Tips & Tricks - Found Missing Issues Via Internet Archive

[TheValintyne]

Hi all!

I'm extremely new here and found the website via a search about a classic feature in Tips & Tricks (I'll forever love Pencil Puzzles).

In order to help this archive be complete, I've been checking readily available sources through the Internet Archive before I raid my collection that's somewhere at my old family home.

Currently, there are 53 issues missing from the 150 issue original run of the magazine. It's been very difficult to find the earlier issues (especially since people either list the issues by their release month/year or by a variety of numbering systems (ex. #1, 001, etc.). So far, this is what is still missing versus what I've found via IA.

Spoiler'd for post length's sake:
 

Spoiler

2 - Missing
5 - Missing
6 - Missing
10 - Missing
12 - Missing
13 - FOUND
17 - FOUND
21 - Missing
23 - FOUND
44 - FOUND
48 - FOUND
61 - FOUND
62 - FOUND
63 - FOUND
64 - FOUND
65 - FOUND
67 - FOUND
72 - Missing
75 - FOUND
79 - FOUND
80 - FOUND
82 - FOUND
88 - FOUND
92 - FOUND
93 - FOUND
94 - FOUND
96 - FOUND
97 - FOUND
99 - Missing
101 - Missing
103 - FOUND
110 - FOUND
111 - FOUND
113 - FOUND
120 - FOUND
127 - FOUND
128 - FOUND
129 - FOUND
130 - Missing
131 - Missing
132 - FOUND
133 - FOUND
135 - FOUND
136 - FOUND
138 - FOUND
139 - FOUND
141 - FOUND
142 - FOUND
143 - FOUND
145 - FOUND
146 - FOUND
147 - FOUND
148 - FOUND
150 - Missing

If my count is correct, there are only 12 issues that are left to preserve. The only reason I didn't want to download these and upload them myself is, well... I'm not really sure how to credit the people who have done the work themselves and I thought it would be best for someone else to decide how to preserve what I've found.

If others have these issues, or know where they could be found, it'd be awesome to finally have a complete collection of Tips & Tricks available freely.



 

[Phillyman]

Interesting find, I would be open to a fundraiser to grab these issues so that you guys can have a full set. However we only provide scans that we make ourselves. So the set would be incomplete from ourside, but for anyone gathering scans from everywhere, it would be complete.

 

[TheValintyne]

Is there a reason why you only use scans that users provide? There wasn't anything about that in the newcomers section, so I'm genuinely curious -- especially since no one could claim ownership of these (because it isn't "theirs" to begin with).

If the overall goal is preservation, I would think that using all available resources to obtain a complete set would be the right idea -- especially since the internet at-large is at risk of losing the Internet Archive as a resource for these items.

Not trying to be argumentative or start a fight as soon as I join, but I'd love to see a "preservation chapter" close. Being within 12 issues of completion with these finds feels too good to pass up.

[Phillyman]

3 hours ago, TheValintyne said:

Is there a reason why you only use scans that users provide? There wasn't anything about that in the newcomers section, so I'm genuinely curious -- especially since no one could claim ownership of these (because it isn't "theirs" to begin with).

To be honest, it is a few things. First of which is pride, we take pride in being the origin of many scans that are mirrored elsewhere. I believe that Internet Archive would not have a single Nintendo Power on their site if it wasnt for us scanning them. I forget when IA started to host magazines, but back in 2005 I don't remember anyone scanning Nintendo Power, EGM or GamePro. It is so easy to just find and rehost files. We exist to preserve what has not been preserved.

Second is we are not big enough. Even with over 4000 magazines, this website barely clears $45 per month in donations. While this site probably actually costs twice that to keep running. If we just became a mirror for thousands of more magazines that we just stumbled upon, those costs would rise. The donations however would proabably stay at the current levels. Being a site that is not paywalled, and doesnt beg for donations every week on Twitter, plus providing unlimited downloads to users who don't even need to register. Not many can claim to do that along side of us.

