gingerbeardman upload thread — Update 2021/10/30 — T&E SOFT 3D Golf Simulation Series Dokuhon (1993/04/30)

[gingerbeardman]

Updates:

• 2019/10/20 Oh! MZ Issue 28 (September 1984)
• 2019/11/19 343 issues of GAME MACHINE (dating between 1974/08 to 1988/12)
• 2020/03/06 POPEYE "Magazine for City Boys" Big 100th issue (10 April 1981)
• 2020/03/06 ICC profile results (Fujitsu fi-4530C)
• 2020/12/12 PC Engine Fanatics/Console Ma'zine/Electric Brain/Games Amusement Pleasure (1989–1995)
• 2021/10/30 T&E SOFT 3D Golf Simulation Series Dokuhon (1993/04/30)

Edited October 30, 2021 by gingerbeardman

[gingerbeardman]

Thanks to a kind member of the Sharp MZ-700, MZ-800 Computers group on Facebook, who bought and scanned this.

Oh! MZ Issue 28 (September 1984)

https://archive.org/details/oh_mz_issue_28_september_1984

Reference: RetroMags database page

edit: Have fixed wrong page-progression setting, waiting for new files to derive.

Edited November 19, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[gingerbeardman]

Here are 343 issues of GAME MACHINE dating between 1974/08 to 1988/12.

https://archive.org/details/game-machine

Interesting issues:

• Mr. Yoshikazu Endo honors Special Issue (No. 72 May 15, 1977) 
• Space Invaders boom heyday (No. 117 April 15, 1979) 
• Video game machine Special Issue (No. 201 November 29, 1982) 

Thanks to the kind folks at ONION Software (of Hot Soup Processor fame) in Japan who shared them at: https://onitama.tv/gamemachine/archive.html 

All issues are already OCR'd from source.

Bonus: outline summary of issues from 1997 to date: http://www.ampress.co.jp/backnumber.html

Edited November 19, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[gingerbeardman]

Jason Scott from the Internet Archive has picked up these Game Machine uploads and is running with it. 

https://archive.org/details/game_machine_magazine_jp

Edited November 20, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[kitsunebi]

12 minutes ago, gingerbeardman said:

Jason Scott from the archive has picked this up and is running with it.

That asshat picks up all kinds of stuff and runs with it.  Pretty much always without asking permission.  He's posted lots of my scans over there against my will and there's nothing I can do about it.  He once nearly got Retromags into legal trouble by posting a collection of around 150 of our files to the Internet Archive and drawing the attention of the media (and lawyers), forcing us to temporarily remove those same files from our site - downloads which to this day have to remain hidden from anyone not logged in as a member.  And I imagine one day, Jason Scott will single-handedly be the reason that @KiwiArcader will be forced to turn Oldgamemags into a completely closed community for scanners only when he posts all of their stuff against Kiwi's explicit wishes.

So not a fan, basically.

[KiwiArcader]

Yep, I've laid out the rules around NOT sharing Oldgamemags files on other sites pretty explicitly and if members decide to upload them to archive.org or elsewhere I close the site down to non-scanning members. I am sick and tired of people like him ripping my site content and making it available over at archive.org with no acknowledgement of where he acquired it from.

No honor among some thieves right?

[gingerbeardman]

I see where you're both coming from but... none of us are the rightly owner of any of this stuff. 

[kitsunebi]

1 minute ago, gingerbeardman said:

I see where you're both coming from but... none of us are the rightly owner of any of this stuff. 

No one's claiming to be.

Do you know that as a moderator, I have the ability to take both of those Electronic Brain scans of yours you uploaded here and change the "scanned by" and "edited by" fields to show MY name instead of yours?  I could do it right now, and it wouldn't really change anything meaningful - the magazines would still be there, and after all, they don't belong to you, so who cares who takes the credit? 

But I would be a disrespectful asshole if I did that. 

Also, if you had uploaded them to your own site and asked that they not be distributed elsewhere, but I ignored you and posted them here, without any acknowledgement of where they came from or who scanned them, I would again be a giant asshole.

Or I might just be sketch the cow in disguise.

[gingerbeardman]

You're really saying all this to the wrong person.

I can understand your issue, and I'm happy you can vent it here.

I don't have time for drama or whatever, so I'm OK with somebody else coming along and saying "I'll help you with that" and then go off and spend time on it that I was never going to do.

Yes, he could have asked nicely, but there you go. We know what that means. 

Edited November 20, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[KiwiArcader]

Hey, you made the comment about his picking up and running with it. We simply stated "HOW" he runs with it, namely site ripping whole content from other sites.

