@Gamer Issue 19 (May 2012)

damn, dablais. Christmas is around the corner and you're still pumping out magazines like you and kitsunebi are in a race. Good job, but I hope both of you can still get some family time in with your respected kin.

Thanks @StrykerOfEnyo!  Haha just trying to finish some stacks of magazine  that I have or received.  If this was a race, probably @kitsunebi will won!

Enjoy the holdays!

LOL.  I don't know how dablais does it, but I'm just uploading stuff I had already scanned during my 3 year hiatus from this site.  I do this in my free time, and once I get home from work, there's not enough of THAT in a day to do a single magazine, let alone two or three in a day.  Most of the work has to wait for the weekend.  Debinding and scanning a mag in a day is no problem.  But editing it, too?  Especially when most of the Japanese mags I scan are 200+ pages?  Forget about it!  I probably do about one new scan per week on average.

For my part, I mainly do them in batches, because as you said, more than one per day from start to finish is a good stretch.  So I do a couple of them in batch.  I can spend a week just scanning and when I have a couple scanned ready to go.  I will do a couple of edits.  If the scans are well done, I can do one or two edit per night/day.  That is why you see me posting 2 or 3 in a row.   

I've seen others post that those nearly 300-page EGMs were a slog to get through. I can see spending the time to scan 3-5 at a time, then editing as a group later. Its damn find work -- from everyone on the site. This is one of the best organized sites for mags I've seen, but then several ask for money to download content, so I usually don't stick around long since I just don't have the extra money at times.

5 hours ago, StrykerOfEnyo said:

I've seen others post that those nearly 300-page EGMs were a slog to get through. I can see spending the time to scan 3-5 at a time, then editing as a group later. Its damn find work -- from everyone on the site. This is one of the best organized sites for mags I've seen, but then several ask for money to download content, so I usually don't stick around long since I just don't have the extra money at times.

There are less than a handful of sites producing scans - all of the others are just re-uploading other peoples' scans.  Retromags and Oldgamemags are the two main ones producing all-new content - Retromags currently has 4,226 files to download, and Oldgamemags has 11,592.  Bunches of new scans also pop up on the Internet Archive, but it's a bit of a disorganized wasteland over there, so there's no way to gauge how many scans they have, let alone which ones originated there and which were just copied from other places.

All sites require funds to operate - Retromags has 14,723 members, and gets by with donations, I believe (Phillyman can correct me if I'm wrong and he's paying out-of-pocket to keep the site running.)  OGM is a closed community of fewer than 300 members, so there is a one time membership fee to help allay the costs of hosting SO MANY FILES LOL.  But especially for anyone interested in mags from the UK or mags about computers/computer games, their library of mags puts all others to shame.  And of course the Internet Archive is an NPO that has over 24 million users and gets by on donations as well...MILLIONS OF DOLLARS OF DONATIONS.  They pull in over $35 million per year.

None of these sites are profiting off of scans.  Again, Philly would know best about RM's finances, but I know that OGM barely scrapes by, and sometimes the membership donations don't even cover the yearly costs to keep the site going, despite it running on much simpler/cheaper software than Retromags.

But yeah, if you see any other site trying to charge money to access scans, for god's sake don't give it to them.  It's almost certain that the scans they offer were taken from somewhere else, anyway.

We should merge the two then, reduce cost, reduce duplicate and getting a hell of a database!

Ha ha...somehow, I think...that's not going to happen.

OGM was created in the first place due to a...difference of opinions with how things were done here.   And it certainly hasn't grown to the size it has despite its (by comparison) tiny membership due to a lack of dedication.  Besides, the world would be a boring place without alternatives.

Besides, the two sites really do cater to different crowds.  Is your favorite magazine Nintendo Power/GamePro/EGM? Is your interest primarily in consoles? Then Retromags is probably the place for you.  Is your favorite mag PC Gamer/Edge/GamesMaster? Are you interested in a broad range of systems from British microcomputers to the Amiga to PCs to consoles? Then OGM has you covered.  Do you like ALL games for ALL systems?  Well then, it's really not THAT inconvenient to be a member at two different sites, is it?

