Looking to Mass Donate many magazines

[mvallas]

Hey there guys - my name is Mike Vallas and I'm a former employee of Ziff-Davis/Sendai between 1991-2001 and have worked on practically all the magazines we did in that era.

The reason I'm posting is that I'm in the midst of purging my home of old stockpile of mags when brought an old friend of mine to hang out. When I told him I was going to pitch these mags into the recycling bin he suggested to check you guys out and to see if you wanted them.

Not only am I impressed at what you've done/are doing, but I've got a BUNCH of mags that you are missing that will fill your gaps! ^_^

First off, I believe I can finish out your entire Expert Gamer, EGM2 collection! I took a look at what you are missing and have practically all those issues in my "to recycle" pile.

Here are the issues I currently have mint-condition copies of:

Expert Gamer you currently need that I have:

Issues 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77.

EGM2 issues I can provide that you need:

25, 28, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 47, 49.

I also have various other things I've done, like a LOT of extra Versus Books/Prima/Brady strategy guides you seemingly do not have.

I don't really have time to scan all these (after all, the point is to remove them! Not keep them around ;P) so I was wondering if we can arrange something where I can donate these.

I've sent PMs to whom I believe are the people who work at this site, but feel free to message me back and we can talk! ^_^

Thx again! ^_^

Mike Vallas

[E-Day]

If I can get them shipped to Canada, I will take them off your hands.

I work here but did not get a PM from you. But my feels aren't hurt. Honest. 

[Phillyman]

PM sent

[mvallas]

Wow, thanks a bunch! Wasn't even expecting to be any form of "patron" - so thanks! =D  Will respond more later, but just wanted to say I read what you wrote and will figure something out to get them to you all. glad to be of help! ^_^

[mvallas]

12 minutes ago, E-Day said:

If I can get them shipped to Canada, I will take them off your hands.

I work here but did not get a PM from you. But my feels aren't hurt. Honest. 

Hehe - no worries. TBH the only reason I didn't tag you was it wasn't letting me put in more than 2 people - so I figured "archivist" would've been better.

...either that, or the Gamepro reveiw avatar may have psychologically prevented me from doing so as well? Who knows! ;P

[kitsunebi]

1 hour ago, E-Day said:

If I can get them shipped to Canada, I will take them off your hands.

I work here but did not get a PM from you. But my feels aren't hurt. Honest. 

Don't worry - I didn't get a message either.  It's just as well, though.  I've already got a pile of donated mags I'll be working on for a while.

Actually, what I'm really jealous of is how quickly Phillyman responded with a PM.  Maybe I should end all of my PMs to him with a photo of a stack of unscanned mags from now on.

[mvallas]

Hey, quick question

I have some strategy guides from Prima/Brady and a ton from Versus Books. Did you need them as well? I ask as I see you only seem to be hosting the unofficial guides ATM for Brady. Just wondering if there was some stipulation or something you couldn't do.

[kitsunebi]

So long as they're old enough to be scanned (strategy guides are beholden to the same self-imposed cutoff dates we use for magazines), there's no reason those can't be scanned as well.

Our current cutoff dates are:

December 2008 for defunct publications

December 2003 for publications still in print

I don't know if this is official policy (it's been a while since anyone scanned a strategy guide around here), but I tend to think strategy guides should be regarded as "publications still in print" since they aren't periodicals and thus could have been made available by the publisher/retailer for a much longer stretch of time than a magazine.  Which would mean anything published up through Dec. 2003 is fair game.

[E-Day]

3 hours ago, mvallas said:

...either that, or the GamePro reveiw avatar may have psychologically prevented me from doing so as well? Who knows! ;P

How dare you. 

[Areala]

On 1/15/2018 at 6:35 PM, E-Day said:

How dare you. 

*ROFL!*

[Ethereal Dragonz]

On ‎1‎/‎15‎/‎2018 at 9:33 AM, mvallas said:

Hey there guys - my name is Mike Vallas and I'm a former employee of Ziff-Davis/Sendai between 1991-2001 and have worked on practically all the magazines we did in that era.

Hey Mike! Any good stories you can share? I wish I could re-live 1990 - 1996.

[mvallas]

 

1 minute ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Hey Mike! Any good stories you can share? I wish I could re-live 1990 - 1996.

Oh good christ do I ever have many stories

One fun one I like to talk of recently actually involves Starfox 2 since that FINALLY got released via the SNES Classic thing by Nintendo. Short version: We saw the game on the show floor and we got hold of the video cables for Nintendo's main screen and spliced the game into a high-8 recorder without them knowing! Was funny too as the big screen blinked off/on quickly - thankfully alerting nobody. Then, Andy Baran (RIP) not only played that game on the show floor, but got all the way to the end and beat the game right there!  We were so excited that we had the ENTIRE game recorded so we published the strategy guide (Found in EGM2, Issue 8) and were totally shocked to find out it got delayed, and then shelved.

That's just a tiny story! Too many to tell! >_<

Another fun fact about me: I'm the guy who did the photoshop work for a lot of the April Fools tricks. My credits go to the All-Bonds code, Akuma in RE2 (I originally pitched that to the EGM staff, but they wanted the All-Bonds code, so I put Akuma/RE2 into EGM2), the 2nd iteration of Shen Long in SF3 (Sushi-X/Ken Williams did the first one. I had only just started there... although I was the guinnea pig for it! I walked in and he showed me the screens and told me how he unlocked Shen Long.  I was happy and thought the screens looked cool so I walked away and everybody started laughing! >_<) I also did the GameNOW Metal Gear Solid 2X  and freelance-wise I did the LotR Cart Racer screen.

[Ethereal Dragonz]

25 minutes ago, mvallas said:

Oh good christ do I ever have many stories

Hahaha those are great. I don't think I can adequately express the gratitude I have for the work that you and your team did back then. Those magazines had a huge influence on my life.

If I could trouble you for one more story, do you have any around Mortal Kombat 2 or 3?

[mvallas]

9 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

If I could trouble you for one more story, do you have any around Mortal Kombat 2 or 3?

Hrmmmm... Some MK stories. There were a few.

One of the nice things about Mortal Kombat was that Midway was in the Western Burbs of Chicago, and so were we! We met with them often, particularly when MK rose to its heights.

In fact, that bit us in the arse one time when we published our first preview of MK2. It was based on one of the final betas they gave us and Barakka had a BUNCH of moves in the game like spinning like a top and such. We published them, and (due to our month delay) MK2 machines were already out and they REMOVED those moves! We had a TON of hate-mail comming back at us accusing us of photoshopping those moves, and we didn't! I even had a personal friend who believed it and I Insisted we didn't to him! It was kinda nice to be vindicated, albeit nearly a decade later, when Mortal Kombat Trilogy came out and they put Barakka's moves back in.

Another story was meeting Rich Divizio who played Kano. Not much there but me being dissapointed that a: he was a really nice guy and b: he was MUCH shorter than me! Kinda took the umph out of that character. =/

Nothing though beat seeing Katalin Zamiar, who played Kitana, that she was REALLY short. Like 5'1 or something!

[Phillyman]

and they arrived this morning

Big thanks again for helping us fill out missing issues.

[mvallas]

Sorry for the late reply - been dealing with the most violent case of food poisoning I've ever had (I'm ok, though - almost recovered! ^_^)  so I've been a bit out of it.

ANyways, glad I could help out! ^_^ (and to think I was just 24 hours away from chucking them into the recycling bin! ;P)