Why do you visit Retromags?

[Areala]

52 minutes ago, PixelBoy said:

I come here to download magazines to my personal collection. I admit that there was over a year when I didn't visit the site or download anything, but I'm catching up at the moment.

I think Retromags is great because although there are sites with more content, and there are sites with slightly better restoration quality, Retromags offers a mix of good quality and wide selection. I have found obscure magazines that I have never even heard about. "Obscure" being a relative term here obviously, because I come from a non-English-speaking country.

I also very much like how Retromags allows to download stuff without registration, and even torrents of some content. If a site claiming to preserve gaming culture is forcing to do registrations and all that, it feels wrong to me. I can understand that in some cases it can be a legal safety cushion, but as most of the stuff is available anyway on Archive.org or somewhere else, it feels a bit unnecessary.

I decided to register here after many years, because I might be able to participate and contribute in some small-scale fashion (not scanning, I don't have such hardware), mostly with non-English publications, like a bunch which I just randomly saw online that was going to be trashed, but I managed to save them... for now, at least.

 

But anyway, as I hadn't said so before, I can say it here and now: your work is appreciated.

Thanks for all the hard work you are putting into this. I do feel a bit saddened when some download counters aren't even going over 1,000, I think more people should be reading these magazines, but maybe most people just want a single issue or two, and not everything available.

Welcome to the site, @PixelBoy! Glad to see a brand new registered user.

It's especially exciting to see users from non-English-speaking countries, because most of us working on the site use English as our primary/only language. Any help you're able to provide with making non-English publications more accessible to our visitors is greatly appreciated! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

*huggles*
Areala

[dablais]

As a French Québécois, I also have a couple of french magazines that I was wondering if they would be of interest.  If someone think they will, I might upload/scan a couple of magazines in French. 

 

Edited February 1 by dablais

[Areala]

54 minutes ago, dablais said:

As a French Québécois, I also have a couple of french magazines that I was wondering if they would be of interest.  If someone think they will, I might upload/scan a couple of magazines in French. 

 

Pour moi, j'adorerais voir des magazines en français!

Sorry if I butchered that...I haven't had a French class in, uh, in a long, long time...

[kitsunebi]

 I wouldn't discount registrations just because "most of the stuff is available anyway on Archive.org" - they're just as vulnerable as anyone else.  I had several of my scans removed from Archive due to a "copyright claim" they received.  I have my doubts that the claim was actually filed by the publisher they claimed to be, since several of the mags which were removed were from  a completely different publisher altogether, but there's nothing I can do about it.  Archive knows all about being sued (just check the news), so when they get told to take something down, they jump.  Scanning sites keeping a lower profile is never a bad idea.

[dablais]

4 hours ago, Areala said:

Pour moi, j'adorerais voir des magazines en français!

Sorry if I butchered that...I haven't had a French class in, uh, in a long, long time...

Je pourrais en faire quelques-uns juste pour toi. 

Edited February 2 by dablais

[Areala]

6 minutes ago, dablais said:

Je pourrais en faire quelques-uns juste pour toi. 

Oui, s'il vous plaît! C'est magnifique! 

[Phillyman]

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?

[dablais]

1 hour ago, Phillyman said:

Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?

Interesting offer!   Mais je crois que je vais passer mon tour! 

[Phillyman]

Just now, dablais said:

Interesting offer!   Mais je crois que je vais passer mon tour! 

Gitchie, gitchie, ya-ya, da-da?

[dablais]

1 minute ago, Phillyman said:

Gitchie, gitchie, ya-ya, da-da?

[Areala]

2 hours ago, dablais said:

Interesting offer!   Mais je crois que je vais passer mon tour! 

Garçons! Trouvez une chambre pour vous.

Maintenant. 

[PixelBoy]

2 hours ago, dablais said:

As a French Québécois, I also have a couple of french magazines that I was wondering if they would be of interest.  If someone think they will, I might upload/scan a couple of magazines in French. 

I can't speak for others, but I think that would be interesting.

Magazines in different countries have slightly different styles, so just looking at how they look like, how the page layout looks like, what kind of pictures they are using, what kind of ads they have, can be fun, or even educating.