While you may have no issues with that, others who have spent thousands of dollars buying scanners and magazines only to have their hard work pilfered with zero acknowledgement of their efforts is a slap in the face. There's sod all people scanning content in good quality out there. You would think he'd encourage people to visit the sites that assist the preservation cause by acknowledging where he got the content to ensure people visit which provides encouragement to continue what they are doing. Nope!!

[vgmax]

gotta concur with this. Should always keep the splash page in place... end of the mag is fine? Most sites hosting the Nintendo Powers and EGMs kept the splash (such as readcomics.to)

[kitsunebi]

29 minutes ago, vgmax said:

gotta concur with this. Should always keep the splash page in place... end of the mag is fine? Most sites hosting the Nintendo Powers and EGMs kept the splash (such as readcomics.to)

Not everyone includes splash pages, though, so without some sort of acknowledgement, all anyone will see is "uploaded by Sketch the Cow."

For files with unknown sources, I don't see any problems with uploading them to archive without explanation, although I'd argue that uploading new magazines there will hurt EVERYONE including Retromags when publishers notice that the Internet Archive is hosting downloads of mags which are still being sold digitally.  Even though archive.org is a hive of scum and villainy which doesn't actually respect any kind of restrictions on what copyrighted material gets uploaded there, I would hope that anyone who appreciates sites that scan and release older magazines will refrain from uploading recent magazines to archive if they want to see sites like this one continue to exist.  The reason we have rules is to protect this hobby.

But when scans (not digital rips, but actual SCANS) come from sites dedicated to creating and releasing scans and are copied and uploaded wholesale to the Internet Archive, it discourages people from visiting the sites where they originated from.  Why visit Retromags for one scan and Oldgamemags for another when you can just get both of them from the IA?  Well, sure, it's convenient to get everything in one place, but here's the facts: if the Internet Archive disappeared tomorrow, you would still be able to get Retromags releases and Oldgamemags releases from those sites, as well as all future scans they release.  However, if no one ever visits those sites and they close down, leaving only the Internet Archive...well sure, you'd still get whatever mags they pilfered and uploaded there in the past - but you wouldn't ever get any new releases, since the communities that create the content hosted at the IA would be gone.

In my opinion, there is no need for any of our content to be mirrored at the Internet Archive.  All of our magazines can be downloaded for free, at good speeds, directly from Retromags.  Mirroring them at the IA or elsewhere simply diverts traffic away from this site - away from the place creating the content and most deserving of the traffic and attention.  If one day Retromags closes shop, then sure, upload our scans wherever you like.  But until that day, why not download them from here and drop a thanks to the scanner while you're at it?

To be perfectly honest, there isn't really a reason to upload all of those Game Machine newsletters, either.  The site they originated from still has all of them available to download.  The only real argument for uploading them the the Internet Archive as opposed to just sharing a link to the site which originally shared them is that the origin site is all in Japanese and may not be noticed by people who can't understand it.

And of course I suppose it could be argued that they shouldn't be uploaded to the IA because the site that released them specifically asked (IN ENGLISH) for the scans to not be shared, BECAUSE DOING SO IS AN ILLEGAL COPYRIGHT VIOLATION), but seriously, no one working for the Internet Archive could give two $%^#s about that.  (I find it amusing but sad that the publisher, who was kind enough to release this collection of newsletters, knew enough about foreigners to make their only message in English be a plea to please respect the law and not share the PDFs.  A plea which was summarily ignored.)

[gingerbeardman]

The only reason I uploaded the 343 issues of Game Machine to archive is because  whilst I was downloading some of them myself the original site was inaccessible (error 504) time after time. So I don't think their hosting is prepared for ongoing access to that 2.4GB of PDFs, never mind all their wildly popular HSP stuff. 

With the "what if it went away?" question... what if RetroMags went away. Would all the scans be safe? I'm not saying they should be uploaded where else, I just hope there's a good off-site backup system in place. 

[kitsunebi]

54 minutes ago, gingerbeardman said:

With the "what if it went away?" question... what if RetroMags went away. Would all the scans be safe? I'm not saying they should be uploaded where else, I just hope there's a good off-site backup system in place. 

Phillyman could best answer that, but the entire site is backed up multiple times per day if I'm not mistaken.

[Phillyman]

9 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Phillyman could best answer that, but the entire site is backed up multiple times per day if I'm not mistaken.

The Retromags website & Seedbox are backed up daily to my OneDrive and my NAS at home. They are then duplicated over to @E-days NAS in Canada. @Areala has a big fat hard drive that has all the Retromags releases on it as well.

