EtherealDragonz upload thread - Update 11/17/2020 Famimaga Apr 20 1990

[JonnyCGood]

I use SumatraPDF. Despite it's name, it supports CBR/CBZ formats, and a lot more. It's really fast too. Winbloze only sadly.

[gingerbeardman]

2 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

them into a zip file

I'm not bashing on you because I really appreciate you sharing this. 

But please be aware that zip is as different to 7z as far, and the files will need naming cbz/cb7/cbr appropriately.

This may or may not be the problem with archive, but it will help people like me be able to view these files more easily.

(I haven't checked any of your other recent files)

Thanks again for the upload!

Edited September 12, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[Ethereal Dragonz]

11 minutes ago, gingerbeardman said:

I'm not bashing on you because I really appreciate you sharing this. 

But please be aware that zip is as different to 7z as far, and the files will need naming cbz/cb7/cbr appropriately.

This may or may not be the problem with archive, but it will help people like me be able to view these files more easily.

(I haven't checked any of your other recent files)

Thanks again for the upload!

Let me be clear since you only quoted part of what I said and then assumed I was doing it incorrectly.

I am using the process listed on this site: http://xylasoft.com/xylamic/how-to-create-a-comic-book-archive-cbz-or-cbr/

I am more interested if you have a better method of generating the files. I am trying to experiment on the April one right now to see if I get different results.

[Ethereal Dragonz]

Fixed this one and I have two findings:

1.) Even though the file was renamed on my own computer to .cbz (confirmed in command line as well), somehow Archive.org is now adding a .cbz.zip to the end of the file name when you access the file on the uploader. I didn't notice it the first time, but I caught it on the prompt and removed the .zip. This is pretty weird since it never used to do that.

2.) At some point I renamed my .cbz file to a different name than the meta.xml file, which probably caused some problems as well.

Edited September 12, 2019 by Ethereal Dragonz

[kitsunebi]

5 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

I am using the process listed on this site: http://xylasoft.com/xylamic/how-to-create-a-comic-book-archive-cbz-or-cbr/

If I had to rank my fandom, I'm 99% a comic book fan and 1% a video game fan.  So I sometimes forget that not everyone knows this stuff backwards and forwards already.  For the record by the way, CBZ is actually quite rare in comparison to CBR.  I've got hundreds of thousands of comics files, and probably at least 75% are CBR.  Not that it matters, of course - just making an observation.

[gingerbeardman]

14 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Let me be clear since you only quoted part of what I said and then assumed I was doing it incorrectly.

I am using the process listed on this site: http://xylasoft.com/xylamic/how-to-create-a-comic-book-archive-cbz-or-cbr/

I am more interested if you have a better method of generating the files. I am trying to experiment on the April one right now to see if I get different results.

That method seems solid. 

But how come your file was  7z not a zip? Is your archive app set to create 7z by default? It might be doing it without you realising.

Edit: Latest file on archive is now a zip.

Edited September 12, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[Ethereal Dragonz]

Newest upload [09/12/2019] -  Famimaga March 1989
https://archive.org/details/famimagamarch1989

 

Here is a list of everything I was able to obtain thus far:

Basic Magazine January 1992
BugBug March 2011
BugBug July 2012
Famimaga June 1987
Famimaga October 1987
Famimaga February 1988
Famimaga April 1988
Famimaga October 1988
Famimaga February 1989
Famimaga March 1989
Famimaga June 1989
Famimaga March 1990
Famimaga April 1990
Famimaga May 1990
Pasocom Paradise December 2003

 

There are some additional files I am downloading that I hope are actually magazines, but I can't read Japanese. Google translate makes me hopeful though.

[kitsunebi]

8 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Here is a list of everything I was able to obtain thus far:

You have no idea the sheer jubilant pleasure I get imagining that some Japanese magazine scan hoarders are getting pissed off noticing this stuff show up at the Internet Archive.  Keep it up.

8 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

There are some additional files I am downloading that I hope are actually magazines, but I can't read Japanese. Google translate makes me hopeful though.

Hmmm...that does pose a problem,  doesn't it.  Lots of Japanese mags have Japanese titles, and even ones that have words written alphabetically on the cover are often written in Japanese when people list them in auctions or otherwise write about them online.  I wonder how much you're overlooking...

[gingerbeardman]

Great work @Ethereal Dragonz!

[JonnyCGood]

12 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Here is a list of everything I was able to obtain thus far:

So quite the haul. Keep up with it. And search using both English and Japanese characters. P2P are just whatever can be found online at the moment right?

3 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

You have no idea the sheer jubilant pleasure I get imagining that some Japanese magazine scan hoarders are getting pissed off noticing this stuff show up at the Internet Archive.  Keep it up.

