kitsunebi's talking to himself again

[kitsunebi]

14 minutes ago, Phillyman said:

 

There is a reason for that though. I am based in the USA, so technically Retromags is a USA website. Also I grew up with USA video game magazines, so those are the ones that I am most familiar with

 

This isn't about international mags.  I only scan Japanese stuff because it's what I have access to.  I do not care about those mags one bit and only bought them in the first place so that I have something to contribute.

I grew up in the USA as well.  And I played video games and bought those magazines as well.  But I also played on the system that had the largest worldwide user base - a PC - and I bought lots of computer game mags growing up as well.  Furthermore, as an adult, I find that those are the ones that hold up best when it comes to re-reading, so those are the ones I most want to see preserved.  But outside of a couple of random releases here and there over the years, I came to realize long ago that Retromags is strictly focused on video games-only (although computer games are allowed) and I would have to depend on places like Kiwis World for a more rounded gaming mag experience.

[KiwiArcader]

4 minutes ago, kitsunebi77 said:

But outside of a couple of random releases here and there over the years, I came to realize long ago that Retromags is strictly focused on video games-only (although computer games are allowed) and I would have to depend on places like Kiwis World for a more rounded gaming mag experience.

The reason KiwisWorld has a lot of PC content is because I went from Amiga to IBM-PC and bought every PC mag I could get my hands on so I had mountains of Atomic:MPC, PC Gamer and PC PowerPlay etc acquired over the years which barring the USA version of PC Gamer I never got rid of any of it. I think the same goes for Jason as well so between us we have provided probably 95% of the PC content over there with heaps more to come after factoring in a Retromags member donating almost a complete collection of Computer Games:Strategy Plus as well. 

Console gaming came later in life for me so it never really took over as my source of gaming leisure. That doesn't mean I haven't spent truck loads of money on acquiring that type of content for the site (nRevolution, NGC, PlayStation Official etc) but it is sort of secondary to me. 

I too see Retromags as more of a gaming magazine site predominantly for USA based content. Submissions here are likely based upon the scanning members location which is mainly USA/Canada based. That isn't a bad thing. As I see it diversity is actually a good thing. It is what it is......

[kitsunebi]

2 minutes ago, KiwiArcader said:

I too see Retromags as more of a gaming magazine site predominantly for USA based content. Submissions here are likely based upon the scanning members location which is mainly USA/Canada based. That isn't a bad thing. As I see it diversity is actually a good thing. It is what it is......

I agree, but that doesn't mean there weren't plenty of computer gaming mags published in the USA.  The problem is that 90% of our users are only interested in magazines that have Mario or Sonic hiding somewhere between the covers...

4 minutes ago, KiwiArcader said:

factoring in a Retromags member donating almost a complete collection of Computer Games:Strategy Plus as well.

I think he knew which site was more likely to actually scan and release those mags.

[KiwiArcader]

33 minutes ago, kitsunebi77 said:

I think he knew which site was more likely to actually scan and release those mags.

Well, he did ask here if anyone was interested in scanning them and got no takers so I made an offer to do it. The rest, they say, is history ........

[kitsunebi]

4 minutes ago, KiwiArcader said:

Well, he did ask here if anyone was interested in scanning them and got no takers so I made an offer to do it. The rest, they say, is history ........

That's because he didn't ask correctly.  To get people around here interested, the correct way of asking is:

"Hello.  I have a complete run of GAMEPRO(oops, I mean Computer Game Strategy Plus)

Would anyone be interested in scanning my collection of (not)GAMEPROS?

[kitsunebi]

All right, on with the not-my-own-scan Japanese uploads.

First is the important stuff: a couple of strategy guides to Nihon Falcom's 1991 real-time strategy game, Lord Monarch, for the PC-98 and later ported to the Super Famicom and Mega Drive.

https://archive.org/details/LordMonarchGuidebook

https://archive.org/details/LordMonarchPerfectGuide

     

 

And also, a couple of artbooks.  After uploading it I discovered that the Capcom book is already available at Archive (with an incorrect title), but I did edit a few of the pages for the heck of it (not all), so technically, mine is the better copy.

https://archive.org/details/CapcomDesignWorks_201901

https://archive.org/details/YoshitakaAmanoJapan

   

[ml0045]

Thanks for all these JP guide scans. Really appreciate it.