Third, there is always users who claim ownership of their scans. I dont want to deal with users coming here and complaining about something that was ripped from their website and released here without their permission. Do they have a claim, probably not. But all the same, its draining and I would like to stay clear.

Anyone who scans stuff for IA, is more than welcome to give us permission to put their scans over at Retromags. If they do, great. If they don't, we will eventually scan our own copies

Plus some of the stuff over at IA and these other sites, is not the best quality, its just thrown together and uploaded. We have quality checks, where we try to scan these magazines just once, destroy just 1 issue per scan, to get that perfect digital copy so that no other copies need be destroyed.

Hopefully this cleared it up

[kitsunebi]

I admit to lolz at referring to mags at the Internet Archive as "finds" like they were discovered on the dark web rather than one of the largest file repositories in the world operating on a nearly $40 million per year budget.

But yeah, I agree.  There's always going to be plenty of people out there who scramble to reupload other peoples' scans like they think they're doing the world a service.  But the people doing the actual work of contributing something to the hobby are a much rarer breed, and sites like RM and OGM are geared towards giving them a place to do what they do without diluting the importance of their efforts by allowing things like standards of ethics and quality become afterthoughts.

[Phillyman]

19 minutes ago, kitsunebi said:

But yeah, I agree.  There's always going to be plenty of people out there who scramble to reupload other peoples' scans like they think they're doing the world a service. 

And I have no issues with them rehosting. It is when they rehost and snatch out the Retromags Thank You page at the end. Or downgrade the quality or convert it to some oddball format. Take our scans, put them on Usenet, put them on public torrent sites, put them on private torrent sites. Just provide them the way you recieved them. So we get a tiny bit of foot traffic and a few members sign up and thank our team members. Otherwise they start wondering, does anyone even care that I am putting all this time into scanning, editing, and releasing this stuff?

[kitsunebi]

32 minutes ago, Phillyman said:

And I have no issues with them rehosting. It is when they rehost and snatch out the Retromags Thank You page at the end. Or downgrade the quality or convert it to some oddball format. Take our scans, put them on Usenet, put them on public torrent sites, put them on private torrent sites. Just provide them the way you recieved them. So we get a tiny bit of foot traffic and a few members sign up and thank our team members. Otherwise they start wondering, does anyone even care that I am putting all this time into scanning, editing, and releasing this stuff?

I don't pay the bills here, so I have the luxury of not caring about the Retromags thank you page, or whatever traffic it might bring.  I don't work for Retromags, I scan mags for whoever wants them.  All of the scans I've been uploading lately were originally scanned for the purpose of uploading at a completely different site, so it's frankly a bit odd that I need to include a page saying they were "made by Retromags."  But whatever.  It doesn't bother me to include it, and it doesn't bother me if people remove it.

But I absolutely agree that while sharing scans in other places is fine, altering the files of the scanned pages in any way is a big no-no.  If you think the file is too large and want to compress it - fine - so long as the new compressed version is your own personal copy.  But as soon as you reupload that altered file, you've put a crappier version of what was intended out into the world, and most people will have no way of knowing if they're downloading the original or the crappy version from that point forward.

The magazine scanning community is pretty lack in organizational standards compared to the comics community - probably because there are so relatively few magazines actually scanned, compared to the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of comic scans and rips out there.  All comics get released with the scanner or ripper's name as part of the actual filename (in addition to sometimes including a credit page at the end of the archive), so you can tell at a glance who created the file, allowing you to know what quality to expect and being able to tell it apart from any other scans of the same issue from different scanners.  Magazine scanners don't do this, so when multiple scans of the same mag show up online, there's no way to tell which is which other than by downloading both and comparing. 

Or, for example, if a comic rip is felt to be exceptionally large and bloated (jpgs saved at Photoshop quality 12, for example), and someone decides to use a more reasonable compression level to make the file smaller, they will always keep the original scanner/ripper's name intact in the filename, and add [repack] to the end, letting people know it's not the original file.  Again, the magazine world has no such standard practice.

