Request - Pixelcade Marquee Artwork for Console Games

[jman06]

Any one out there using the Pixelcade LED marquee?  Keep in mind, this is LED and not LCD.

I'm using Launchbox and am wanting to get high-quality Marquee artwork for it. The MAME marquee games are all looking good, but it's the console platforms that have mediocre to down-right awful graphics which display for SNES or NES or N64 games, in my blunt opinion.Just look at Lemmings for SNES or Act Raiser 1 or 2, just as examples. They are washed out, very hard to read, etc. with the LED marquee.

Does anyone know where to get higher quality marquee (128x32 pixels) graphics for these games or have created some themselves and willing to share? Looking for typical consoles - SNES, NES, N64, GB, GBC, Atari.

Thanks!

Edited August 18, 2021 by jman06

[megashub]

On 8/18/2021 at 7:23 AM, jman06 said:

Any one out there using the Pixelcade LED marquee?  Keep in mind, this is LED and not LCD.

I'm using Launchbox and am wanting to get high-quality Marquee artwork for it. The MAME marquee games are all looking good, but it's the console platforms that have mediocre to down-right awful graphics which display for SNES or NES or N64 games, in my blunt opinion.Just look at Lemmings for SNES or Act Raiser 1 or 2, just as examples. They are washed out, very hard to read, etc. with the LED marquee.

Does anyone know where to get higher quality marquee (128x32 pixels) graphics for these games or have created some themselves and willing to share? Looking for typical consoles - SNES, NES, N64, GB, GBC, Atari.

Thanks!

I just got my Pixelcade LED marquee installed and I'm beginning to work on missing marquee images too. I figured out a quick solution to homebrewing your own really quickly (once you get the process down):

Using gimp or photoshop or whatever your graphics editor of choice may be, create a new image that is 128x32, with a pixels per inch of 5 (at least that's the number that works for my P6 Pixelcade panels). Set the background to black. Then, add a new layer. On your LB/BB machine, navigate to the LaunchBox install dir, and open the Images/[console]/Clear Logo folder. Open these clear logo files in your graphics editor. First, use Trim to crop the image by transparent pixels (removing all dead space on the outer edges of the image). Then, resize the image down to 128x32, 5 pixels per inch (or whatever your panel's PPI is). It's common that clear logos will be larger than 128 or 32, so just try to get it as close to 128x32 as you can without going over (commonly it'll be something like 113x32 or whatever). Copy the resized image and paste it into the new image you created above as a new layer. You may need to play around with your chosen editor's resampling options. In Photoshop CS 2021, I've found that Bicubic Sharpener (reduction) produces reliably clear results. Just remember that logos need good contrasting color schemes for them to scale down that far and still be legible, but I've had good luck with it so far. 

Edit to add: If you have a different size panel or you're not sure what your pixels per inch should be, take a tape measure and count the number of dots on the panel that fit inside 1 inch and use that number. If it's close, and you're not sure, opt for the lower number. 

It's a quick process once you get the steps down, and I was cranking out new marquee images rapidly last night. Here's a couple of examples produced with the above process:

 

Hope that helps teach you how to fish, as it were. Let me know if I can help clarify anything.  

Edited October 24, 2021 by megashub