[kitsunebi]

A couple more onto the pile.  This time we have some Western computer games ported to Japanese consoles.  The flashback guide covers the Super Famicom and Mega Drive ports, while Eye of the Beholder covers the Super Famicom port.

https://archive.org/details/FlashbackOfficialGuidebook

https://archive.org/details/EyeOfTheBeholderVictoryStrategyMethod

[Ethereal Dragonz]

15 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

A couple more onto the pile.  This time we have some Western computer games ported to Japanese consoles. 

This is interesting. How popular is Dungeons and Dragons in Japan?

[kitsunebi]

2 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

This is interesting. How popular is Dungeons and Dragons in Japan?

Now?  Not very, I would guess.  But be it tabletop RPG or computer game RPG, Japan was first introduced to to the concept and mechanics of role playing games via the West.  So the further back in time you go, the more similarities there are between Western RPGs and Japanese RPGs.  I'm really not at all familiar with the Japanese TRPG scene, but I believe they mostly play games original to Japan these days, rather than Western imports like D&D.

[orenronen]

23 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Yeah, but first of all...12TB HDDs in Japan???  Seriously, does no one pay attention when I say how technologically behind the times Japan is compared to the rest of civilization?  The first 8TB drives just got released here a few months ago.  Probably won't see 12TB drives for at least another couple of years.

Wait, what? I just looked on Amazon, Rakuten and even Bic Camera's online store and they all offer 12TB (as well as 14TB) HDDs. If you buy on Bic they're way overpriced but on Amazon they're actually not that much more expensive than on the US site. Applicable for same-day shipping and Prime, so it's not some import seller either.

Sure, you won't find them on the shelf in any physical electronics stores (though you probably can if you dig through specialty shops in Akihabara and the like), but that's just lack of demand from the average customer frequenting those shops. They're definitely available if you want them, though.

[kitsunebi]

10 hours ago, orenronen said:

Wait, what? I just looked on Amazon, Rakuten and even Bic Camera's online store and they all offer 12TB (as well as 14TB) HDDs. If you buy on Bic they're way overpriced but on Amazon they're actually not that much more expensive than on the US site. Applicable for same-day shipping and Prime, so it's not some import seller either.

You're right, I was blinded by my inability to see irrational prices.  The only 12TB external I see at Amazon.jp is over $800, so it's invisible to me.

I honestly only look at Seagate externals when shopping for HDDs, since they're the only affordable ones on the market (also, I've had Buffalo and I/O drives fail on me, so I avoid them).  There is no 12TB Seagate external at Amazon.jp, and the only 10 TB Seagates for sale are not from Amazon itself, but from an affiliated company selling them for substantially more than what they cost in America ($270 vs. $430).  As I said before, Amazon.jp (proper) only started carrying the 8TB version a few months ago.  I know, because I had it on preorder.  (The same 8TB drive I'd been importing from the USA for the past couple of years.)

Maybe if I shopped for internals I wouldn't have this problem?  Alas, I haven't owned a desktop PC in over 11 years.

 

[kitsunebi]

Two more I uploaded this morning, but only now had the time to go in and fix the cover page on the flipbook.  (Seriously - what the hell is wrong with their software?  Why can't it just assume that PAGE 1 is the cover?  At least 75% of the time (probably more like 90%) I have to go in afterwards and edit the scandata.xml file to tell it that yes indeed, page 1 should be the cover, rather than page 7 as their "intelligent" software originally selected for me.

Anyway, here's a couple of books from a series of games that never made it Westward.  Partly due to the platforms they were published on (PC-98 computers and PC Engine CD), and partly due to the fact that I'm sure that bringing them over would have required quite a bit of translation work at a time when very few games were given that treatment.

https://archive.org/details/SchwarzschildHandBook

https://archive.org/details/SchwarzschildWorldTechnicalFile

[E-Day]

On 1/26/2019 at 6:58 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

That's because he didn't ask correctly.  To get people around here interested, the correct way of asking is:

"Hello.  I have a complete run of GAMEPRO(oops, I mean Computer Game Strategy Plus)

Would anyone be interested in scanning my collection of (not)GAMEPROS?