Archive isn't popular among the Japanese, and the titles are in English. So there's enough of a barrier that they'll likely never even realize or notice this. 

[kitsunebi]

18 hours ago, JonnyCGood said:

Archive isn't popular among the Japanese, and the titles are in English. So there's enough of a barrier that they'll likely never even realize or notice this. 

They're aware of Retromags.  And Retromags is barely a drop in the ocean compared to the Internet Archive. I assure you that anyone interested in Japanese mags is aware of the Internet Archive.  There are nearly full runs of some Japanese mags available there which were uploaded from Japan.  

Just because not a lot of people are uploading stuff, doesn't mean they aren't downloading.  If being a scanner for Retromags has taught me anything to be The Truth, it's the fact that the world is basically nothing but leechers.

It may take a while (I sometimes don't notice that some jackhole has uploaded my scans to the IA for months/years afterwards), but it will be noticed eventually.

 

PS True story - I actually had an email exchange with a Japanese collector deep into the private trading scene tell me that one of his biggest regrets was that he spent money having a collection of MyCom Basic and Gamest digitized using a scanning service, and then someone released mass quantities of those mags onto The IA (thus invalidating the "trade value" of his files).  I'm guessing he's talking about the over 100 issues of MyCom Basic available at the IA, as well as the Gamest files being uploaded by one of our very own members. 

And with every scan I've ever scanned for Retromags, it is my fervent hope that somewhere out there is some selfish douchebag similarly cursing me for killing the trade value on an issue I've made available to everyone that had previously been something they had been using to barter for personal gain.

[christian]

thank you " Ethereal Dragonz " ^^ 

[godane]

3 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

They're aware of Retromags.  And Retromags is barely a drop in the ocean compared to the Internet Archive. I assure you that anyone interested in Japanese mags is aware of the Internet Archive.  There are nearly full runs of some Japanese mags available there which were uploaded from Japan.  

Just because not a lot of people are uploading stuff, doesn't mean they aren't downloading.  If being a scanner for Retromags has taught me anything to be The Truth, it's the fact that the world is basically nothing but leechers.

It may take a while (I sometimes don't notice that some jackhole has uploaded my scans the the IA for months/years afterwards), but it will be noticed eventually.

 

PS True story - I actually had an email exchange with a Japanese collector deep into the private trading scene tell me that one of his biggest regrets was that he spent money having a collection of MyCom Basic and Gamest digitized using a scanning service, and then someone released mass quantities of those mags onto The IA (thus invalidating the "trade value" of his files).  I'm guessing he's talking about the over 100 issues of MyCom Basic available at the IA, as well as the Gamest files being uploaded by one of our very own members. 

And with every scan I've ever scanned for Retromags, it is my fervent hope that somewhere out there is some selfish douchebag similarly cursing me for killing the trade value on an issue I've made available to everyone that had previously been something they had been using to barter for personal gain.

You should tell that guy that some of those magazines could have pages missing or are out of order. It depends on the years he has also. Issues pass 1995 are not on archive.org and issues before 1984-12 are also not.

 

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, godane said:

You should tell that guy that some of those magazines could have pages missing or are out of order. It depends on the years he has also. Issues pass 1995 are not on archive.org and issues before 1984-12 are also not.

Why exactly would I do anything to try to make that guy feel better?  His entire stance on magazine scans is that if it's a mag only he has a scan of, he wants to keep it to himself and gets pissed if it shows up online.  Mind you, he's happy to download anything and everything uploaded here or elsewhere if he doesn't already have it.

The scanners at Retromags scan mags to freely share them with everyone.  This guy has his mags scanned just so he can use them as trade bait with other people just like him.

Selfless vs. selfish.

[Ethereal Dragonz]

Newest upload [09/13/2019] -  Pasocom Paradise December 2003
https://archive.org/details/pasocomparadise122003

Cover supplied by the man of 20,000+ images, kitsunebi77!

[JonnyCGood]

12 minutes ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Selfless vs. selfish.

My whole stance is that this is primarily about scholarship and history. First, we can see what the media was saying about these games. Second, we can find new information about the games (such as interviews, development) that we can't just by playing them that is likely exclusive to these magazines. So the fanbase for a series might debate a topic for like 20 years online, but then it turns out this debate over canon was explained already in some official guidebook or interview from the 90's.

The whole idea of restricting this information is silly. This was once very public information on news stands. 100,000 people may have read that issue when it first came out. Now that information is to be hidden away for all eternity?

[kitsunebi]

1 minute ago, JonnyCGood said:

The whole idea of restricting this information is silly. This was once very public information on news stands. 100,000 people may have read that issue when it first came out. Now that information is to be hidden away for all eternity?