Oooo I was not aware of the background between the two sites.   I didn’t know they were related somehow at some point.   Anyway, really glad to see you here and contributing again, we need more scanners at Retromags.

7 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

a member at two different sites

I can be both? I though that was against the bylaws! I read the Charter like a good Newbie (haha). Kidding, I didn't even know about Oldgamemags, so I really appreciate you mentioning them. I do love Nintendo Power, GamePro and EGM though. The few sites I found had free downloads, but they throttled your speed and they had a limit to how many you could download in 24 hours (I think another had a 3-day limit). I got a few issues of Retro Gamer I was looking for, but it wasn't worth the time-sink to get more. THEN you had to be a member to have access to anything beyond the first few years of a magazine, I believe. So you had to PAY to have decent SPEED, and also PAY to be a MEMBER, in order to have full access to everything on the site. I understand it takes money to run a site, but I wasn't sure what was acceptable for mag sites -- so thanks for clarifying that. I've been downloading from here for nearly a decade, and eventually that message got to me, "Please consider signing up and saying thank you to our Team Members!." So I did that so I could say thanks to all of you:)

7 hours ago, dablais said:

Oooo I was not aware of the background between the two sites.   I didn’t know they were related somehow at some point.   Anyway, really glad to see you here and contributing again, we need more scanners at Retromags.

Yeah, it was before my time, so I can't comment on it.  The Out of Print Archive began in much the same way.  OGM has gone on to release a massive amount of scans dwarfing everyone else's collections, while OoPA...has not produced quite as much.

2 hours ago, StrykerOfEnyo said:

I've been downloading from here for nearly a decade, and eventually that message got to me, "Please consider signing up and saying thank you to our Team Members!." So I did that so I could say thanks to all of you:)

First of all, whatever site you're talking about is exactly the type you should avoid.  I guarantee you that every mag they have is either a scan pilfered from somewhere else, or a rip of a publisher's digital release.

Second, I want you to know how much your thanks are appreciated by myself and anyone else contributing their time, effort, and money into scanning.  Most people have the common courtesy to thank their clerk/waiter/cashier/deliveryman/etc. when we're handed something we paid for, and only the rudest of people wouldn't thank someone for a gift.  Yet despite the effort that goes into making scans and asking nothing in return, we get precious few thanks, even when all it takes is a simple click of a button.  I try to make an effort to thank every scan that gets released, even though I very rarely download anything (I don't have much interest in games anymore, to be honest), just to show my support.

So again, thank YOU for taking the time to thank us. It is absolutely appreciated.

Totally agree with you @kitsunebi!  

14 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

Ha ha...somehow, I think...that's not going to happen.

OGM was created in the first place due to a...difference of opinions with how things were done here.   And it certainly hasn't grown to the size it has despite its (by comparison) tiny membership due to a lack of dedication.  Besides, the world would be a boring place without alternatives.

Besides, the two sites really do cater to different crowds.  Is your favorite magazine Nintendo Power/GamePro/EGM? Is your interest primarily in consoles? Then Retromags is probably the place for you.  Is your favorite mag PC Gamer/Edge/GamesMaster? Are you interested in a broad range of systems from British microcomputers to the Amiga to PCs to consoles? Then OGM has you covered.  Do you like ALL games for ALL systems?  Well then, it's really not THAT inconvenient to be a member at two different sites, is it?

Dont forget also the great Nintendo focused OutofPrintArchive

50 minutes ago, matrixman said:

Dont forget also the great Nintendo focused OutofPrintArchive

Yep, I mentioned them a few posts up.  Unlike Retromags and OGM, though, OoPA is really just one guy doing the scans.

This is a LOT of responses for an issue of @Gamer: The Official Magazine of Best Buy. I bet those new to the site are impressed by our dedication.  

8 hours ago, StrykerOfEnyo said:

This is a LOT of responses for an issue of @Gamer: The Official Magazine of Best Buy. I bet those new to the site are impressed by our dedication.  

Oh man, is THAT where we are?

Eh, I've had conversations in stranger places.