People are encouraged to scan the things that interest them, and people will probably enjoy the tedious job of scanning and editing a magazine if it's something that interests them rather than something they have little to know interest in. If people here are more interested in video game magazines than computer game magazines, that's just the way it is. Most members are from North America and are interested in console magazines. If someone comes along and wants to scan everything PC game related, then that's fantastic. It would be great to have more contributors from other parts of the world so that we could get a wider variety of stuff that those people are actually familiar with.

The site and its user base are what they are. And this issue also illustrates why it's good to have multiple outlets. People more interested in PC magazines can go to Kiwi's site for their fix since he is focusing a lot on that stuff because that is what he grew up on and enjoys.

If I had to choose between scanning a 1997 issue of PC Gamer and and 1994 issue of VG&CE, I'll choose VG&CE every time because it holds more interest to me. That's not to take away from PC Gamer. Now, if I had a Fujitsu scanner that could scan quickly instead of making it a time consuming labourous job, and someone else could edit some of the scans, then I would scan everything

[kitsunebi]

1 hour ago, E-Day said:

People are encouraged to scan the things that interest them, and people will probably enjoy the tedious job of scanning and editing a magazine if it's something that interests them rather than something they have little to know interest in. If people here are more interested in video game magazines than computer game magazines, that's just the way it is. Most members are from North America and are interested in console magazines. If someone comes along and wants to scan everything PC game related, then that's fantastic. It would be great to have more contributors from other parts of the world so that we could get a wider variety of stuff that those people are actually familiar with.

The site and its user base are what they are. And this issue also illustrates why it's good to have multiple outlets. People more interested in PC magazines can go to Kiwi's site for their fix since he is focusing a lot on that stuff because that is what he grew up on and enjoys.

If I had to choose between scanning a 1997 issue of PC Gamer and and 1994 issue of VG&CE, I'll choose VG&CE every time because it holds more interest to me. That's not to take away from PC Gamer. Now, if I had a Fujitsu scanner that could scan quickly instead of making it a time consuming labourous job, and someone else could edit some of the scans, then I would scan everything

Yes, this site is a product of its own creation.  Its founders were video game fans, so they scanned video game magazines, which attracted more video game fans. 

It doesn't mean that PC game fans don't exist - it just means that they come to the site, see that hardly any attention is paid to PC games, and they move on.  That's what I did when I first discovered Retromags, a couple of years before I eventually came back and joined as a member.  The notion that seems to be hinted at above that anyone with an interest in PC game magazines must come from a country outside of the USA is absurd, especially since the only games the USA was developing that were worth a damn during the classic 8/16 bit eras people are so nostalgic for were PC games - the consoles at the time were reserved for Japanese titles and American garbage like LJN and Acclaim.

It also means that the prospects of seeing non-video game mags in the future here are grim, since anyone who has some they are willing to scan would probably consider this a poor choice of sites to host them after a quick look around.

But as you say, there's always Kiwis World.

This is no one's fault - I'm not trying to hate on anyone who only likes console games because that's all they ever played.  It's just frustrating for me personally as I feel a part of an extreme minority in a place that should accommodate everyone.  Kind of like I showed up to a comic convention dressed as a Star Trek character, but every single other person at the con was dressed in Star Wars garb.

[E-Day]

We don't want anyone not sticking around because something they are interested in isn't available in great quantity on Retromags. If there is a way to keep them around and maybe encourage them to help fill the void, we should be doing it.

I originally came here way back in 2007 looking for GamePro. There was a good amount, and I was happy. I also liked it so much that I wanted to contribute. Not everyone will be like that, but if the odd person passing through ends up doing that, we'll have a good amount of people contributing, hopefully in areas where we are lacking content (Japan, Europe, UK...pretty much everywhere but North America).

[KiwiArcader]

1 hour ago, E-Day said:

We don't want anyone not sticking around because something they are interested in isn't available in great quantity on Retromags. If there is a way to keep them around and maybe encourage them to help fill the void, we should be doing it.

