GAME集中营 magazine 1993-2012

[JonnyCGood]

I've come across a supposedly complete scanning of a Chinese language video game magazine, which was from 1993 to 2012. The format is pdf, and the collection is 30GB in total. Most issues are 25-50MB in size. The scanning quality isn't great, and the paper quality of the magazine isn't great either. Curious that many of the covers are identical to Famitsu's.

The download link is below. the first link is to a chinese download host and requires a chinese mobile phone and is lightning fast. The second link is to a site that anyone can download from by inputting the passcode "5282" but is quite slow. It was just 10 minutes to download a single issue. this presents a logistical nightmare if someone wants to archive all this, as a single person would take weeks or months to download all this since each issue has to be downloaded individually.

https://pdfzj.com/17222.html

Translation of the Chinese language Wikipedia page:

Quote

Video Game Software (referred to as "Diansoft", the supplement name was originally "GAME Concentration Camp", later changed to "GAME Landscape"), is the earliest TV game magazine founded and distributed on a large scale in mainland China. Originally a monthly magazine, it was later changed to a semi-monthly magazine. The content includes game console software and hardware information. "Diansoft" was one of the most important game magazines in the 1990s. It created a light-hearted humor and a publishing style suitable for the aesthetic orientation of teenagers, attracting and nurturing a generation of players [1].

In 2000, it was brought under the banner of Next Generation Media. In 2003, sales fell to the bottom [2], and then they improved. It was discontinued on February 27, 2012. Republished in May 2012, turned into an academic journal, and changed its name to "Electronic Technology and Software Engineering" in November of the same year, which is no longer related to video games [1]

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/电子游戏软件

Edited February 24, 2022 by JonnyCGood

[sCZther]

I am trying to pull these and mirror them somewhere afterwards. But it's taking a long time. The links are only valid for 24 hours. Doing 1996 so far.

Edited March 14, 2022 by sCZther

[JonnyCGood]

More Chinese scans. They aren't the best, and it's just pressing the book down on the scanner with little to no editing. But the content is readable. This is about 100 books, mostly PS, SFC, MD, PS2. It uses Baidu, and I've finally found a work around for baidu.

http://bbs.chinaemu.org/read-htm-tid-128858.html

https://oneleaf.icu
you need to set your useragent to whatever it says in the useragent field when it gives you the baidu link

Sample:

Edited March 18, 2022 by JonnyCGood

[sCZther]

Now up to 2001. It goes far more stable at my work's net. Hopefully it will be more smooth sailing from now on. Then I will probably try to upload to Archive.

[JonnyCGood]

19 hours ago, sCZther said:

Now up to 2001. It goes far more stable at my work's net. Hopefully it will be more smooth sailing from now on. Then I will probably try to upload to Archive.

That's good to hear. The magazine itself seems a bit derivative and likely has no exclusive content. But it's nice that someone went ahead and scanned the entire thing. I am curious if they had permission to use Famitsu covers or if they just copied them. I like seeing all these quirky local magazines scanned. It's especially interesting to see how various countries reviewed various games.
 

 

There's several chinese scanning forums and I fear some of this material could be post. These are based in Taiwan or mainland china, and they're in a prime spot to scan both Chinese language material and Japanese material. There's also Japanese manga sites which periodically post retro game book scans, that I can't find elsewhere, which I think are sourced to underground chinese scanners.

 

They have another thread linking to another file sharing site with a host of old Chinese video game magazine scans. I don't think I can use it though.
 

https://www.endlessfight.org/discuz/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=513&extra=page%3D1
 

[sCZther]

So I got all of them, 30 GB. A pretty hefty size, so I will now need to think about how to best upload them somewhere. Also, a lot of the pdfs have a corrupted page or two sadly.

[JonnyCGood]

These scans seem to be taken from a Chinese piracy site which directly sells files, and rehosted on another piracy site that hosts files on file hosting sites. This is also where the issues of Pocket Gamer came from, which have been re-hosted on archive:
 

https://archive.org/details/pocketgamer/掌机迷vol001/

 

The Japanese language book/magazine piracy sites are also suspected to be located outside of Japan due to strict piracy laws, either in Korea or Taiwan. There's also Chinese scanning forums who frequently post scans, often using Baidu.
 

Such sites post a lot of Chinese and Japanese language scans, so it pays to keep an eye on them.

 

Edited April 7, 2022 by JonnyCGood