So since magazine scans are so difficult to know who created them in the first place, it's easy to cloud the waters even further with every altered variation that someone creates to suit themselves and then reuploads elsewhere online.  So I can't stress enough how important it is to only share files "as is," and any alterations you make to those files should be for you own personal copy only.

Edited January 6 by kitsunebi

[TheValintyne]

5 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

I admit to lolz at referring to mags at the Internet Archive as "finds" like they were discovered on the dark web rather than one of the largest file repositories in the world operating on a nearly $40 million per year budget.

No need to be rude or dismissive. I'm only trying to help the end-goal here.

If you're a purveyor of any "lost media" wikis or groups, you'd know that, 9 times out of 10, what people are looking for is usually right under their noses. "Missing commercials" have been found on random YouTube collections. In turn, many documents, books, etc. have been found on IA, just waiting to be discovered by the right person that's looking for them.

It wasn't as easy as typing in the magazine title and the issue number/date as many of those were incorrect, using varied numbering styles, etc. I flipped through about 600 results to put together what I did. As far as I can see on the forum, no one else decided to do that in order to help complete collections.

 

5 hours ago, Phillyman said:

To be honest, it is a few things. First of which is pride, we take pride in being the origin of many scans that are mirrored elsewhere.

If that's the case, why accept donations/gestures like this? I checked all of my "finds" and all but two confirm sourcing from the Video Game History Foundation, scanned in at 600p resolution.

Relying on people who claim to have "x" number of issues and will mail them out, only to go radio silent for years, unfortunately, isn't reliable if the end-goal is preservation of every issue of a particular magazine. It was really disheartening to see so many threads like that abandoned for whatever reason.

Again, not trying to fight or disagree just to disagree, I just want to understand why something like this is considered inferior when there was a massive list posted of people excited to finally fill the holes in several magazines' libraries... only to have that languish and be seemingly forgotten about.

 

 

[dablais]

If I may add here, the main reason why I joined Retromag was all about getting and creating a quality product that is scanned, edited and released to as close to a digital release.   Too many scans out here are just… scans. There is no editing which is mind boggling to me, that I don’t even want to read it.  I personally prefer having one great scan of a set than 10 magazines unedited from that same set… If the quality is not there, I don’t even add them to my personal collection.  Unfortunately, IA as a lot of this…

@Kitsunebi really glad your are back! Everything you do is top notch!

Edited January 6 by dablais

[Rando1975]

9 hours ago, Phillyman said:

Plus some of the stuff over at IA and these other sites, is not the best quality, its just thrown together and uploaded. We have quality checks, where we try to scan these magazines just once, destroy just 1 issue per scan, to get that perfect digital copy so that no other copies need be destroyed.

No kidding. I've got some stuff from IA when there is no scan here, to index the contents on this site and some are pretty good. But others are crooked, upside down, or so small you have to magnify it 200x to make out what they are talking about. 

[chris85]

@Phillyman

I think all or most of those Tips and Tricks are scanned by Video Game History Foundation. Issue 13 for example has Retromags page.

The user that scanned them is TheRedEye on here i believe. Anyways i figure you guys should know this. Hope this helps.

[StrykerOfEnyo]

I believe I might have found this site because some magazine I came across had a Retromags Thank You Page, even though I found it elsewhere. 

[Phillyman]

3 hours ago, TheValintyne said:

No need to be rude or dismissive. I'm only trying to help the end-goal here.

If you're a purveyor of any "lost media" wikis or groups, you'd know that, 9 times out of 10, what people are looking for is usually right under their noses. "Missing commercials" have been found on random YouTube collections. In turn, many documents, books, etc. have been found on IA, just waiting to be discovered by the right person that's looking for them.

It wasn't as easy as typing in the magazine title and the issue number/date as many of those were incorrect, using varied numbering styles, etc. I flipped through about 600 results to put together what I did. As far as I can see on the forum, no one else decided to do that in order to help complete collections.

 

If that's the case, why accept donations/gestures like this? I checked all of my "finds" and all but two confirm sourcing from the Video Game History Foundation, scanned in at 600p resolution.