Well, one USA based member offered their collection of Computer Games: Strategy Plus magazines here and no-one replied so I ended up taking them at some cost in shipping to get them to New Zealand. This should never have happened. You'd think at least one scanning member here in the USA would have taken him up on it but that didn't happen. Same happened for Sega Dreamcast Official Magazine (Japan) and that's a console title albeit in a different language but still, you get where I'm going with this?

The user base here is console oriented AND to a certain extent not all that interested in the hard work involved in getting the content online especially when you consider Retromags has 13,000+ members here but only a handful of scanning members inclusive of yourself and Phillyman and a couple of others throwing an edited marktrade magazine out occasionally. I have only 95 members over at KiwisWorld and again, a handful of scanning members but most of those members didn't even consider scanning for Retromags as:

1. They felt the site was too USA oriented and they mainly reside in the UK or Australia so thought more people would appreciate their content on an alternate site and
2. A couple, myself included, feel the content restrictions here are simply too restrictive

I completely understand Phillyman has every right to determine what can be hosted here but not accepting 3rd party scans if quality is acceptable and imposing date restrictions on content when the publisher has discontinued magazines IS going to have an effect on enticing people to actively contribute. That's why Archive.org is what it is, the biggest receptacle for content on the planet and why both our sites which used to be THE places to come to, aren't so much any more. I don't care one iota about it but I personally think it's had a big impact. No doubt Phillyman will say that the value added benefits of the magazine database give Retromags added value but really? Who comes here to look at the database? Me, when I want to check an issue here or there but most everyone else comes here for magazines, and things have been somewhat glacial on that front in recent times. Not Meppi glacial mind you, but slow nonetheless.

[orenronen]

19 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

You're right, I was blinded by my inability to see irrational prices.  The only 12TB external I see at Amazon.jp is over $800, so it's invisible to me.

Maybe if I shopped for internals I wouldn't have this problem?  Alas, I haven't owned a desktop PC in over 11 years.

 

 

There's this one (Western Digital, and it's also a RAID case) for around $600, but external ones are consistently about $200 more expensive than in the US, sure, and most of them are only through external sellers.

You definitely want to go internal with those sizes if you're looking for prices more in line with America (still more expensive, of course, but by a lesser margin). Besides, with those sizes you'd want to invest in a RAID, so you'll go for internals anyway.

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, orenronen said:

 

There's this one (Western Digital, and it's also a RAID case) for around $600, but external ones are consistently about $200 more expensive than in the US, sure, and most of them are only through external sellers.

You definitely want to go internal with those sizes if you're looking for prices more in line with America (still more expensive, of course, but by a lesser margin). Besides, with those sizes you'd want to invest in a RAID, so you'll go for internals anyway.

Yeah, I don't see the point in buying a 12TB dual-drive RAID for nearly twice the price of buying two 8TB externals.  $600 for 12TB or $360 for 16TB?  Not a hard decision.

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, KiwiArcader said:

I completely understand Phillyman has every right to determine what can be hosted here but not accepting 3rd party scans if quality is acceptable and imposing date restrictions on content when the publisher has discontinued magazines IS going to have an effect on enticing people to actively contribute. That's why Archive.org is what it is, the biggest receptacle for content on the planet and why both our sites which used to be THE places to come to, aren't so much any more. I don't care one iota about it but I personally think it's had a big impact. No doubt Phillyman will say that the value added benefits of the Magazine Database give Retromags added value but really? Who comes here to look at the database? Me, when I want to check an issue here or there but most everyone else comes here for magazines, and things have been somewhat glacial on that front in recent times. Not Meppi glacial mind you, but slow nonetheless.

If we didn't have a bunch of Nintendo Powers that the Internet Archive was forced to remove (which granted were our scans to begin with), we'd be of far less interest to casual downloaders who can find most of our stuff and more elsewhere on the net.  Which is one reason why I think we more or less make an exception to the "we'll remove it if asked" rule.  I mean, sure, technically we were never asked to remove the files.  But the Internet Archive was told they had to remove them.  And those were OUR files.  So clearly, Nintendo doesn't want OUR files being shared. 

