VIC-20 Cartridge Label Font

[alexjlopez]

Anyone know what the font is that's used in VIC-20 first-party game cartridge labels? The font I'm looking for is the one that's used for the game's name.

I'm trying to create a label for a diagnostic cart I ordered. I searched the board and found a lot of interesting stuff, but came up empty on the font I'm looking for.

Thanks!

[mrr19121970]

What do you mean 1st party?

[alexjlopez]

The standard, Commodore published games. Like this one. The font I'm looking for is the one used for the game's name.

[eslapion]

The standard, Commodore published games. Like this one. The font I'm looking for is the one used for the game's name.

It was discussed in the past but I suggest you try this: https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

[alexjlopez]

Thanks, I tried that but had no luck.

[mrr19121970]

I know what it is, but I don't remember. I need to look in my CorelDraw files tonight.

[mrr19121970]

Banco (medium)

[alexjlopez]

Thanks! --Alex

[doug_in_nc]

I'm resurrecting this thread just to add the fonts I found when trying to reproduce a cartridge, so anyone who is looking for the full set of cartridge fonts can find an example. You can see they aren't quite perfect, but as close as I could get with free fonts. The image enclosed is produced in MS Word. overlaying what I found in red on an actual cartridge so it is easy to compare with the original.

The "commodore" is in Eurostile Next LT - kerned (ie spaced out, or in this case compressed) by -0.25 points
The "VIC-1914" is in Joe College Sans InlineNF W1000
The "Adventureland" is RSSlabface - kerned by +0.5 points.

[orion70]

Nice, thank you! Now I'm dubious if I should use the standard game title font for my Sorcery cart label, or leave it with the original trademarked title font

Also, should I convert to these fonts, I'd have to find out what's the one on the regular Commodore boxes.

viewtopic.php?p=114588#p114588

Suggestions?

[doug_in_nc]

As is mentioned earlier in the thread, using https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/ is a good way to identify the font you want. You drag a screenshot of the text you have, and it will identify the commercial fonts used in the image. From there you can identify a similar free one. It doesn't always work, but it helps. I will try to see if I can identify at least the spine font (though Commodore has used more than one, I think)

[doug_in_nc]

Now I look deeper I can see that font for the name of the game on the front of the box varies, but matches the font on the spine. For example Avenger and Poker are in Advertisers Gothic Light, but Adventure Land and the other Scott Adams adventures are close to ASAP Semi Bold (kerned to compress the spacing) but it would take me a bit more time to find a better match for those. Given that, I would suggest that to be consistent with Commodore box styling, as long as you use the same font on the front and the spine, anything you like would be appropriate.

Of course, being Commodore, they couldn't actually keep to that rule all of the time, so GORF has 3d effect lettering on the spine and something totally different on the front.

[orion70]

Great! I guess I'll stick to the original Sorcery title font, leaving all as it is. After all, a VIC role playing game on a cartridge is a totally new beast, and Commodore did exceptions as you wrote . Maybe I'll just reduce the spacing between characters in the spine and label.

Also, thanks so much for pointing out the myfonts.com site, which is useful for the casual retrogame repro / new release. Using old style characters adds to the final product.

[doug_in_nc]

I was going to tell you that you should make sure the text in the spine red because that's how it is on the actual boxes, but then I checked the boxes I have... indeed almost all have red text, but I have one Canadian bilingual box that has the text in black, and my Sargon II cartridge has text in a sort of purple color.

It would be interesting to see what other box spines look like. Normally you don't see the spine shown on pictures on the internet, so its difficult to judge how much variation there really is.

[doug_in_nc]

I don't have boxes for all of my cartridges, and some of those I do have are not in great condition, so I keep my cartridges in these sleeves made by Giacomo Vernoni https://www.oldcomputr.com/product/comm ... commodore/
To be consistent I make up similar (but much less skillfully done) sleeves for my non-Commodore brand cartridges in the style of their original packaging, and identifying the fonts used on the original packaging is very helpful in making them look more convincing