Relying on people who claim to have "x" number of issues and will mail them out, only to go radio silent for years, unfortunately, isn't reliable if the end-goal is preservation of every issue of a particular magazine. It was really disheartening to see so many threads like that abandoned for whatever reason.

Again, not trying to fight or disagree just to disagree, I just want to understand why something like this is considered inferior when there was a massive list posted of people excited to finally fill the holes in several magazines' libraries... only to have that languish and be seemingly forgotten about.

 

 

Right, but again I am saying there is a difference between Frank from Video Game History Foundation coming here and telling us directly that Retromags can either...

1) Rehost their scans as is

2) Fix up said scans via Photoshop and rehost.

And us just going all over the internet, sucking in found magazines from anywhere we can find them. If you look at his account on here, he has been a member at this site for probably well over a decade.

[dablais]

What I can do is going through TheRedEye scans that we received from VGHF and start editing them.  You should see a bunge of Tips & Tricks appearing in the following weeks.

[TheValintyne]

9 minutes ago, Phillyman said:

Right, but again I am saying there is a difference between Frank from Video Game History Foundation coming here and telling us directly that Retromags can either...

1) Rehost their scans as is

2) Fix up said scans via Photoshop and rehost.

And us just going all over the internet, sucking in found magazines from anywhere we can find them. If you look at his account on here, he has been a member at this site for probably well over a decade.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Like others have also pointed out, most of these are scanned in by VGHF and were even on the Massive Scan List that I linked in my previous comment. Heck, as @chris85 pointed out, Issue 13 already contains the Retromags page in the back (something I completely overlooked because I didn't know it was a "thing" until this thread).

[E-Day]

4 hours ago, TheValintyne said:

That's exactly what I'm saying. Like others have also pointed out, most of these are scanned in by VGHF and were even on the Massive Scan List that I linked in my previous comment. Heck, as @chris85 pointed out, Issue 13 already contains the Retromags page in the back (something I completely overlooked because I didn't know it was a "thing" until this thread).

The VGHF scanned all of those based on what was missing here for us to edit and make available on our site. He didn't just scan them and happen to let us know. We worked with them to curate a list of what's missing here. And as he's a member here it is almost the same as another member scanning things for us to edit and host. 

[TheValintyne]

14 minutes ago, E-Day said:

The VGHF scanned all of those based on what was missing here for us to edit and make available on our site. He didn't just scan them and happen to let us know. We worked with them to curate a list of what's missing here. And as he's a member here it is almost the same as another member scanning things for us to edit and host. 

I never said that? I never even implied it was an accidental, happenstance thing.

There's no way to know what is currently being worked on, besides the "Scanning" tags or "Missing" tags on issues. When a new user sees all of the old threads with unanswered replies/requests, it's difficult to know if something has actual progress or it's just set that way on the database.

It seems like there's a lot of miscommunication between curators here, because if the VGHF scenario was already widely known, it would've been nice to be told that by the *first* curator instead of being told, "We don't want these unless you've scanned them yourself."

I like this website a lot already and it's brought me a lot of joy (the short time I've been here), but some of you aren't exactly making it a welcoming environment for people who are unfamiliar with how you do things. I posted this thread before I knew about the "massive scan list" or anything about the relationship between RM and VGHF. It isn't fair to assume that I should know your "lore" or internet relationships as a new member. I was simply trying to be helpful and I was excited to see that a complete set was so close to happening.

But man, this experience has been far more draining than it's been worth.

[kitsunebi]

2 hours ago, TheValintyne said:

I like this website a lot already and it's brought me a lot of joy (the short time I've been here), but some of you aren't exactly making it a welcoming environment for people who are unfamiliar with how you do things. I posted this thread before I knew about the "massive scan list" or anything about the relationship between RM and VGHF. It isn't fair to assume that I should know your "lore" or internet relationships as a new member. I was simply trying to be helpful and I was excited to see that a complete set was so close to happening.

But man, this experience has been far more draining than it's been worth.

