Okay time to get back on this horse...
I've got the first batch of boards assembled and on hand now, there are 150ish total IIRC. I flashed one up with RC2 and played all the games and everything looks good to me. I'm really impressed with the line up you guys came up with this year, a few surprises showing up from the 'distant' past was certainly nice to see.
I've been talking with 43110 about the boxes, so we have some decisions to make there assuming he can come up with some artwork to fill it. My suggestion is to blow up the label for the front cover, and maybe a few screen shots on the back with some verbiage taken from the manual. But assuming we're opting to provide a box at all, we can choose from a traditional cardboard box, or a bitbox from stoneagegamer. Bitboxes are a little easier to manage for small volume releases as they can be purchased in small volumes of 100 or less for around $3ea including printed insert. I have a local print shop that I've been using for traditional boxes that does good work with a nice glossy protective finish. The price varies based on qty, ($5ea @100, $2.56ea @250, $1.70ea @ 500). If we choose to invest the funds upfront for traditional boxes I'd recommend the 250 qty for $641 total. Then we can decide how much to mark it up for the CIB option, perhaps around $8..?
The manual preview I saw looks good. I kinda like the black and white effect. That also gives us some lower cost options. Full color manual prices vary based on page count and quantity, I can quote those if that's something we'd like. But the simplicity and low cost of the black and white manual sounds fitting to me. The only question is if we want to include the manual with loose carts, or just CIB's?
We do also have to settle on a design for the label on the back of the cart. I swapped the "CAUTION" label size on my cases for a standard avery size 1 x 2-5/8" which is size #8160. I've made up a generic one we can use, or we can come up with whatever we'd like.
CAUTION label templateYesterday I picked up a big batch of clear cases to cover the LE's for compo prizes. So I'll put those and some RE grey's together so they're only awaiting the final rom and stickers.
I'd like to get the labels printed off at the same time we do the boxes if possible assuming we are doing a box. And if we opt for a long term
release of volume 1 in conjunction with the vol2 release, then we can get ourselves a better group discount on labels. I might have another separate title I can squeeze in at the same time to get us all a better deal on printed materials.
One other minor thing, I have new black plastic dust sleeves now too from videogameboxprotectors. I expect between sleeves, labels, and cases all being sourced myself this year we'll at least get the sleeves for free compare to last year's cost of ~$15ea for grey. But I'll have to run the exact numbers once we iron things out.
If we can get these last items sorted out before the end of the year, then I think we're in good shape to release in January. If we've got a good idea how we're handling the next compo perhaps we can make one big giant update and release of the compo all together.