Computer Gamer Magazine?

[KiwiArcader]

Hi Guys,

Having just joined I am still finding my way around the site but thought I'd find out if there was any interest for some of these old English magazines.

I have quite a pile of these. As you can see they're a tad old.

Anyways .... if there's any interest I'll get onto scanning and cleaning them up and so on. If they're old news I'll throw them back on the shelf and look for something else that might be useful.

Cheers .......

[Phillyman]

Those actually look kinda interesting, how many pages are they?

[KiwiArcader]

Approximately 90 pages with reviews largely of the 8-bit machines of the day. They included type in proggies for C64 etc.

I think the Amiga/ST were only just starting to appear at this time.

All told I have 16 issues sitting on my shelf .... 1985 - May, Jul, Aug-Dec 1986 - Jan-Jun, Oct, Dec 1987 - Apr

[BarbieOnWeed]

I'm all for it , so please do scan them.

[meppi]

While things like the C64, Spectrum and such don't really are my cup of tea, it can't be denied that there are lots of people that are HUGE fans of the systems.

Along with the fact that these are some of the oldest game magazines around, I'd say go for it without a doubt!

I'm sure you'll be making quite a few people happy who might not be finding their thing here at the moment.

[KiwiArcader]

Oki-dokey...

I have commenced scanning one of the issues. As these are 20+ years old and printed on the news print type paper of the day they have aged as you'd expect of that type of paper and the covers do show shelf wear. As a result I am doing a fair bit of image processing work on the pages as I scan them. I also have done a lot of extra work cleaning up the wear marks on the cover to get it looking as close as possible to mint. Due to this I am guessing it will take a few days per magazine barring the wifey beating me up for spending too much time in front of the PC

The sad thing is I had a heap more of these at one stage and threw them out along with a huge Penthouse/Playboy collection when I got married. These somehow missed the great cull ... rather fortuitously. Really kicking myself as I also had the first dozen original issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland in mint condition which are now worth a small fortune. Sigh!!!!

I was/still am a huge Amstrad CPC and Atari 800 fan. I also had a C-64 and a C-128 but just never really got into them as much as the other 2. The Amiga's and Atari ST's I had were also nice but there was something special about the 8-bit era for me.

UPDATE. I have completed scanning & cleaning up one of the issues. First up is ...

Dec 1986 Issue with reviews of Sentinel, The Pawn, Academy [sequel to Tau Ceti] and lots more interesting stuff for the 8-bit machines.....

Where can I upload the 71mb .cbr file to? Ok ... uploaded to Rapidshare

http://rapidshare.com/files/134214322/Comp...ue_21_.cbr.html

Edited August 2, 2008 by KiwiArcader

[KiwiArcader]

Wow!!!

No comments on quality etc or whether anyone even downloaded and checked it out.

These old magazines obviously dont interest anyone so that is/was my last one considering the amount of work involved getting it scanned/cleaned up etc.

[Phillyman]

I must have missed your reply stating the magazine was ready, I just took a look at it and it turned out fantastic! Gotta love any magazine that has Sly Stalone in it. I will send you instructions on how to add it to the Download section in a little bit , I am currently at work.

[hahnchen]

Kiwi, I didn't spot this earlier. I downloaded your rapidshare file, and found the scans to be real good quality.

I'm not a fan of 80s home gaming, nor was I familiar with the magazine. But knowing that anything even mentioning the Spectrum is archive at World of Spectrum, I checked them out.

It turns out that they already have all the issues archived at ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclai.../ComputerGamer/ .

[Phillyman]

Kiwi, I didn't spot this earlier. I downloaded your rapidshare file, and found the scans to be real good quality.

I'm not a fan of 80s home gaming, nor was I familiar with the magazine. But knowing that anything even mentioning the Spectrum is archive at World of Spectrum, I checked them out.

It turns out that they already have all the issues archived at ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclai.../ComputerGamer/ .

Personally I think his scans are better, Even when things are already scanned...I don't want to take credit for work that was found somewhere else. Example being that the first issue of Nintendo Fun Club can be found on the internet scanned, but I have yet to add it to the Retromags collection because "We" have not scanned it yet. I think of it this way....I would be really ticked if someone came on here and took our scans, tweaked them a little bit and then tried putting them off as their own.

Retromags is not going anywhere, so take your time and do what you can....the power is in the number of people participating.....not the amount each person can crank out (because that always leads to burnout)

I added the release to the Download section and credited you for the work, and also bumped you to "Scanner" status

-Phillyman

[KiwiArcader]

Oh Man!!!

I checked [censor bypass] and a couple of other mag sites and Computer Gamer wasn't on the radar so thought they weren't available anywhere.

Hence deciding to put the time into making them available. I cleaned up the cover a whole heap removing scratches etc and getting all pages rotated and corrected for page fold etc so the end result I feel does the magazine a tad bit more justice than the ones on World of Speccy site.

I will continue to work through the ones I have but maybe for the ones I am missing we could look at compiling them from the other site? Thoughts? They are essentially just raw scans after all. I'd have to apply the same amount of effort cleaning those up but at least we'd get the complete collection.

[hahnchen]

Kiwi, your scans are of better quality than those on WoS, and your efforts are appreciated. Just wanted to let you know that the magazine was available elsewhere in case you wanted to switch priorities.

[KiwiArcader]

Well .... I have a truckload of Amiga Format and Amiga World magazines .... LOL

Seriously though ... I'll continue to get the Computer Gamers scanned and looking like new seeing as they are the oldest mags I have and some are showing their age now so the sooner I do it the less work will be required.

[KiwiArcader]

Okay ..... another day see's another magazine scanned and ready to be added to the collection. This time it's ...

