Custom Game Cases (Walkthrough and Tips/Tricks) UPDATED

My latest project has been making cases for all my loose games. Personally, I think this is more important than ever when contacts can get super dirty and labels/plastic can become damaged (hurting the value of your games). I decided it was worth the investment to get some custom game cases and a decent printer to make the covers. Here is a breakdown of the process. Also I made a video you can watch at the bottom of the page.

CASES

First, you need the cases from MediaShelving.com. The cases they offer will support, NES (with some modification), Famicom, SNES, Super Famicom, Sega Genesis (including EA carts), and N64 games. As I mentioned, you have to modify the cases to support NES games, but you can do this quickly and easily with an Oscillating Tool (This is the one I got for $30, does the trick in 15 seconds). If you are willing to mod the cases, they will fit just about any cart from Atari 2600 to the Atari Jaguar.

100 cases will run you $60 plus shipping (for reference, to Massachusetts it was $20 to ship them). Here is the direct link to the clear plastic cases: CLEAR PLASTIC GAME CASES

Covers

The covers for these universal cases can be acquired at http://thecoverproject.net. The community there has done an amazing job creating custom covers for an astounding amount of games. There are even covers and box arts from the  Japanese versions of your favorite games. Simply select the cover you want to print, download it, and open it up in your favorite photo software.

Printing

For the printer, I purchased a Canon MX922 for about $100 on Amazon. It prints beautiful covers.

I chose to print my covers on glossy letter sized (standard size) paper instead of the recommended Legal size. Since I am not using legal size paper I only get 98% of the image printed. After printing over 30 of these, I haven’t had a single issue with how they look or with loss of picture. See the image below of a printout for a closer look.

Then, simply use a paper cutter and trim the top and bottom.

Once you are done and have them on the shelf, the cases look amazing.

UPDATE

Here is a follow up video discussing the modifications of the cases for NES games, modifying box arts for Japanese games, and the final product: