• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

What's up with Side-of-Box titles? (I'm looking at you, Nintendo)

The Giant

Banned
lol weird topic but you know what, I like minimalist approach on the spine,

some games just have super ugly logo like DKCTF, looks super lame from the side


wish 3d world also had a simple logo ._.


Didn't know american wii u boxes spine was white. Ours is blue.
 
I'm especially disappointed in Super Mario Galaxy not sparkling the letters for U R MR GAY :(

heh, I wonder if there's a steam skin out there that let's you replace the text with individual custom fonts and graphics in list view and detail view.
 

jroc74

Phone reception is more important to me than human rights
I dunno, for me artistic spines make it easier to find things since the colors make things pop out more

Yea. There were a few occasions where different games had similar spines but overall I also feel it makes it easier to find what I'm looking for.
 
I actually find it faster and easier to identify a game on my shelf if it has the game's artstyle and logo applied to it. Like those Pikmin cases. Plus it's really fun and colorful looking. Always tempted to fix my Wii U cases by printing out a proper logo.
 

_woLf

Member
Personally I hate logos on spines. I'd rather companies just stick to the same font so that my spines all look nice and neat. The europe PS2 boxes were a perfect example of this:

The lack of consistency in formatting in the Castlevania titles and the fact that Final Fantasy is capslocked for XII and not for X is extremely upsetting.
 

MUnited83

For you.
Personally I hate logos on spines. I'd rather companies just stick to the same font so that my spines all look nice and neat. The europe PS2 boxes were a perfect example of this:
While I actually aprecciate some of the logos on spines aestethically individually , the PS2 style spines are the best for a collevtion. Makes it all consistent, neatly organized and practical.
 

Lynx_7

Member
You don't know the general layout of your own games collection? I mean, I have a shelf with a few hundred movies on it, not organized by alphabet or chronology, just loosely by genre and my own feeling, and I could grab Chinatown or Spider-Man or anything else in an instant. I know where everything this. I put them there myself.

No, because there's no layout to my collection. My brother is constantly taking games in and out and moving them around so there's no order or logic to my stack, I have to look the games one by one. I also keep them stacked on top of each other since I don't have much physical space to store them so yeah, I appreciate the designs that stand out.
 

randomkid

Member
for illustrative purposes, here's a horrific zoomed shot of my lower shelf. which games can you still recognize?

BWcdgYW.jpg


notice that eyesore euro-game in the middle? can't believe i have to put up with that bc nintendo refused to let us have tingle over here.

(tbh the main reason i'm posting this is to mess around with ocd shelf organizer ppl)
 

Dremark

Banned
Personally I hate logos on spines. I'd rather companies just stick to the same font so that my spines all look nice and neat. The europe PS2 boxes were a perfect example of this:

I didn't realize they called Lament of Innocence just Castlevania in Europe. Although Iirc that was the name in Japan too.

Yeah, a good clean look is nice. My personal favorite is Resident Evil Revelaitons.

27c98d8dd5.jpg


It's a nice clean look and it's very apparent they put a lot of care into the side of the box.
 

Cartman86

Banned
I wish they would just come up with some consistent base design that is both unique to each title, and readable. Like maybe the background color is unique, but the font is the same, maybe have a game icon in the same spot on each spine. Anything but the black and white boring Euro PS2 and JPN boxes, or the wild west NA.


Yep something like that.
 
Personally I hate logos on spines. I'd rather companies just stick to the same font so that my spines all look nice and neat. The europe PS2 boxes were a perfect example of this:

I'm the exact opposite. This generic font SCEE uses on spines is my biggest pet peeve about boxarts and i've often looked with envy at the US versions that use logos on spines. I've even gone so far to look up unboxing videos, just to check out whether a game published in EU has a generic spine or not and if it did, i looked for options to import the NA version. Thankfully not all publishers use this font in the EU though. I'm sure this is baffling to some, but i just like the diversity of logo spines and think that it lends more personality to shelves full of games. But then i'm also someone who doesn't organize their book/movie/game collections by alphabet, but by genre, which i'm sure is equally puzzling to some. :)

You don't know the general layout of your own games collection? I mean, I have a shelf with a few hundred movies on it, not organized by alphabet or chronology, just loosely by genre and my own feeling, and I could grab Chinatown or Spider-Man or anything else in an instant. I know where everything this. I put them there myself.

This is exactly how i organize my collections. *brofist.jpg*
 

Menitta

Member
I'd want it to be all or nothing. Either full on colorful spines or raw text. Organized alphabetically or by color. I don't like 3DS, Wii, Wii U, or Xbone spines.

There are a few Wii U games like Bayo 2, Hyrule Warriors, Splatoon, NSMBU, and Smash 4 (kinda) that all have the same font and color. That's fine. I don't like the fancy font on the same background across one console.
 

Atomski

Member
this would be good except they fuck up by slightly misaligning the text and the spine bar and companies are inconsistent with their uses of trademark symbols and the ratings symbol and
Cliff hanger right here..

Anyways man you guys are picky about such a small thing.
 

Mr Rivuz

Member
Personally I hate logos on spines. I'd rather companies just stick to the same font so that my spines all look nice and neat. The europe PS2 boxes were a perfect example of this:
These are the worst. I have a mix of us/pal games for my ps2 and the pal ones are so ugly and boring. And they aren't functional at all because to find a game you have to actually read those since they all look the same, while if i want to play my us Persona 4 i'll find it at first glance thanks to that nice yellow sleeve.
 

eXistor

Member
Personally I hate it too. I'd much rather have the original logo, which simply looks nicer to look at; adds some pizzaz.

