Floppy disk labels

Having entered the retro scene I decided that now I can afford games more readily than back in the 80’s and 90’s I would monitor Ebay, Facebook and Amibay for the collection I always wanted.

Sadly, games can be more expensive than I ever expected and the condition of them can be disappointing.  Many sell as untested so you really are taking a gamble when you purchase them.  What do you expect from a 20 to 30 year old games? I hear you say!  yep you’re right!

That however wasn’t my only concern, the biggest problem I had was space!

Have you seen the size of some of these big box Amiga games!!  I have a collection of about 30-40 games and it quickly became apparent that it just isn’t going to work for me in my limited sized man cave!

Plan B was needed.

Luckily I have invested in a wonderful but expensive little device called the Kryoflux. Basically it lets you read and write original game disks – protection and all.  I absolutely hate hacked games with the annoying intros and modifications they do to ‘make it better’ – nah, I want the original game in all its glory.  The Kryoflux gives me that option, perfect!

Now creating these disks and scribbling the name on the label is a bit crap… I wanted to do better.

First, I found an online tool to generate my labels with, this being avery.com.  Using the you print option and creating an account I selected the template 5196 as this allows you to fold the label over the edge of the disk and onto the back.

Secondly, I needed labels to work with, fortunately I found the Avery pack for the 5196 template on amazon.com and got some shipped over.

Before I discovered this pack I tried some Kodak photo sticker paper and cut the labels out by hand!  A very tedious process but at least the labels came out glossy.  The downside was that they didn’t actually stick very well and even trying some double-sided sticky tape didn’t give me the finish I craved.

 

My first attempt with Kodak photo sticker paper.  Very nice to look at but didn’t stick well at all.

I found Avery to be a nice tool but with some annoying nuances – so it takes a bit of patience and trial and error to get it right.

Some tips on using it:

• If you want to print colour all the way to the edge of the label use a background colour – the downside being that the whole page has the same colour.  You can use a background image too but you will need to ensure you’re printing perfectly on your labels!
• Always check your editing one or all templates… the amount of time I failed to notice and screwed up things – very annoying!
• The copy feature adds to the existing label and doesn’t replace.. so watch the layers on the right had side and delete unneeded ones.  I tend to delete prior to pasting.

So once you start using it you can design your label.  Do some test prints on paper first to align your text and images to where you want them to be.

Early Ocean prototype before I stuck a little white border around the edges.

I generally choose to use the publisher or developer as the main image just because its easier to churn out multiple titles and keep a consistent design.  Some do get special treatment though if I can find an image.

Once you’ve completed your page of labels you need to print.  I had a hard time here trying to get it right and went through plenty of ink and labels!  To this day I haven’t really managed it..  not sure why but its just off..  the labels say make page type to be ‘labels’ but I don’t seem to have that setting anywhere!!

The best I managed was setting the page to ‘Legal’ and the quality to ‘matte’.

I got around the offset of printing by either moving it a little off centre, setting a background colour rather than image or reducing the background image to leave a white border.

Not bad ey!

They are looking very nice and I actually prefer them over the glossy originals I did.  Now I have a good template to roll these out as and when I need them.

Files:

The following files are provided unsupported.

• See my Github project for the files.
• See a list of all the games.