Project of old magazines website (coming soon)

[Hoagie]

Hello,

I'm currently working on a project of old magazines sub-website that is similar to Retromags in some ways and different in others :

• It's in French.
• We won't archive any PDF or full scans of magazines, just covers.
• For now, it's only about magazines featuring computer games. Maybe we'll add later the console mags, but it's really not a priority.
• The page of each magazine will contain up to three links to websites hosting some or all of the issues : Abandonware Magazines, Retromags, Kiwi's World, Kultmags, CGW Museum, Old Games Italia, Internet Archive... It will also contain a description of the magazine and its history, the awards they gave, a list of people who worked there (with roles and dates), and of course a list of issues. Each issue may have a cover and a part of its summary (interviews, reports, previews, reviews, strategies...).
• A feature will show the covers of the issues published during a month in history in a country. Want to see what the German mags published in March of 1991 looked like ? It's possible !

So far, this database features 128 magazines from France, UK, USA, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, Australia and Argentina, and it's not over.

Now, the question : is it authorized to use some of the covers available on Retromags for our database ? Of course, they will be credited, the credits will clearly appear under each cover. This database is designed to be both a source of information about old magazines and a portal to the other magazine websites, to find easily where some of these mags can be found (with the status : complete or incomplete collection, downloable, readable on line).

I'm waiting for your comments and questions. If I can help Retromags to complete its database, feel free to ask - I'm a huge fan of old computer mags.

[kitsunebi]

As the person who has uploaded the majority of the images at Retromags, I say you're welcome to whatever cover images you want.  No need to credit them, either, in my opinion (full scans would be a different matter).  I realized long ago how utterly ridiculous it was to expect us to ever fill in covers on the nearly 20,000 magazines currently in our database by waiting for site members to scan the covers of their personally owned mags (in the 2 years since I uploaded my first image, there have probably been less than 300 covers added by members other than myself).  The mags we offer to download have are all products of Retromags scanners through and through (and will continue to be so), but for our galleries and database to be useful sources of information, I decided we needed to fill those image holes however possible, so our covers and ads have been pulled from all sorts of other sources.  I spend a great deal of time seeking out the best images to use, and probably about 85% of them have been cleaned up by me in Photoshop before being added here, but that doesn't make them mine or ours, and there's no reason you shouldn't feel free to use them as well. EDITED TO ADD: To be clear, you're free to use any cover images from mags I've personally scanned as well.  And again, so long as it's just the cover or an advertisement (and not the full mag) I would not expect any credit to be given.

My goal when I joined this site was to get rid of all of the ugly grey "image coming soon" pics in our gallery, and create the most complete source of visual information about gaming mags on the internet.  I've added nearly 10,000 pics since then, but I've only scratched the surface.  Maybe one day we'll add French mags to the database (admittedly, not a priority at the moment), and if that happens, hopefully we'll be able to use some of your cover images as well.

[Hoagie]

Great, thaks a lot.

I don't know how you plan to fill the database (country by country ?), but if you want to find info and scans of French magazines, Abandonware Magazines is the reference. There is also some useful info in Press-O-Tech.

[kitsunebi]

Truthfully, I don't plan to fill it in at all.  I just contribute here and there as my mood strikes me.  Filling in our database and galleries is supposed to be a collaborative effort of all members of the site, but since so few people actually contribute, it leaves huge gaps waiting to be filled, particularly in the international sections.  I've done a lot of work on the Japanese section, which I feel is the most important, since half of the games released there never make it to other countries, so the only information available on them comes from Japanese publications.  Other countries' mags are all covering the same games as one another for the most part, albeit in different languages, so filling in those sections is less of a priority, but as I said, if the mood strikes me...

[KiwiArcader]

Feel free to use cover scans from Kiwis.World as well.

I'm way too busy scanning mags and running the site to contribute covers over and above the mags available on the site by and large, especially when I'd have to debind the mag to scan it anyway.

[kitsunebi]

Yeah, covers are the one and only reason I wish I still had a flatbed scanner around.  I've got tons of mags I'd like to add the covers to, but I'd have to debind them first and I simply don't have the time to scan the whole mag.

The pisser is that the flatbed I used to have never actually broke, but it was part of a printer/scanner combo and when the printer's waste ink pad got full, all printer and scanner functions were suspended until the waste pad was replaced.  The problem is, replacing the ink pad was a procedure that cost more than the printer itself.  I didn't even want the stupid printer at that point, having already bought a color LED printer.  But even though there was nothing wrong with the scanner, it wouldn't let me use it until I replaced the damn pad, which I wasn't going to pay to do.  (Although you aren't supposed to do it yourself, I realize that there are methods posted on YouTube and whatnot, but nothing that would have worked on the particular Japanese printer I owned.)

And so I have a closet full of mags whose covers may never be scanned, or at least not for years.

[KiwiArcader]

I HAVE an A3 flatbed. I just can't be shagged scanning covers..... or anything really .... on the damned thing.

[kitsunebi]

Of course your website has no place for covers of magazines that aren't available to download, so scanning covers would be pointless, anyway.  But this guy is creating a site for nothing but covers, so he's speaking my language.

[Hoagie]

Thank again !

It won't just about covers, however. I try to gather lots of info of any kind. For instance, you can already browse our database of more than 19000 personalities and filter them by function, country and gender. Here is the link for people who worked in magazines : https://www.abandonware-france.org/personnalites/recherche/?pays=&genre=&fct=200&letter=&motscle=

[Hoagie]

Well, it's the big day: here is our section about old computers and computer gaming magazines: 134 magazines from 10 countries, almost 9700 issues, more than 50000 referenced articles, pages with personalities, awards, links to archive websites, and the ability to see which magazines were available during a specific month!

https://www.abandonware-france.org/bibliotheque/magazines/

Hope you'll like it! Of course, any suggestion and comment is welcome.