Luckily, we're such small potatoes in the scanning world that Nintendo doesn't know we exist. And so long as we ignore their expressed wishes by focusing on semantics (they haven't asked US to remove them), we haven't broken our rule.  So we just stick our fingers in our ears and sing LALALALALA and pretend we respect the publishers' wishes, because doing otherwise would take away one of our biggest draws.

That said, I don't really care if people are inspired to scan by us or Kiwis World or the Internet Archive.  Just so long as they do it and make their scans available somewhere.  To that end, I'd say our biggest drawback is also one of our only unique strengths - quality.  The Internet Archive hosts a lot of scans, but most of them aren't the best quality.  However, at the end of the day, a scanned mag is a scanned mag, regardless of quality.  I've got about 6 scanned mags sitting on my hard drive right now waiting to be edited, but until they are, they are of zero use to anyone.  Our quality standards hamper our output, without question.  Which is not to say I think we should abandon them, but it would be silly not to acknowledge them as a problem nonetheless.

[kitsunebi]

Just one upload today - a guide for the first in the Gōketsuji Ichizoku series (known as Power Instinct in the USA).  I'm not familiar with this series from Atlus, but then I was never a fan of fighting games.  However, I feel the marketing for this game was all wrong.  Here's the SNES cover:

You can almost smell that guy's foot right?  Really makes you want to buy it, right?

Now here's the cover for the Japan-only release of Gōketsuji Ichizoku 3.  Don't even try to tell me this isn't the direction they should have taken from the start.

Feet or underboob. I sure know which one I'd choose.

Anyway, here's the guide:

https://archive.org/details/PowerInstinctGouketsujiIchizokuThoroughStrategy

[Phillyman]

11 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

If we didn't have a bunch of Nintendo Powers that the Internet Archive was forced to remove (which granted were our scans to begin with), we'd be of far less interest to casual downloaders who can find most of our stuff and more elsewhere on the net.  Which is one reason why I think we more or less make an exception to the "we'll remove it if asked" rule.  I mean, sure, technically we were never asked to remove the files.  But the Internet Archive was told they had to remove them.  And those were OUR files.  So clearly, Nintendo doesn't want OUR files being shared. Nnte

We have been providing Nintendo Powers since 2005, we have been featured on the front page of Reddit, Slashdot, Kotaku, Digg, and quite a few other big name sites out there. Plus all of our releases started out on Public torrent trackers like The Pirate Bay and MiniNova, Super Nova, etc. We have been on the front page of emulation websites over the years, and we rank in the first page of search results for most queries of "Nintendo Power Issue XXX MM/YYYY"

So there is no freaking way, none at all that Nintendo and Future do not know of our existence, I reject that notion completely, and that's not even considering the people who dislike my ass from the old days that probably spent the better part of a few weeks reporting this website to every DMCA email address they could find

So yeah, Big N knows we are around. When Internet Archive uploaded everything they made a bigger splash then we ever could with that news. But I bet that the reason the C&D letters flew out were due to how much cheddar Internet Archive pulls in from donations. Last time I checked its a few MILLION dollars a year! So little ole me and Retromags who barely scrape by with pocket change to run this hobby site, well we ain't much of a concern. Plus IA probably pisses them off by hosting all the Nintendo Roms and Isos over there too! I checked a few weeks ago and they had the entire GameCube USA ISO set, Nintendo makes money off that Virtual Console and doing rereleases....so yeah,......no surprise.

Now as to us going in line with another site.......I am just not down with it. I want you guys to know that the ONLY reason that Die Hard GameFan is not on Retromags, is because Meppi and Triverse told me that Dave asked them to let me know to not provide them here. I NEVER saw ANY of these correspondences, which I thought was weird. I would get tapped on the shoulder from Meppi and Triverse from time to time that a top level person with a specific gaming magazine didn't like the vulgar language on Retromags, or that they didnt like us mentioning emulation or roms, or that they didnt like a certain quality of digital magazine being released. All of this cloak and dagger shit really wore thin on me back then, anyone here remember all that "PHOENIX is coming/Dark Phoenix is coming"??? Not even I knew what those two were talking about, and I felt as though it was deception on their parts, that I was some puppet and as long as they said a publisher wanted a change, that I needed to follow suit. Meppi still talks shit about Retromags on Twitter any chance he can get to which I say.....

