83 replies to this topic

[HK-47]

But it turned out amazing! Your #9 entry whould be my choice.

[SS]

128bytes said:

Another reason to pick JoeyBastard's design:  It will be ultra-rare after Procter & Gamble x-rays Big Player's apartment (as part of their ongoing Cincinnati collective mind control experiment -- if you don't believe me, check out the Bengals' uniforms this year!), finds the cartridge, and demands that AtariAge changes the label!

This scenario would also be a brilliant super-sneaky way to get me to buy SCSIcide THREE times!  

Damn you, George Lucas!  

[joeybastard]

Congrats Nathan!  Once again, you've proven me inadequate

[Albert]

February 9th, 2005 - Winner Selected!

/images/news/UltraSCSIcideWinner.jpgWe are pleased to announce that Nathan Strum is the winner of the Ultra SCSIcide Label Contest!  Nathan's vision of an exploding hard drive captures the frenetic pace of Ultra SCSIcide and what we imagine happens to your data after you finally succumb to the ever increasing speed of the game!  It was a tough decision for Joe Grand to make, as many fantastic entries were submitted for this contest.  For his efforts, Nathan will receive a copy of Ultra SCSIcide, labeled with his winning label design, a Stelladaptor 2600 to USB Interface and a $25 gift certificate in the AtariAge Store.

Once again, congratulations to Nathan Strum (who has won several recent label contests) and to everyone who took the time to submit the many great labels we received for this contest!  It's always a pleasure to witness the artistic talent present in the classic gaming community and we look forward to more such contests in the future!

[efdious]

Oh man... these contests are totally fixed!  Nathan Strum's #3 totally ROBBED the victory from the TRUE winner: Nathan Strum #9.



Seriously, nice work all around!  Seeing all these great sumbissions makes me want to start a homebrew just so we can have another contest!

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Congratulation Nathan!

Your are the Todd Rogers of label contests.

[snorlaxnut]

This is the third label contest Nathan has won. Looks like its a waste of time to even send in an entry. When a new game comes out, maybe the label contest should be skipped and just ask Nathan to make a label?

[joeybastard]

snorlaxnut said:

Looks like its a waste of time to even send in an entry. When a new game comes out, maybe the label contest should be skipped and just ask Nathan to make a label?

Why?  It's fun to screw around with the designs.  Nathan does excellent work, but someone mightt come up with something next time, you never know.  If you think it's a waste of time to enter, don't, but that's no reason to kill off the contests.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Most people like challenges, that's why so many people still try to beat the champ (Todd) in HSC etc. I hope that spirit is not only limited to gamers.

[Albert]

snorlaxnut said:

This is the third label contest Nathan has won. Looks like its a waste of time to even send in an entry. When a new game comes out, maybe the label contest should be skipped and just ask Nathan to make a label?

One of the unfortunate aspects of running contests like this is that only one label can be selected as the winner.  Regardless of how many excellent submission there are (and as usual, there were quite a few with this contest), a single entry must be chosen, that's just the nature of the contest.  Everyone had an equal opportunity to win this contest, no bias was shown to Nathan because he has won two previous contests.  Part of the fun with these contests is to see what people dream up, and being able to look at all the various entries.  

A while back Dave Exton won two label design contests in a row (Gunfight and Qb), but that hopefully did not discourage people from entering future contests.  I can understand the emotions behind, "Damn, Nathan won again!", but his past performance is no guarantee that he'll win any future contests.  Every author has different tastes, and with the wide variety of art submitted for each contest, it's never a shoe-in for any particular artist.

We've run 13 label contests so far on AtariAge, and of those, 9 different individuals have come out on top.  

..Al

[Atari-Jess]

While I hereby admit defeat, I must add that I didn't think
Strum's entry #3 was that great.

I much enjoyed the spinning platter with game graphics, and I absolutely
loved the harddrive as atari cart inside a vader with both a joystick and
paddle in the foreground. Those were my two "strum-favourites"

Wronka had a wonderful piece of art, but I think the rest of the label
hurt his entries.

I think I did an okay job and with 10 entries certainly I think I did well
as far as "standings" go.

Good contest everyone. Albert is correct, Even though Strum won again
it was through an entry that I felt was rather weak. Just goes to show you
NEVER know what the author wants until he picks it!

[joesmooth]

Atari-Jess said:

While I hereby admit defeat, I must add that I didn't think Strum's entry #3 was that great.

I much enjoyed the spinning platter with game graphics, and I absolutely
loved the harddrive as atari cart inside a vader with both a joystick and
paddle in the foreground. Those were my two "<i>strum-favourites</i>"

Everyone will have their own personal favorites, and that's fine. There were a number of personal choices on why I picked #3 versus some of the other submissions - this is one of the benefits of writing a game and hosting a contest. To give you an example, the hard drive label was too similar to our PC3 limited edition label that Albert and I made a few years ago. The hard drive as a cartridge was very clever, as was the spinning hard drive, but I prefer more abstract labels.  

Basically, many of the entries were excellent and it took about an hour to pick one from my top 6. It wasn't easy, but the decision has been made and I am happy with the outcome.

Joe

[efdious]

OK, so all that being said, this leaves us with 2 items to tackle:

1) Joe needs to change the "current project" portion of his signature  
2) When does the Ultra SCSIcide pre-order begin?

[joesmooth]

efdious said:

OK, so all that being said, this leaves us with 2 items to tackle:

1) Joe needs to change the "current project" portion of his signature    
2) When does the Ultra SCSIcide pre-order begin?

1) Haha! Hmm. But I have to think up another "current project" now

2) Good question. Albert would know, but I'm guessing once we finish up the new manual (ASAP) it will be ready to go!

