel or long boxes?

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Retro STrife
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Re: Playstation One: Jewel or long boxes?

Postby Retro STrife » February 17th, 2018, 5:52 pm

Matchstick wrote:The only issue I've had with my long boxes is that, over time, the cover image on the front and backs of the cases has tended to come unglued around the corners. i attribute it mostly to the damp Oregon climate where I live, but I've had a few games, Darkstalkers included, where I've had to gently remove the cover art from the long box and glue it back in place. Looks as good as new when it's done


Nice post Matchstick. I'm on the east coast and have had the same problem, so I don't think it's just Oregon. Do you use a gluestick? That's what I've always used for fixing my labels, whether it be these longbox labels, Atari labels, or anything else.

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Matchstick
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Re: Playstation One: Jewel or long boxes?

Postby Matchstick » February 17th, 2018, 8:08 pm

Retro STrife wrote:
Matchstick wrote:The only issue I've had with my long boxes is that, over time, the cover image on the front and backs of the cases has tended to come unglued around the corners. i attribute it mostly to the damp Oregon climate where I live, but I've had a few games, Darkstalkers included, where I've had to gently remove the cover art from the long box and glue it back in place. Looks as good as new when it's done


Nice post Matchstick. I'm on the east coast and have had the same problem, so I don't think it's just Oregon. Do you use a gluestick? That's what I've always used for fixing my labels, whether it be these longbox labels, Atari labels, or anything else.


Yessir! I use a standard Elmer's glue stick, though I typically go for one of the larger, thicker varieties. Some are made more for scrapbooking and feature photo-safe glue, and if I can find those, I go for them. Back when I was in art school, I used a brand known as Uhu for almost everything, which was a purple glue stick that came in a yellow tube. Haven't seen them in years, though.

That's a great photo of all four varieties of PlayStation game cases in one shot. I mostly associate the long boxes with the second case in the photo, the one for Return Fire. Those are the sturdier, hinged plastic cases that have the artwork gluing issue I mentioned before. I had both Darkstalkers and the original Resident Evil in cases like that, and I believe Krazy Ivan came in one of those cases, too.

I did like the cardboard cases, like the Doom case shown in the photo. I think the original NHL Shootout came in a case like that. I remember the two halves of the case fit together very, very snugly, which made for a nice "burping tupperware" effect when you put them back together. PC game boxes in the same style had a similar problem, but I always thought it was part of the charm of those cases. Most of my LucasArts PC and Mac games were in that style, and came with one of my favorite pack-in goodies ever - The LucasArts Adventurer magazine!

One detail that I find disappointing is how poorly the cover art for most long box games used the additional space on the box. In The Critic's photo, all three long box games have cover art that is bordered by a large black margin. Doom is bordered on both the bottom and the top edge. You can see where the designers tried to fill the space with what they had, by having the Ridge Racer car "break the frame" and extend downward into the black margin, while the Doom cover placed the game's logo high into the top margin, and filled the bottom space with company logos.

By comparison, the Steel Harbinger artwork fills its space perfectly. It's as if most cover art was done in more of a square shape or even a landscape style, and the designers of the box art had difficulty adapting it into the longer portrait format.

Did Japan or Europe use the long box format, or were they always in standard CD cases? If it's the latter, than I can totally understand the difficulty of trying to adapt cover art meant for a CD case into a longer format space. I know that Saturn games were always in standard CD cases in Japan, which led to some, um, "interesting" design decisions for our US case cover art. Moebius's killer Panzer Dragoon cover art comes to mind; here in the US, we just got a 3D render of the dragon and the rider from the game, against a plain black background. LAME!!


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