We need your help

This is a big project, we are trying to collect about 100.000 images. So, we encourage you to send your snapshots and scans. They will be added to our database as soon as one of our validators checks their quality. Right now, there is no upload system implemented, so if you want to send your files, please contact us, and we will open an FTP account for that. You can also upload them to megaupload, rapidshare, or one of those upload sites, and post the link in our help forum.

Published Images format and properties

We would like to release the best images we can, taking care of their size in kb. So, we are going to use two different formats:

• Game snapshots - .png format, Images will be released at their original resolution.
• Scans - .jpg format and they will be at 200dpi (dots per inche). This will give you the oportunitie to use the scans in your front-end and to see them alone with your favourite image viewer.

Following this 200dpi standard quality, our images will be these sizes:

Send us your images

We are going to be specially focussed in quality, so, for colaborations we would like to ask you for:

• Game snapshots (Intro and ingame) - They must be in .png format, preferly 8bit images because they are smaller and can handle 256 colours, wich is the case of most systems we cover. Nintendo 64 can display millions of colours, so, 24-bits png images are used. Images MUST be captured at their original resolution. No scaling or filtering will be accepted because they degrade image quality.
• Scans (Front/Back cover and Cartridge) - They must be in .png format as it can handle million of colors without any loss of quality. We're trying to collect original images and we won't accept any watermarked box, or with any logo on it (apart from those from the manufacturer).
  
  As we said before, we´ll be focussed in quality and we are going to release 200dpi images, but maybe in the future we will release higher resolution images. So, please, send us the biggest image you can. But please, don´t use your scanner over its natural resolution.

For game snapshots, sometimes it's not possible to get original pixel size images (as far as we know) because there is no emulator that supports it. TRY TO FIND AN EXAMPLE. In this cases, snapshots must be downscaled to their original resolutions. The best way to do that is:

1. Find an emulator that can use the double or triple of original resolution.
2. Run the games at this double or triple resolution with no filter, usually in a window as not all video cards can handle those resolutions in fullscreen.
3. Take the snapshot
4. Downscale the image to its original resolution using any software you want without any scaling filter since it degrades image quality. Here you can see an example of downscaling with and without filtering. Notice the sharpness of the no filter scaling and the blurriness of the filter scaling, for example in "chaotix's" eye.

Systems original resolutions and suggested emulator

• Note 1: In case of various resolutions, Bold resolutions means it's the most common for that system.
• Note 2: "Direct capture" means you can get sanpshots from the emulator at the original resolution independent of the resolution you use for gaming. So, you doesn't need to re-escale the snapshots.
• Note 3: Nintendo 64 has not standard resolution, so we are going to re-escale every image to 320x240px.
• Note 4: Sega Game Gear games are sometimes direct ports from Sega Master System without any resolution retouch. It means the games are in a resolution above the Game Gear display posibilities. The hardware itself is responsible for that underscaling. In those cases, we will have the snapshots at their original resolution even if the system wasn't capable of showing properly the image.