And in the near future there will be AI tools that can easily (attempt to) translate an article or a page from a magazine, so the language barrier is at least getting a bit lower to cross.

 

20 minutes ago, kitsunebi said:

 I wouldn't discount registrations just because "most of the stuff is available anyway on Archive.org" - they're just as vulnerable as anyone else.  I had several of my scans removed from Archive due to a "copyright claim" they received.  I have my doubts that the claim was actually filed by the publisher they claimed to be, since several of the mags which were removed were from  a completely different publisher altogether, but there's nothing I can do about it. 

Yeah, that's true.

I was very slowly downloading Starlog Magazines that they used to have, and one day all the Starlogs, except one random issue, were simply gone. In hindsight, I should have downloaded them all in one go, but as they had been there for a few years, and referred to in many web articles, I would have thought they were there more permanently. I managed to get more than half of them, but the rest I had to get from elsewhere, with much lower quality.

I don't understand why there were deleted. I haven't seen those magazines being on sale again anywhere or some company starting to re-publish the magazine. So why where they pulled from the Archive, who knows.

[StrykerOfEnyo]

I've been a registered user at Retromags for only the last 6 months or so, but I've been looking for digital copies since 2005. I will answer your question @kitsunebi, but I will do it based on why I visited BEFORE I registered. I found my way here because of an ad page at the end of a magazine I found on the Internet Archive. I started downloading the Torrent Packs around #3 or #5 because I was looking for a place I could download more than one mag at a time, and this place was great. I kept coming back to find more torrent packs. I did look at the New Release page every so often, but I didnt bother downloading any because I didn't mind waiting for a new torrent pack that just had everything.

I liked the quality of the scans way better than most other sites, and this was one of the only places that had a good number of Nintendo Power, EGM, GamePro and a few others. The Archive did have some good quality scans, but you could have four versions of the same mag, so you had to look at all of them to find the best version. I loved that there was just one entry here. This site seemed to embrace the .cbr and .cbz format rather early compared to others, and once I got more familiar with them, I totally preferred them. 

I grabbed all the mags I could back then. I never checked the forums, I never looked at the comments on different mags from other users, and I never read the info/description listing for issues. To be fair, most other videogame magazine sites didn't have a comment section for each issue, or a place for users to interact with the people that scanned or published a new issue. So, I didn't really expect it on other sites, nor did I really care to interact with others. I got the magazines I wanted and left. I was around 25 years old back then, I was going to college, and I didn't spend time in other forums or registering on other videogame sites. 

Now, I'm over 40, and I decided to thank those names I've been seeing for all these years. Since taking the time to talk to members, I've found a lot of passionate people that love magazines even more than I did, and now I'm always signed in (aside from my tab "sleeping"), always check new releases, talking to other members, thanking everybody for their hard work. And I love every minute of it. It feels better to share these memories with others. I like the look of this site and the way its organized more than others. Some mag sites still use frames on their pages, and they haven't been updated in 10 years. But its probably run by one person. I just wasn't as social when I was younger, but it also wasn't easy or very practical to send messages to other users on the Internet Archive in order to thank them for an upload. I hope this insight helps.

[kitsunebi]

 

18 minutes ago, StrykerOfEnyo said:

I will answer your question @kitsunebi

LOL, I forgot I started this topic.  I appreciate the well-thought-out reply, though.

[Interesting]

I've had a great time revisiting the magazines of my video game obsessed kid days, though not like anything has really changed with me being obsessed with video games, ha ha!

I enjoy the preservation aspect and do find game preservation to be very important, and it's nice to see that magazines and strategy guides are falling into that category too! I'm very indeed down with that and am willing to help with anything I haven't seen on the site in my eclectic, random assortment of magazines.

[wingsoftomorrow]

I found Retromags a few years ago while looking for scans of CVG. 

I am really grateful for all the work that has been put into preserving the old magazines. Cheers! 

[Gregorick]

I have always been a bit of a retromags lurker but I've tried to start contributing more and hopefully I can add some more scans/images to the site. I am often a bit too shy to interact on the forums but please know that I appreciate the work all the scanners, website creators and contributors have done preserving magazines, adverts, strategy guides, information and more.