You're right, you were only trying to be helpful.  And I'm sure the list you made with links to the Internet Archive will be useful to anyone looking to fill holes who doesn't want to deal with the disorganized mess that comes from having a site with millions of users who can upload anything they like with very little moderator oversight.  The Internet Archive may be significantly higher profile than Retromags, but organized it isn't.

Your reaction to want to help by sharing things you've found elsewhere isn't uncommon by any means.  New members step forward with similar offers on a regular basis, which is probably why the "we can't use it if you didn't scan it yourself" reply may have sounded a bit curt.  It wasn't meant to be so, it's just that it comes up so often (most people don't check the FAQ first).

Indeed, the reason many of the scans at the Internet Archive are there in the first place is because someone reacted the same way you did, albeit with the sites reversed: "Wow, I found this site called Retromags with lots of scans.  I'll reupload them all at the Internet Archive so that other people can find them."  As Phillyman said, he's actually fine with that.  Not all scanners are - some like having control over where they share their scans, and it's important to respect that, since ignoring their wishes could well drive them to stop sharing scans at all. 

I appreciate that you were sensitive to the fact that uploading things here that you found at the Internet Archive was problematic because you weren't sure how to go about crediting them.  Most people who reupload our scans elsewhere aren't so considerate.  There are members here who upload our new releases on a regular basis to another site, usually within hours of them being posted here, and not once have those people ever thanked the scanner.  And of course, once our files are at that other site, no one downloading from there has any idea who scanned them, and couldn't thank the scanner even if they wanted to.

 

For now there are 2 ways to help people fill holes.

1. Exactly what you did.  Not everyone checks all of the various places scans pop up on a regular basis, so lists like you made with links to those places will surely be beneficial to some of our members.  We can't just copy and paste other people's scans here without their permission, since it goes against the rules this site has always operated by, but pointing people in the direction of where those scans can be found is no problem.
2. Join the efforts to preserve magazines here, either by scanning magazines yourself, or else donating something to someone willing to do the work for you.

 

Sorry you've felt frustrated.  I think it shows just how much you want to help, so who knows, one day you could be the best among us. Everyone here who contributes scans started doing so for that same reason, after all. 

Edited January 6 by kitsunebi

[dablais]

Hi Guys,

  I just purchased issue 62, 72, 99, 101, 130, 131 and 150 with the help of matrixman.

We will be missing only these earlier issue 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13 and 21.

I will keep going through the VGH list, we should be close to a complete set after.

Danny

Edited January 8 by dablais

[TheValintyne]

@dablais, this is AMAZING news!

Those earlier ones are going to be difficult to find, I imagine, but I wonder if @ChrisBcould point someone in the right direction?

[dablais]

@TheValintyne I will finish going through the current list we have... meaning do their edit and color correct them because a lot of them are picky-ish.  I need to correct those.  Once finish I will scan these new issues!

Let's try to hunt the missing one!

[dablais]

Looks like issue 111 is also missing in our sets, it was mislabeled.  It's actually the Codebook 10th anniversary.   This one will need to be found also.

[MkMoveList]

11 hours ago, dablais said:

Hi Guys,

  I just purchased issue 62, 72, 99, 101, 130, 131 and 150 with the help of matrixman.

We will be missing only these earlier issue 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13 and 21.

I will keep going through the VGH list, we should be close to a complete set after.

Danny

I have issues 2, 5, 6, 10, 12, and 13. About to get #2 out the door then I will move on to scanning #5..

Edited January 9 by MkMoveList

[kitsunebi]

Man, I feel like I should be getting really pumped! by how quickly all these holes are getting filled!

Unfortunately, other than the single issue I scanned because it was included in a pile of other stuff someone sent me, I've never read an issue of T&T in my life.   But I'm excited for everyone else's excitement!

...Where the heck was this kind of team spirit when I first joined RM 10 years ago and one of my first posts was wondering if any issues of PC Gamer were ever gonna get scanned (I think there were only 2 or 3 at the time)?   Ah well, got them eventually.

 

[dablais]

Wow!  I’m impressed!  @MkMoveList 

@kitsunebi very glad to see more people contributing!