So no, unless @E-day or I receive an email to remove something, I am not pulling down anything on rumor, word of mouth, tweets, or anything else from here on out. I am not guessing any publishers or copyright holders thoughts or feelings on the matter. This is also one of the reasons that the team of E-day and myself has worked out much better than the days of Meppi, Triverse and I. Because when I get emails from the people that used to work on or run these magazines, I share the original emails with E-day......and he does the same with me. We are not over here blowing smoke up each others asses. And to the people outside of E-day and Myself.....yes we do get emails from people who worked on these magazines in the past, and some of those names are pretty epic. For anyone wondering why I am leaving our sweetheart Areala out of the mix in the above, Its because she had stepped down as an Admin a while back and then when she had trouble updating some records in the Database (due to a bug) I promoted her back to Admin to get around that bug, but I am not sure if she wants to stay an Admin or go back down to a Team Member. So just to prevent any chatter on that front (We love you @Areala

 

[kitsunebi]

26 minutes ago, Phillyman said:

Now as to us going in line with another site.......I am just not down with it. I want you guys to know that the ONLY reason that Die Hard GameFan is not on Retromags, is because Meppi and Triverse told me that Dave asked them to let me know to not provide them here. I NEVER saw ANY of these correspondences, which I thought was weird. I would get tapped on the shoulder from Meppi and Triverse from time to time that a top level person with a specific gaming magazine didn't like the vulgar language on Retromags, or that they didnt like us mentioning emulation or roms, or that they didnt like a certain quality of digital magazine being released. All of this cloak and dagger shit really wore thin on me back then, anyone here remember all that "PHOENIX is coming/Dark Phoenix is coming"??? Not even I knew what those two were talking about, and I felt as though it was deception on their parts, that I was some puppet and as long as they said a publisher wanted a change, that I needed to follow suit.

OK, so, uhh...why are those mags not allowed here again?  Based on what you assume are lies?

 

27 minutes ago, Phillyman said:

So no, unless @E-day or I receive an email to remove something, I am not pulling down anything on rumor, word of mouth, tweets, or anything else from here on out. I am not guessing any publishers or copyright holders thoughts or feelings on the matter.

Err...

(Mind you, I've never read an issue of Gamefan in my life, so I couldn't care less, but it seems like you're sort of contradicting yourself here.

[Phillyman]

17 hours ago, KiwiArcader said:

The user base here is console oriented AND to a certain extent not all that interested in the hard work involved in getting the content online especially when you consider Retromags has 13,000+ members here but only a handful of scanning members inclusive of yourself and Phillyman and a couple of others throwing an edited marktrade magazine out occasionally. I have only 95 members over at KiwisWorld and again, a handful of scanning members but most of those members didn't even consider scanning for Retromags as:

1. They felt the site was too USA oriented and they mainly reside in the UK or Australia so thought more people would appreciate their content on an alternate site and
2. A couple, myself included, feel the content restrictions here are simply too restrictive 

 

I could lift any and all restrictions tomorrow and it would not change how many people contribute around here. Very few people come to Retromags and say "What? A 10 and 15 year cuttoff date, screw this I was gonna scan some magazines....but nope, F them!"

Scanning a magazine is work, Editing a magazine is work.......work not something most people volunteer for

Also 13,000 members is incorrect, I pruned a bunch of people from this website over the years. Shiti is our newest member as of this post and his member number is 30644, so since we first started we have had almost 31,000 members of which maybe 50-75 have stepped forward to scan or edit a magazine.

[kitsunebi]

6 minutes ago, Phillyman said:

I could lift any and all restrictions tomorrow and it would not change how many people contribute around here. Very few people come to Retromags and say "What? A 10 and 15 year cuttoff date, screw this I was gonna scan some magazines....but nope, F them!"

I think when he said "content restrictions" he was also including RM quality control.  And we definitely HAVE had people be turned away for imperfectly edited (or unedited) scans.  So anyone not wanting to go through that step (the most time-consuming) will choose to go with a different site.  Not that there's anything wrong with that.  If quality scans are to be our trademark, then that's our stand.