Steve-O

That is an incredibly reasonable way to resolve this question. Nicely done.

I should add that I have no problem at all with images that have been tweaked in Photoshop. If somebody wants to take an actual box scan and clean up scratches and smudges and other imperfections, more power to 'em! I'd just prefer to avoid boxes that have been constructed, Frankenstein-like, from spare parts somebody had lying around the lab.

In this case, the elements on the image are not true to the original, since the only thing that is scanned from the original box is the art. Everything else is recreated using fonts that, though close, are noticeably different from the originals. Take a look at the two images for Las Vegas Roulette above, for example. The Intellivision logo extends all the way over above the R in Roulette in the recreation, but does not in the original. The text at the bottom is also laid out differently.

I'm the one who has been uploading the sadly somewhat grungy Intellivision covers. Most, if not all, of the Intellivision boxes currently in the database are recreations from thecoverproject.net (the one you're asking about came from http://www.thecoverproject.net/view.php?game_id=5825). The x-by-2100 resolution is the giveaway, although if you look closely at the small fonts, you can tell they're not quite right. The backs of the boxes are much more obvious. I wish I could find better scans of some of these boxes, but Intellivision was a lot less prevalent than the 2600 back in the day, so there are far fewer sources available, especially for the backs. I've also been replacing a few Atari 2600 thecoverproject.net recreations here and there. These also look very nice, but they're a little too perfect, and the kerning of the fonts is usually a little off. Anyway, thanks for asking about those boxes rather than just rejecting them out-of-hand.

On occasion, I'll absent-mindedly make a dumb mistake -- e.g., upload the back of a box as the front or vice-versa -- and immediately realize it. It would be really nice if I could go into my pending changes list and delete things I know are wrong.

Moderators, if you run across the Sears Tele-Games versions of the early Atari 2600 games that I added to the database yesterday, please reject them. I had it in my head that those had separate ROMs associated with them, when in fact they do not. That does bring up the point that it would be really nice to have the ability to choose between multiple covers for a given game. I personally had a mix of Sears- and Atari-branded games, and it would be great if I could choose to display the box art from the version I best remember. I'd consider that pretty low down on the priority list, but it's something to consider.

That seems like a reasonable approach (although the many Atari developers who left to form 3rd parties back in the day might have a quibble or two). Mostly I'm suggesting that it's a good idea to have the prevailing wisdom written down somewhere so contributors can reference it when they have questions.

Cebion said Second this. You may add this to the bitbucket page. Ah, is that a more appropriate place to put these kind of requests? If so, we can delete this topic. Or we can keep it around to discuss genre things before making requests in bitbucket.

Since it doesn't look like we currently have the ability to add/modify genres (please correct me if I'm wrong), I thought this post might serve as a generic place to request changes to those. I'll start us off by requesting that an "Educational" genre be added. The educational games I've run across have been filed under "Puzzle", but this doesn't really accurately describe the abysmal games made to try to sell early consoles to parents as "learning machines".

It would be helpful if there were a section of the guidelines (or perhaps a separate document) that lists out each of the different fields with a description of what should go there. For example, on the ancient Atari 2600 games I've been editing, I've noticed that previous contributors have set the Developer to Atari, while others have set the Developer to the actual programmer (e.g., Larry Kaplan). If I had something I could reference that indicated what the intent of the Developer field is (say, "the company that developed the game" vs. "the company that developed the game, or the lead designer(s) if known"), I could make better judgments as to which one to keep.