Joe

[efdious]

Oh duh.  It says "latest" project.  Um... ON WITH THE PRE-ORDER!

[DaveD]

snorlaxnut said:

This is the third label contest Nathan has won. Looks like its a waste of time to even send in an entry.  

Yes but what you don't understand is all creative geniuses have their peaks.  Nathan is at his peak.  From this point on Nathan will try to hold onto his number one slot with all his might, only to succumb to the inevitable downward spiral into obscurity.  I predict Nathan's next steps will be:

Release an album of duets with William Shatner.  The album will bomb when everyone learns that Milli Vanilli did all the voices on it  

Addiction to painkillers.  All stars go through this.  I think it'll be orange, chewable baby aspirin.  

Nathan's very own talk show will debut.  Actually he'll be hired to replace Donny Osmond on his show since they have basically the same audience.  Unfortunately Nathan's show will be cancelled after a single airing.  The only explanation he receives is "you have the perect face for radio."     

After that will be the inevitable tell-all book, a failed attempt at a breakfast cereal endorsement, then finally he'll pack it in when he realizes he's all washed up.  

So don't worry.  We'll all have our shot soon enough.  

BTW, congrats on another fine design Nathan.

[Nathan Strum]

joesmooth said:

To give you an example, the hard drive label was too similar to our PC3 limited edition label that Albert and I made a few years ago. The hard drive as a cartridge was very clever, as was the spinning hard drive, but I prefer more abstract labels.

That's interesting, and pretty much the opposite of what I expected. I figured since SCSIcide was technology-themed, that you'd be looking for a label that reflected that. I was really surprised when the exploding hard drive won. (I thought #7 worked best, personally.) You just can't predict what someone will like.

DaveD said:

From this point on Nathan will try to hold onto his number one slot with all his might, only to succumb to the inevitable downward spiral into obscurity.

I look forward to it. It gets really tiresome with people stopping me on the street all the time saying, "Hey, aren't you that label guy?"

DaveD said:

Addiction to painkillers.  All stars go through this.  I think it'll be orange, chewable baby aspirin.

Mmmmm. Baby aspirin. Almost as good as Flintstone's Chewable Ibuprofen.

DaveD said:

a failed attempt at a breakfast cereal endorsement

Yeah, for some reason people weren't into the world's first "cheese-flavored" cereal. Don't people like soggy Cheetos?

[Nathan Strum]

Shoot. Still no "edit" button.

Anyway, I meant to be sure and thank Joe and Albert for holding the contest! They're a lot of fun to enter, and it's a real privilege to have my label on a game as well-liked as SCSIcide.

In the end, the important thing is that Joe ended up with a label he likes. (I always wonder what would happen if a programmer didn't want to use any of the entries in a contest...) Although I like the design of some of the technical entries more, I'm glad he went with that one, because for me, that one was more fun to work on. (Explosions are always fun.)

[Jacob Rose]

I love Nathan's #10 submission! Very cool!

http://www.atariage....&EntryNumber=10

The "Written by Joe Grand" chromed onto the front of the 2600 case looks just like it belongs there.

[efdious]

I just went back and looked at all the entries... and I noticed that a really good chunk of them have this upper-left to lower-right thing going on.  Check it.  I even went and looked at my 2 failed label attempts and they both had the same kind of "diagonal symmetry."  Funny....

[Atarinvader]

There's no doubt in my mind that Nathan should have won, well done. Although I was impressed by nearly all the labels.

Perhaps in future contests applicants should be limited to one or maybe two entries? I think that would even things up a bit and stop the "one design, twenty labels" mentality.

BTW I just noticed that me and Manu Pärssinen have used the same base image, but they've ended up looking very different!

[Nathan Strum]

Atarinvader said:

Perhaps in future contests applicants should be limited to one or maybe two entries? I think that would even things up a bit and stop the "one design, twenty labels" mentality.

The problem with limiting the number of entries per person, is that it also limits what the homebrew author has to choose from. Since it's their game that the label is going on, I would think they'd want as many choices as possible.

Unless you're working with someone on a design, and have an idea what they're after, you basically just have to guess. Some prefer a completely unique label, some like the silver Atari-style labels, some like the older Atari labels. They may not even know what they want themselves, until they see it.

Since the contests are for label designs, and not for illustrations to be worked into a label design later, I think it's in the programmers' best interest to allow people to submit as many as they want, provided they're within the rule guidelines. If they want to limit them, that's fine too. But would that result in more people submitting labels, or fewer entries overall?

[Jacob Rose]

Atarinvader said:

Perhaps in future contests applicants should be limited to one or maybe two entries? I think that would even things up a bit and stop the "one design, twenty labels" mentality.

I think we all have a fair shot at it, if we have equal time to do it. It would maybe be more "fair" to make the contests longer so we all have enough time to expend every idea that flashes into our heads, but it's not unfair that one person produces more in the same time!

[Albert]

Jacob Rose said:

I think we all have a fair shot at it, if we have equal time to do it. It would maybe be more "fair" to make the contests longer so we all have enough time to expend every idea that flashes into our heads, but it's not unfair that one person produces more in the same time!

When we first started running label contests they always ran for two weeks.  More recently I've extended them to three weeks, especially since some of the previous contests were before the holidays when people are often busier.  I don't really want to extend them much longer than that, though.  And I have no intentions of limiting the number of entries people may submit.  There's already a provision that allows us to reject labels that are too similar to an entrant's previous submissions, so someone submitting multiple labels will need to spend a reasonable amount of time doing so.  

..Al

[Albert]

A picture of the cart and manual using the winning label design..



..Al