Label for Space Invaders Deluxe

[MaximRecoil]

Here is a low resolution mockup:

 

 

 

I created it completely as a vector file, so its DPI is infinite; i.e., it can max out the DPI capability of any printer, at any print size.

 

It is based on the kick panel artwork from Taito's Space Invaders Part II arcade cabinet, with elements from Midway's Space Invaders Deluxe arcade cabinet. A few elements were already available in vector form (i.e., the background SI monsters and the title) so I used those; and I vectorized the rest of it myself, including everything on the ground, the mountains, the flying saucers, the SI monster that has one arm raised in the air, the rainbow logo and the rest of the Atari "silver label" template.

 

I used a photograph of a Space Invaders Part II cabinet that I found on a Google image search, along with a Space Invaders Part II flyer, as a guide.

 

By the way, I have a question for Albert: is the following old offer still available?

 

If you have somebody one-off you a cartridge (which the store here probably will still do for you), I'd recommend that you go for the most recent 8k version (here). Besides adding adding most other arcade features, the earlier 4k version still had a couple unresolved glitches.

I'd be glad to make such carts for anyone who wants one. If someone puts together a nice label for the cart (main and end label) at 300dpi or higher resolution, I'll make you a free, labeled cart. ..Al

[MaximRecoil]

93 views and no comments?

 

This label took many hours to create, because the art didn't exist in a print-ready form that I know of (aside from the "Space Invaders Deluxe" title text and one of the two SI monsters). That means it had to be recreated line-by-line (i.e., "vectorized"). That's quite a job even if you have a nice 300 DPI or higher scan to work from, to say nothing of working from a low-quality source like this (offhand cellphone picture):

 

 

Which is all I could find.

 

So for example, through line-by-line manual vectorization ("auto-trace" is horrible, especially when starting from a low quality raster source):

 

 

I considered that artwork ideal for a Space Invaders Deluxe Atari 2600 cartridge because it's "official"; it is designed to fit the same type of rectangle that's used for Atari 2600 cartridge label art, and it is from a Space Invaders Part II arcade machine, which is simply the non-U.S. release title of Space Invaders Deluxe.

 

In any event, this is not a case of spending 5 minutes to download a pre-existing image from the internet and upload it into the Atari Label Maker site. I spent a lot of time on this because I love what Nukey Shay did with the game (it is the best Atari 2600 hack I've ever seen), and even if no one else cares about having a label for it, it is worth it to me to have my own label for it, because I want a dedicated cartridge for the game.

Edited April 8, 2012 by MaximRecoil

[maiki]

I appreciate you are using vectors. This is the only way to get quality. Screw all those bitmaps low res scans. You should rather invest this time to "remastering" the official labels... the reason given in previous sentence. Honestly SI Deluxe hack is not that great as it seems to be... it plays so easy it becomes boring after a couple of minutes. He should have kept the number of shots at one per time as in the original game.

Edited April 8, 2012 by maiki

[Trinity]

I like it easy.

 

Great work! Makes me wanna play some.

[MaximRecoil]

Honestly SI Deluxe hack is not that great as it seems to be... it plays so easy it becomes boring after a couple of minutes. He should have kept the number of shots at one per time as in the original game.

 

That is selectable. In the original game you can select "double fire" by pressing and holding the reset switch as you turn on the console's power, due to a bug/glitch (feature?). However, it only works on the default level 1; as soon as you select another level it resets to the normal one shot at a time.

 

Nukey Shay made "double fire" selectable in Space Invaders Deluxe via the right difficulty switch ("B" for "double fire", "A" for one shot at a time) which allows you to select "double fire" for any of the game variations (except in 2 player simultaneous mode, in which case each player has one shot at a time due to inherent limitations of the system).

 

As far as I'm concerned, Nukey Shay's Space Invaders Deluxe is entirely an improvement, with no drawbacks, compared to the original. It even has a built-in pause function (press your button during a cut scene; you can also skip the cut scene which is nice; by moving your joystick).

Edited April 8, 2012 by MaximRecoil

[almightytodd]

_{SI Deluxe is one of my favorites. Thanks for sharing your artwork, which is very well done and quite fitting for this excellent game.}

Edited April 8, 2012 by almightytodd

[accousticguitar]

Very nice!

