Save Our Gaming Magazines

[DJ Sack]

Some of you who post over at Rllmuk may know about this but some of you do not.

This is something ive been thinking about for a long long time. In front of me is a shelf of magazines, which from time to time i just love to read through, seeing the hype of the Saturn or Zelda being released, looking at what the DC was meant to become and very much did or just classic reviews for games im now thinking of getting.

Its very much a nostalgia thing, i get a great feeling looking back over these magazines but they take up so much space, are bulky, heavy and well...theres loads out there id love to read, like the offical saturn magazine, super play and old CVG.

A little while back i scanned in the first issue of Arcade magazine, and had it up for download. It had a great response and people are interested in me scanning the whole set (which is a lot of time and effort).

Now i posted this to firstly and quickly ask for those that have magazines for sale or want to bin, shoot me a PM and i'll be happy to take them off your hands to scan in and preserve. As we all know its getting harder and harder to find the older magazines except for ebay, and even then.

But secondly and most importantly i wanted to know your views on it all, would you like to help in preserving our magazines in digital format? Would you even care if they were preserved and available on a DVD or for download?

Also i wanted to find out other peoples views of what they'd like to see and what they'd like me to do when scanning in these mags.

thanks.

[jezzace]

Doh! I had a load of N64, from issue 1 through to about 60 something and I binned them all a week ago! Also had the classic issue of Total where they gave mario 64 100%!!

[Concept]

If it's an amateur project then I'd love to help, but I think there'd be legal issues to be honest if people had access to archived media from various publishing sources easily available for download.

[charlesr]

The legal issue being that it's illegal.

[Molloy]

Then you just do it by torrent. The publishers can't touch you.

[Concept]

Yes, but advertising such a project on Rllmuk and NTSC-uk is hardly the most discreet of moves, if you're looking to gather a resource together of old British gaming magazine issues for access.

[Jakeway]

That?s quite a nice idea. I will help you out, as long as your not planning to sell a load of magazines on a DVD.

Unfortunately I got rid of loads of magazines about a year ago. I kind of wish I didn?t now. I remember I had a lot of old Sega magazines, and some Mega CD magazine that was only ever 30 pages long and always came with a demo.

I remember reading over some of them just before they got binned. I had a good few Pre-Nintendo 64 magazines, it was interesting just to read all the crap hype and bear-face-lies about the power of it. I also recall some more recent Pre-GameCube magazines had some pictures of Galleon and Wave Rave blue storm (which looked awful)

At the moment the only half interesting magazines I have are is last issue of the unofficial Dreamcast magazine and a GamesMaster that has interviews with all some of the people that worked on the show. Other than that its just recent Edge and Games TM mags.

[TheShend]

I have every issue Official Sega Saturn Magazine and all but the 1st two editions of Official Sega Magazine as well. And a scanner >_<

And my uncle teodi Super Play.

I think it's a great idea.

[DJ Sack]

Its not a case of trying to make a quick buck as with peoples help this wont be needed. Im looking into the matter legally and have got advice from many people. Ive also contact future publishing who failed to get back to me so they obviously dont care too much (especially when their auto responder says my email will be delt within 3 days, that was a few weeks back now).

Also take a look at zzap64.com or the your sinclair website where they were legally told by the publisher they could host the magazines for free and were even given limtied help in hosting them.

There are thorny legal issues with this, but for now i just wanted to see if people would/could help and just guage a general reaction to it all.

Once again its a public service to keep our old gaming magazines alive, not exploit other peoples work for profit or gain.

the reason i say DVD is that arcade issue 1 came in around 150 megs. Times that by 20 (for all issues made) times that by X amount of downloaders and you quickly see that it is a very costly thing to host unless you use p2p or dvd.

If you want to help please pm me telling me what you can scan in and when you can do this. It will require a lot of free time. 180 pages took roughly 8-10 hours on a good fast colour scanner scanning at 300dpi i believe, which is great quality and means pictures look like pictures rather than dots or colour.

Personally im starting with Arcade, DC-uk and ODM as they were very small runs, but things like old CVG which have hundreds of issues will require multiple people to work on them.

[gizmo1990]

My simple answer would be yes, bring on the Zero scans. 8)

But!

You should definitely consider setting out some ground rules for how scans should be submitted.

The Amiga preservation group (being German ) does this very well.

To my mind theres no point doing something such as this if the quality isn't good enough and importantly, uniform.

[DJ Sack]

I totally agree, thats why if people pm me i can get everyone in sync hopefully.

[Lyris]

I don't want to give them away, but if you want to borrow any of the later ODM (Official Dreamcast Magazine) issues to scan then you're very welcome to

I also have the unofficial "Dreamcast Magazine" right up until the end. Not a very good magazine but probably interesting.