British PlayStation magazines

[JHD]

I did not acquire a PlayStation until quite late in its lifecycle (around 2004), just a retail support was starting to decline.  Consequently, I paid no attention to video game magazines in the 1990s and early-2000s.  I am now endevouring to get caught-up in what I missed.

 

Looking at all of the various and sundry collections of scanned video game magazines (i.e. not just this site), far more British PlayStation magazines have been scanned than American. (Sadly, there are apparently no Canadian-specific video game magazines.) For example, I have found only a small handful of issues of the Official PlayStation Magazine (US version), but many issues of all three series of the UK version. It also appears that there were many more Playstation-specific titles being published in the UK.  

 

Are there more British PlayStation enthusiasts scanning magazines than American  PlayStation enthusiasts? Is there some other reason? 

 

I admittedly have two random issues of the American version that have not yet been scanned, but I would need to purchase a larger scanner to do so -- and moving/finding a new job closer to home is far more of a priority for me at present.  

[Cauterize]

A user at Archive.org uploaded a plethora of UK PlayStation mags this week:

https://archive.org/details/@gamemags1957?&sort=-publicdate

[KiwiArcader]

A lot of PlayStation Official issues from Australia/New Zealand have also been scanned and released over at OGM. These were essentially localised releases of the UK version.

[JHD]

I was very surprised to see the New Zealand (~5 million people) received its own version, while Canada (~37 million people) did not!

Is the editorial content much different from the British version, or is it mostly just the advertisements?  

 

[kitsunebi]

Speaking as someone who grew up in the USA and bought every mag on the market at that time, there were only two USA PlayStation mags of any significance: The Official PlayStation Magazine and PSM. 

I bought OPM primarily for the demo disc, but the magazine itself was not very good at all.  I'd go so far as to say it was one of the worst gaming mags at the time.  The design was boring and I never felt it had a strong editorial voice or trustworthy reviews.  PSM was much better.  I'm not sure why so few issues have been scanned.  A lot of people (like myself) owned multiple systems at that time (unlike the more divided 16-bit era), so many people preferred mags that covered all systems to a mag covering a single system.  Which is one reason there are probably a lot more copies of EGM out there than PSM.

Btw, not everyone scanning mags is an enthusiast for what they're scanning.  I haven't touched a console in 15 years (literally), only occasionally playing a game on my PC.  Why scanners scan is...a mystery.  But since we have to destroy the mags in the process, a healthy LACK of enthusiasm actually makes doing so easier.  The real enthusiasts are the ones hoarding mags that they could never willingly sacrifice for scanning purposes.

[KiwiArcader]

2 hours ago, JHD said:

I was very surprised to see the New Zealand (~5 million people) received its own version, while Canada (~37 million people) did not!

Is the editorial content much different from the British version, or is it mostly just the advertisements?  

Well, the mag covers both Australia and New Zealand so that's approx. 30 million people between the two countries that it caters to. I haven't really looked too much at the UK variant so couldn't tell you what percentage of content is a straight copy from versus localised content to be honest.

1 hour ago, kitsunebi said:

The real enthusiasts are the ones hoarding mags that they could never willingly sacrifice for scanning purposes.

Scanning members are selfless in ensuring such content isn't lost forever. Those people might "get" rich selling their mags off for a profit or are rich for having access to their collections but I like to think we are richer for enabling others to access content they might otherwise never have seen.

Edited April 9, 2020 by KiwiArcader

[kitsunebi]

7 minutes ago, KiwiArcader said:

Scanning members are selfless in ensuring such content isn't lost forever. Those people might "get" rich selling their mags off for a profit or are rich for having access to their collections but I like to think we are richer for enabling others to access content they might otherwise never have seen.

People who sell their magazines don't give a shit about them.  I don't know why we even have a section in our forums for such things, since we're a site about preserving mags, not profiting off of them.  The worst is people who come here trying to sell mags and also hope that whoever buys them will scan them.  Er...that's what donations are for, bro.

I just meant that "enthusiasts" for a particular mag probably want to physically own a copy of every issue of that mag, and would never consider scanning it (unless maybe they had multiple copies per issue) since doing so would destroy their copy.  Like it or not, most people who have kept old magazines around for all these years have done so out of a collector's mentality.  Otherwise they would have tossed them out ages ago.  And collectors want physical copies, not digital approximations.

So yeah, magazine enthusiasts aren't much help when it comes to scanning, but they're probably the ones in possession of the most mags.  I was just pointing out that it ISN'T those enthusiasts doing the scanning, as was suggested in the OP.  That wasn't meant to take anything away from the scanning enthusiasts who are doing all of the thankless work for everyone else's benefit.

[KiwiArcader]

I have a couple of thousand mags in my basement. A lot of these were acquired at the time of release and the only reason I still have them is because I have a basement so didn't get my ass chewed off by the wife to get rid of them. No collectors mentality here. I just paid money for them and couldn't bring myself to throw them given what they cost me. 

I will say though that I purposely dumped pretty much all my collection of PC Gamer (USA) from issue 01 thru 90'ish and burned a few others after Meppi/triverse pissed me off over the year 2000 saga here at Retromags back then. Regretted that after I started scanning mags for my own site though I must admit.

After getting into scanning I rapidly realised that the hoarding thing really is a selfish pursuit. I understand it but to me It's like a scientist inventing a cure for Covid-19 then taking a dose himself and putting the rest in his vault. The whole world dies around him and worst case scenario he's the only one left alive to brag about how he invented the cure. Literature was written to be read, understood and appreciated, not hoarded in someones basement.

Edited April 10, 2020 by KiwiArcader

[MigJmz]

if your looking for UK mags this guy gotcha covered: https://archive.org/details/@gamemags1957

[KiwiArcader]

No ... he has 300 odd mags covered 

[kitsunebi]

38 minutes ago, KiwiArcader said:

No ... he has 300 odd mags covered 

Yeah, it's a drop in the bucket compared to OGM.  Still, in relevance to the OP's request, there are plenty of new scans of PlayStation mags there.  Dunno if any of them are any good (I'm often disappointed in the writing of British gaming mags, but there are some that are excellent).

[E-Day]

I just released a new one on here.

[KiwiArcader]

That's a bit of a rarity for you E-Day