[Pioneer4x4]

I didn't comment originally, but I have putzed with Vector graphics a bit, enought to realize the work in it. I also agree %100 that it is the way to go for art like that.

[MaximRecoil]

Thanks for the comments.

 

I found out what the correct font for the "silver label" text is: "Eras". AtariAge has "Ergoe" listed as the "silver label" font (link); which is what I used for my label. "Ergoe" is a clone of "Eras", but it lacks the 3 degree slant that Eras has (look at a real silver label cartridge and you'll see that slight slant to the text).

 

If I can't find it, I can easily add the slight 3 degree slant to "Ergoe", which is otherwise a near perfect clone of "Eras". I'm also going to go with a lighter weight version (e.g. medium instead of bold) like was used in the 1983 small rainbow silver label cartridges (and change the copyright date to 1983 to match) because I think it looks better.

 

Edit: Nevermind; I should have scrolled down on the AtariAge font page that I linked to; A couple of versions of Eras are right there. There is no "medium" or "bold" though (just "demi" and "light"); does anyone have those?

Edited April 8, 2012 by MaximRecoil

[Pioneer4x4]

ERASBD.TTF.txt

ERASDEMI.TTF.txt

ERASLGHT.TTF.txt

ERASMD.TTF.txt

I have Eras ITC Bold, Demi, Light, and Medium on both of my Windows 7 machines.

Edited April 8, 2012 by Pioneer4x4

[MaximRecoil]

ERASBD.TTF.txt

ERASDEMI.TTF.txt

ERASLGHT.TTF.txt

ERASMD.TTF.txt

I have Eras ITC Bold, Demi, Light, and Medium on both of my Windows 7 machines.

 

Thanks!

[MaximRecoil]

About the silver vs. gray labels; anyone printing this out is going to end up with a gray label, unless they somehow manage to find silver paper to print on. So was there a certain year when Atari started using gray rather than silver labels, or was it just a random thing that could have happened in any "silver label" year?

[MaximRecoil]

I changed the font to Eras and made a few more minor corrections. I think it is about done now, but I want to see how it prints out before releasing the vector file. Here is another mockup:

 

[Rubio80]

Beautiful labels, good work!

[Pioneer4x4]

ERASBD.TTF.txt

ERASDEMI.TTF.txt

ERASLGHT.TTF.txt

ERASMD.TTF.txt

I have Eras ITC Bold, Demi, Light, and Medium on both of my Windows 7 machines.

 

Thanks!

No problem, nothing wrong with sharing text files right?

[+TrekMD]

That looks nice.

[KevinMos3]

I changed the font to Eras and made a few more minor corrections. I think it is about done now, but I want to see how it prints out before releasing the vector file.

 

You've done some nice work. I'm looking forward to seeing your vector files.

 

To me there is too much dead space in the middle. I would let the ship at the top left overlap the boundary of your rectangle as well as at least one of the aliens on the right. Artwork on labels of this period usually didn't stay within the frame. That would open up a bit more space in the middle for you to make the logo larger and maybe try letting it overlap some of the art. I understand you may be hesitant to cover up the vector work you did, but it may look more filled out if you play with that a bit more.

[MaximRecoil]

To me there is too much dead space in the middle. I would let the ship at the top left overlap the boundary of your rectangle as well as at least one of the aliens on the right. Artwork on labels of this period usually didn't stay within the frame. That would open up a bit more space in the middle for you to make the logo larger and maybe try letting it overlap some of the art. I understand you may be hesitant to cover up the vector work you did, but it may look more filled out if you play with that a bit more.

 

I played around with all of those ideas early on, and I didn't find anything I liked. I looked at all of the small rainbow "silver label" cartridges listed on this site and I did notice that about half of them had artwork that spilled over into the silver template area, so I tried that but it didn't result in a significant amount of extra room, nor did I like the way it looked. I also tried allowing the title to partially overlap the large SI monster, but that looked weird simply because of how the colors and shapes interacted at the points of overlap. If the Space Invaders title had been designed to be outlined in white then the overlap wouldn't have looked weird, but adding a white outline to it looked weird in and of itself.