I detest the clinical, no-fun-allowed look of EU PS2 boxes. I have about 120-ish ps2 games and about half of them are US and the rest are EU, I have them alphabetized and it looks like shit. I used to have them seperate, but that's no good either, I want them in order. Why can't they at least be consistent on these things universally?

/edit: Just a small taste of what it looks like. I did a rough count, I have about 65 US games and 95 PAL games, I was way off with that.

5FtypLD.jpg
 

iMerc

Member
What the hell is this Nintendo...
408894_side.jpg

what?

i'm not sure what box you got, but the splatoon box i have has the splatoon logo on it's spine, not this 'plain text' thing you have going…??
they're not custom cases either… they're bought straight from an EBgames store shelf.

the same goes for other wiiU games i have like bayonetta 2, W101, sm3dw, starfox, TMM:FE, MK8, Pikmin 3, LoZ:WWHD, & yoshis' woolly world etc.
the only boxes i have that are plain text are hyrule warriors, and captain toad. :)


Cliff hanger right here..

Anyways man you guys are picky about such a small thing.

lol. perhaps.
i also prefer game logos or 'art' on the spine.
i can't stand plain text spines. they're increibly boring and feel like a deliberate 'cost effective' decision.

actually, now that it's mentioned, i hate how some game cases have deliberate holes in the plastics. it just makes the entire package look/feel cheap.
 

TheMoon

Member
Didn't know american wii u boxes spine was white. Ours is blue.

Some are black even (deus ex, re: revelaitons).


Eww. Shortened game titles.

what?

i'm not sure what box you got, but the splatoon box i have has the splatoon logo on it's spine, not this 'plain text' thing you have going…??
they're not custom cases either… they're bought straight from an EBgames store shelf.

This is obviously a European box you're looking at.

Same story with the DS. The European boxes just had plain text on the side.

no. :D
 

kagamin

Member
what?

i'm not sure what box you got, but the splatoon box i have has the splatoon logo on it's spine, not this 'plain text' thing you have going…??
they're not custom cases either… they're bought straight from an EBgames store shelf.

I'm in the US if that changes anything. :p
 

TheMoon

Member
Same story with the DS. The European boxes just had plain text on the side.

No part 2: now with pictures:

ds2fhs62.jpg

ds1c0sob.jpg


Some more inconsistency on GCN. Ignore the part where I have a mix of regions but there's still inconsistency with PAL-only games too. Just look at Chibi Robo, Doshin, Eternal Darkness next to each other. All PAL. Then there's Metroid Prime. Star Fox next to Mario Sunshine. Coin flip galore.
gcnetsfc.jpg


Wii games. Gotta love that Resident Evil consistency. Capcom is something else. Also, that random Wii Music logo.
wii2dssy6.jpg

wii114sxz.jpg


Wii U is a very special spine roller coaster.
wiiuboxesv2srb.jpg
 

mollipen

Member
Personally I hate logos on spines. I'd rather companies just stick to the same font so that my spines all look nice and neat. The europe PS2 boxes were a perfect example of this:

If I ruled the world, your example is how every game spine in the world would look. I loathe fancy spines on games. White text on black, or black text on white, and that's it.

And center aligned text / logos is THE WORST.
 

TheMoon

Member
360aijjz.jpg

ps3bnkb5.jpg


everyone loves inconsistency equally btw

the hilarious thing is that Microsoft even changed their budget line design TWICE so there are THREE designs for the Xbox 360 Classics covers/spines/everything lol.
 

TheMoon

Member
Just for fun, let's throw PC boxes into the mix. These are all Euro cases from mostly recent years with some early 00s in the mix. Note how only the budget reprints have the plain text spines here.

pcd1sl8.jpg
 
Europeans still have the spine font of the gamecubes games, until some third party games comes and fucks up your tidy consistent looking collection with a shitty american spine logo.

But we have that horrible triangle changing color in the spines, who knows why (im betting is germany's fault lol)
 

Yoshi

Headmaster of Console Warrior Jugendstrafanstalt
Yeah, the GameCube font gets used on GameCube, Wii, Wii U, DS and 3DS games, so there's that. However I prefer this over randomly taking another font that is not the one from the logo. Use the logo, or the same font for everything, but don't tka e font just for one game's spine. It's a bit strange that Nintendo is so inconsistent though. Mario Maker uses the logo, as do Metroid Prime 1 & 2 (not 3 though) and Paper Mario SS. For the Pokémon games on 3DS they also resorted to the "random new font" garbage in Europe.
 
Personally I hate logos on spines. I'd rather companies just stick to the same font so that my spines all look nice and neat. The europe PS2 boxes were a perfect example of this:

Looks like a periodicals section in a library.

No thanks.

I like for my collection to look A-Symmetrical when it comes to the design of the spines.
 

gelf

Member
Part of me wants them all to be uniform while the other wants it diverse. I don't know where I stand on this.
This is how I feel about it as well. What I will say is it all has to be one of the other. Sometimes you'd get those few games that didn't fit the pattern of the rest and that would really bother me.
 

TheMoon

Member
But we have that horrible triangle changing color in the spines, who knows why (im betting is germany's fault lol)

Germany has nothing to do with the triangles. The triangles identify which country/territory the game is from/sold in.

If you buy your games in the same country, you'll always get the same triangle (UK=green, for example). Also, if you look at my pics you'll see that first party/third party also has nothing to do with spine logos vs text.
 
Top Bottom