on the forums i made a little page asking about possible templates for the 2600 Red Label, sadly i dont think many were interested in that idea. Or just didnt see it or respond, but i shouldn't be so judgemental.

Essentially what i did is take some red labels (from the AtariAge label guide) and put them in GIMP on a 1080P + 360 PPI project, downloaded the fonts stated by ChristopherD on the forums in 2001 to be from the Red Label games and just overlayed the letters over the original cart, then moved it onto the empty template labels which were made via messing with the magic selection tool on the crusty JPGs then filling them out with an approximated color of red/burgundy/maroon admittedly poorly, did i mention this was just a temporary thing for messing around with?  and approximating the positions by eyeballing the original, and they're good enough for what i'd want to try with them for the time being.

And now comes the question, that many will rightfully ask: " so this is admittedly a poorly made ' temp ' label since ' afaik, a red label template doesnt exist, at least not on google images or the atari2600 label maker site that Atari Age links to on their store for custom carts, so what is this template for? "

Well simple, for those like me who just wanna mess around and make custom labels in that style for fictional games, hypothetical repros (obviously not to actually print out for use on one), homebrew devs who might want a proof of concept label in the Red Label style (again obviously not for retail or consumer labels) or just anyone in general who wants to mess with it!

A quick reminder is it's not a vector image format like SVG, it's a PNG so keep in mind if you make changes to the size of the image or something, it might end up compressed and "crusty" looking. And since it is a PNG and not like a GIMP Project file you have to add, say the catalog numbers or copyrights yourself so for extra text i reccomend using top and bottom retail label images from the AtariAge label guide to fill in those gaps, and using the provided link from ChristopherD to search for the fonts you need, nonetheless it should make it easier than making your own temporary templates for concept art. So HAVE FUN!

BTW the biggest issue besides the uneasy label coloring is the fact that, whatever font is used for the "2600" numbers on the og labels (likely it is indeed a form of futura extra black or something like it and may be same case for 7800) is just... idk less compact and a certain level of boldness that i think many before have struggled to replicate afaik, even those with better repro labels for actual cart use struggle with this seemingly, so thats kinda weird, did my best to make it work, could've done a bit better but for this niche purpose it passes well enough...