 

So eventually I decided to just leave it as it appears on the SI Part II cabinet's kickpanel; because while the aesthetics of the layout is subjective, the quality of it being an "official" SID layout is not. Also, since it is vector, anyone who wants to tweak it according to their own preferences before printing it can easily do so.

 

By the way, "easily" depends on your level of experience working with vector files. My vector files once finished are harder to "tweak" than most, because every object fits together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, as opposed to simply overlapping / laying on top of other objects. So you can't just click on e.g. one of the SI monsters, a flying saucer, the title, or whathaveyou, and move/resize it. You would have to release the compound paths and recolor and reorder things before you could do that. The reason for this is because I normally create vector files for screen printing (AKA: silk screening) where ideally the only overlapping of objects is in the form of traps and bleeds so that you don't waste ink and/or have undesirable ink color interactions trying to lay one color over another (like a light color on top of a dark color) when screen printing.

 

Of course, with digital printing (e.g. inkjet), the specific structure of the vector file is irrelevant; there's no need for color separations; what you see on your monitor is what you get; and even the most hamfisted structures will print out just fine. However, old habits die hard; plus I like the idea that any vector file I make can be screen printed as-is (or with the addition of traps and bleeds in this case).

[ledzep]

Nice work on the label, especially the vector artwork. Having said that, I'm old-school and much prefer the old text labels on black, particularly Version C in that link that credits Taito and includes an * at the end of the name. The silver labels with the red bar always bothered me, seemed like an after-the-fact bid to unify them with the Atari 5200 carts but I always preferred the older boxes in various colors.

[MaximRecoil]

Nice work on the label, especially the vector artwork. Having said that, I'm old-school and much prefer the old text labels on black, particularly Version C in that link that credits Taito and includes an * at the end of the name. The silver labels with the red bar always bothered me, seemed like an after-the-fact bid to unify them with the Atari 5200 carts but I always preferred the older boxes in various colors.

 

I like standard picture labels the best (like versions F through J in your link). That's what most of my cartridges looked like when I was a kid and it is the type that I always liked the best; it just seemed like how Atari cartridges should look.

 

I never liked the text labels. As a kid I only had one text label cartridge; I got it in a box of various loose cartridges I was given by a friend. It was Space Invaders, and it was the Sears version. It stood out like a sore thumb among all my cartridges and I thought it looked like a cheap knockoff, even though I knew the game itself was the same regardless of the label. At the time I figured that only Sears versions had text labels because it was the only one I'd ever seen, but all text labels still look cheap and uninspired to me. However, if you like text labels they are certainly the easiest format to use for designing a new label (it would take only a few minutes no matter what game you are making a label for).

 

The only reason I chose the small rainbow silver label format for a Space Invaders Deluxe label is that it has the most amount of room for the picture out of any of the Atari label formats. If the art layout I wanted to use would have fit properly in the standard picture label format I definitely would have used that instead.

[ledzep]

Aha, that makes more sense. Well, you did a great job with the picture, I looked up Space Invaders Deluxe online, I couldn't find anything useful for artwork, most of it is on the front glass. The sides just have the invaders standing there.

 

I grew up with the Sears Tele-Games version of the 2600, not only do I prefer text labels but also the black Sears boxes, haahaha. We're basically opposites there. I do also really like the Atari text labels and the gatefold boxes. I was very disappointed, later in life, to learn that they only made like 9 of them that way. One of my favorite games for the 2600 is Stellar Track, a Sears-only release but I also got Submarine Commander and Steeplechase in boxes just to have all 3 of those Sears games even though I'm not a big fan of Steeplechase. That has changed a little now that I'm collecting arcade game flyers, I had no idea how many old '70s arcade games that I never even played were converted into 2600 cartridges.

[jhammond]

Wow! where can I buy this game for my 2600?

[Nukey Shay]

The store here will make you one if Al's not too busy. I never made carts of anything I did. Be sure to specify the 9/28/2005 version below if you want him to burn the most-recent one:

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_id=41672