Well, as you know, scanning magazines takes a lot of money and time.  I've spent over $1000 and god knows how many hours of my free time working to provide stuff for our members (and everyone else, really, since you don't have to join RM to download our releases).  I get nothing in return other than the occasional thank you (usually about 1 for every 50 downloads.)  That's a commitment of time and money with no reward that VERY few people are willing to make.

Then you've got people like the community of Japanese traders who justify the expense/time of digitizing their collections by considering the resultant files to be their personal property which they can then "sell" to recoup their losses (in this case, by trading with other like-minded individuals).

Would the world be a richer place if people were willing to share their resources selflessly?  Well, sure.  But as long as we've got millions of starving, destitute people out there in the world being ignored by people with the means to help, it seems a little silly to get TOO upset over someone hoarding magazines.  Most people are selfish.  It's just human nature.

[Ethereal Dragonz]

Newest upload [09/14/2019] -  Famimaga June 1987
https://archive.org/details/famimagajune1987

ProTip: There might also be other items uploaded as well.

[kitsunebi]

4 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

ProTip: There might also be other items uploaded as well.

No other magazine epitomizes the decline and homogenization of the game industry in Japan moreso than Comptiq, in my opinion.  It launched in 1983 and was a magazine exclusively about computer games for over a decade.  The issues from this time period are literally the only Japanese magazines I own which are interesting for me to flip through.  But sometime around 1994-1997, the magazine began to change.  The focus shifted away from computer games and began to focus more on game characters from PC and console titles.  The reason being, of course, that it was during that time period that computer gaming died in Japan.  In the rest of the world, the PC was making great strides during those years - super VGA, advanced sound cards, and rapidly improving 3d graphics ensured that the PC had at last finally emerged as a technically superior system for gaming over home consoles.

But in Japan, the PC never caught on as a gaming system.  Windows 95 hit the market and PCs quickly took over as the standard for home and business computing, but computer games remained relegated to the PC-98 computers for the most part, which ceased production in 2000.

So it was during that 1994-1997 era, just as PC gaming was exploding in the West, that it began to die in Japan, with the development/release of computer games becoming less and less, and being replaced more and more by cheaply produced cookie-cutter visual novels.  Hence, without any "real" games to actually report on, Comptiq switched gears and became a magazine full of illustrations of visual novel characters, similar to Dengeki G's Magazine.

Sure, Japan still has consoles.  But I can't help but believe that the games industry would be richer overall if computer gaming had survived and not EVERY single game released in Japan had to first be approved by Sony or Nintendo.

[Ethereal Dragonz]

Newest upload [09/15/2019] -  Famimaga October 1987
https://archive.org/details/famimagaoctober1987

Also other stuff

Edited September 15, 2019 by Ethereal Dragonz

[kitsunebi]

15 minutes ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Also other stuff

26 issues of Oh! MZ are already available at archive, including the one you just uploaded.  The copy you uploaded is 50MB smaller than the one already available - but maybe it's a cleaner scan?  At any rate, just letting you know in case you weren't aware.

[Ethereal Dragonz]

2 minutes ago, kitsunebi77 said:

26 issues of Oh! MZ are already available at archive, including the one you just uploaded.  The copy you uploaded is 50MB smaller than the one already available - but maybe it's a cleaner scan?  At any rate, just letting you know in case you weren't aware.

Yeah, I actually edited the thread once I noticed it and deleted it. I uploaded this Famimaga instead. I was surpised to see Oh! MZ and Oh! X already on there.

[kitsunebi]

Just now, Ethereal Dragonz said:

Yeah, I actually edited the thread once I noticed it and deleted it. I uploaded this Famimaga instead. I was surpised to see Oh! MZ and Oh! X already on there.

What one notices when searching for scans of old mags in ANY language is that there are a fair number of video game mags, relatively few computer gaming mags, and a ^%$#load of computing mags.  This leads me to believe that the most passionate communities of preservationists are those interested in old computers, especially retired systems (i.e. not PCs).  True, some of these magazines cover games as well, but that isn't their focus, nor do I believe that games are what interests the people who preserve them.

So it actually doesn't surprise me at all that there are large collections of mags like I/O, Basic, and the Oh! series available, yet contemporary 1980s computer gaming mags like Login and Comptiq are unrepresented.

[Ethereal Dragonz]

 

[Removed]

 

Edited September 18, 2019 by Ethereal Dragonz
Download already offered at another site.

[kitsunebi]

3 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

I didn't see this one on archive yet. I discovered a few PC Engine FAN magazines from Perfect Dark, so i'll upload those in time.

I thought I downloaded my copies from archive, but it turns out it must have been this site, since these are all the ones I have:

https://necretro.org/PC_Engine_Fan

Did you find any not from this site?