'The trick, William Potter, is not minding that it hurts'
I've seen plenty of box replacements for SNES or PSX on Etsy and Ebay. As of yet, there isn't much for pc retro era. If you own a proper scanner (1200 dpi, rescan all images 4 times with 90 degrees diff to get rid of dot matrix), clean it up in Affinity Photo and Lightroom. Boom! Would it be nice to share it with others... right? Well... that's where the grey area comes in. That's not exactly legal even with a NON PROFIT FAIR USE intensions. And, that's not all. It's also the community - people still want to make money. Doom Shareware box almost as new? £600 pounds please. I personally don't care if I have original poster sold 40 years ago from Alien 1979 in my room or if it was reprinted for a £10 on a nice glossy or matt paper by a seller on ebay. From loads of feedback people still are 'naaahh' about having a replacement.
For now, I'm preparing a Shareware Project to recreate some of the smaller boxes of the 90s. 300grm silk board, gloss laminate. Just need to prepare all the outlines for the creases and cuts. Have to read more about legality of sharing such material.
The main issues I'm facing - lack of source materials. Not many people care about it / have scanner / or / want to share their treasures. MobyGames has resolutions around 1200x1200 which is only good for reference or Topaz AI upscale. Some of these old logos are pain in the arse to recreate. Thank god for whatTheFont as it recognises the fonts from images, so you can recreate writing in vector.
It it were up to me, I would like for any fan to be able to reprint those boxes in any local printer shop... and put on their shelf... makes one feel nice - 'been there done that'... was good to be playing those titles back in the day.