90% of the releases are on 1337x's public torrent tracker, as well as out at a few private trackers. One of these days, I will float them all up to Newsgroups (Usenet) as well.

Oh and places like The Eye are also mirroring the vast majority of our releases - https://the-eye.eu/public/Books/RetroMags/

Also the Magazine Database is backed up every 6 hours.

We got so many backups, Juvenile is going to sing at our holiday party this year!

 

[E-Day]

6 hours ago, Phillyman said:

The Retromags website & Seedbox are backed up daily to my OneDrive and my NAS at home. They are then duplicated over to @E-days NAS in Canada. @Areala has a big fat hard drive that has all the Retromags releases on it as well.

 

Actually, we never got that set up, so it's not backing up to my NAS yet.

[Phillyman]

22 minutes ago, E-Day said:

Actually, we never got that set up, so it's not backing up to my NAS yet.

[gingerbeardman]

1989&1990 issues have been added at the source.

Bonus being that is no longer my job to upload to archive! Result. 

Edited December 1, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[godane]

@gingerbeardman The main reason the game machine collection happened is cause i told him (Jason) about your one item collection. He organize that one item into a collection of items. He organize the crap the people sometimes just dump into one item like what happened with some of the japanese magazines i also found on archive.org.

[kitsunebi]

1 hour ago, godane said:

@gingerbeardman The main reason the game machine collection happened is cause i told him (Jason) about your one item collection. He organize that one item into a collection of items. He organize the crap the people sometimes just dump into one item like what happened with some of the japanese magazines i also found on archive.org.

Unfortunately, archive.org does not give users the ability to create and organize collections.  They can only be created by admins.  And the admins will only create a collection once you have at least 50 items uploaded which will go into that collection.

I've never tried to create a collection, but I've never had any of my other requests responded to by admins, so I'm not sure I'd be successful even if I tried.

At any rate, regarding these particular files, I personally think it's easier to simply download them from the site that released them (the site that specifically requested that the files not be shared elsewhere because doing so is a violation of their copyright.)  Downloading them from the Internet Archive is just pointless in this case.  It's like if Best Buy was giving away free TVs, but you decided that rather than go into Best Buy to be handed your totally legal and free TV, you decide to go into the alley behind Best Buy and get a free (but stolen) TV from some guys handing them out of the back of a hijacked Best Buy delivery truck.  Sure the TV is the same, but...why would you do that?

[gingerbeardman]

@kitsunebi77 See my earlier comment about it being difficult to download them from the original site due to encountering frequent bandwidth outages. 

@godane well, "thanks", I guess!?

[kitsunebi]

28 minutes ago, gingerbeardman said:

@kitsunebi77 See my earlier comment about it being difficult to download them from the original site due to encountering frequent bandwidth outages.

I saw it, but it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the fact that the publisher specifically requested (in English, no less) that the scans not be shared elsewhere.  Retromags always honors such requests, which is why we don't host certain mags.  It's also why we are entitled to take a dim view of promoting other sites' efforts to ignore those publishers' expressed wishes.

[AJIMS64]

When it comes to downloading Game Machine issue, all i do is save them into a flash drive and keep them for personal reading in case the website dedices to stop releasing or downright take down their issues. Re-uploading them when the magazine's publisher is doing the job of releasing them for everybody is just retarded and asking for trouble...

[kitsunebi]

1 hour ago, AJIMS64 said:

Re-uploading them when the magazine's publisher is doing the job of releasing them for everybody is just retarded and asking for trouble...

Jason Scott (self-proclaimed archivist at the Internet Archive) excels at asking for trouble.  There's actually an entry in the Internet Archive's Wikipedia page under "controversies" detailing the time that he stole all of Retromags' Nintendo Powers and uploaded them, then got into trouble with Nintendo's lawyers after a media blizzard suddenly whipped up proclaiming that the Internet Archive had released the collection (whether he had anything to do with breaking and promoting the story, I don't know).  Literally ever single article about it at the time failed to mention that the collection was thieved wholesale from Retromags, nor does the Wikipedia entry mention it either, and all credit for their creation and release was falsely given to the Internet Archive.  Granted, in this case, that works to our favor, since we could continue to stay off of Nintendo's lawyers' radar.  But his actions could have led back to us and Nintendo Power scans would be a thing of the past around here.  Just one more reason I hate it when that dude uploads my own scans to their site against my will.

[Areala]

On 11/21/2019 at 3:35 PM, Phillyman said:

@Areala has a big fat hard drive that has all the Retromags releases on it as well.

Sorry, I had to delete them, but they died for a good cause. Turns out 4K resolution lesbian porn takes up a LOT of space. Who knew?

*huggles*
Areala