June 1986 No 15 cleaned up etc etc. Rapidshare link as I dont have any other way of making it available at present is ....

http://rapidshare.com/files/135795405/Comp...ue_15_.cbr.html

Enjoy!!!

UPDATE: I pulled the first page of Issue 1 off the World of Speccy site as I dont have this issue and wanted to see if they were worth editing. Here is the result ...

Compare that to the original and let me know if it is worth pursuing this avenue for those 10 issues I dont have. We could use those along with my scanned issues to create a complete collection as it appears only 27 issues were made. If you think it worthwhile I'll email the site admin and ask if they object ....and we can provide their site with much better issues as a bonus so everyone wins.

[KiwiArcader]

Hi everyone,

Finished scanning another episode of this magazine .....

April 1987 Issue 25 is now available via Rapidshare for those interested in the 8bit gaming days .....

http://rapidshare.com/files/136448705/Comp...ue_25_.cbr.html

Enjoy!!!

UPDATE: Well ..... as I have no way of obtaining the missing issues of these magazines I pulled down issue 01 from World of Speccy, adjusted the contrast,resized the images and compiled the issue into one I can certainlylive with. I have uploaded it to Rapidshare in case anyone else wants it barring finding a good print copy somewhere. The issue is

and the linky link for the mag is.....

http://rapidshare.com/files/136484680/Comp...ue_01_.cbr.html

UPDATE. Phillyman has told me how to get these up online so expect it on the site shortly.

[KiwiArcader]

Just an update to say where I am at .....

Currently I am scanning

Computer Gamer ..... Issue 19

Antic Sept 1985 ..... Atari Magazine supporting 8-bit Atari's

Amiga Format ..... Issue 3

... along with a heap of my original Atari Owners Guides as no-one has PDF/CBR'd these and some are works of art from the old days and a shame if they disappear. I dont know if these are required here but if anyone wants any I am working through guides for ...

Atari 800XL

Atari 1200XL [Done]

Atari 130XE [bIG!!!!]

Atari 1050 Disk Drive [Done]

Atari 1010 Program Recorder

Atari 1027 Printer

Atari XC12 Program Recorder [Done]

2 Atari Catalogs. One of these has photo's of Atari Computers that were advertised but never made it into production. Cool stuff indeed.

[KiwiArcader]

Wow!! Obviously no-one around here has much interest in anything other than Nintendo Power or EGM going by the total lack of interest. Being an old school gamer I thought some of my older stuff would interest people around here. Obviously not ...

Seems like all the effort in getting these old Atari & Amiga magazines/manuals etc scanned, edited and turned into cbr's is a waste of time as a result. So while I will continue to work on the Owners Guides for all my Atari Hardware as it's a pet project of mine I am forthwith stopping work on all other magazine creation. That includes a couple of issues of SNES Super Play, EDGE and some other old Commodore Computer oriented magazines.

Bye.

[Phillyman]

KiwiArcader you should realize that this is a small site and your not going to receive 5-10 replies within 24 hours of posting what you are currently working on. You should be scanning because its something you wish to do, and not relying on people to come forward and express thanks. Look at how many magazines are in our Download section.....and look at how many of them have comments on them. Not many of them at all have even a "Thanks for Releasing This"

I would hate for any one to stop contributing due to not feeling appreciated. Dont get the wrong idea about this site.....EGM and Nintendo Power are not the only two publications we care about. Its just that each of us picks a magazine to scan that we like.....and in doing so we achieve a greater spread of whats being scanned......Look at how it is right now......

Phillyman - I tend to jump around but right now am concentrating on EGM

E-Day - He tends to do Gamepro and EGM

kbf_private_joker - He tends to do GamePro and PC Gamer

azzardx - He helps out on the EGM front

Fusoya - Only scans Nintendo Powers

Meppi - Tends to be a Sega Fanboy and picks Sega Saturn and Club Nintendo magazines to scan

Thor - helps out from time to time on the Sega Visions

It would be incredibly dull if we were all working on the same magazine, so dont think because you are scanning Atari magazines that we dont appreciate it.

I hope you change your mind

[gizmomelb]

Wow!! Obviously no-one around here has much interest in anything other than Nintendo Power or EGM going by the total lack of interest. Being an old school gamer I thought some of my older stuff would interest people around here. Obviously not ...

Seems like all the effort in getting these old Atari & Amiga magazines/manuals etc scanned, edited and turned into cbr's is a waste of time as a result. So while I will continue to work on the Owners Guides for all my Atari Hardware as it's a pet project of mine I am forthwith stopping work on all other magazine creation. That includes a couple of issues of SNES Super Play, EDGE and some other old Commodore Computer oriented magazines.

Bye.

Hi KiwiArcader,

I appreciate the effort you've gone to scanning these old UK 8 bit magazines, so thank you very much!

I think the majority of people on here are Americans in their mid-late twenties and they 'missed' the 8 bit computer revolution and came in on the Nintendo and Atari console wave. Me, I'm an old fart who's nearly 40 and grew up with the UK computer magazines and dreams of owning a ZX Spectrum etc.

If you're spending the time cleaning up the scans from the World of Spectrum FTP site then you may like to contact the original scanner and see if he's also interested in your scans / work on cleaning them up. His name is Mort and his website is: www.zzap64.co.uk

Cheers and thanks for the effort and scans!

Gizmomelb

[KiwiArcader]

Sorry if I sounded a tad grumpy but the lack of feedback makes it hard to know where to concentrate ones efforts on.

As far as the World of Speccy stuff goes .... I only obtained issue 1 off their site as I have a significant portion of the rest and where I do have the original magazine I am scanning those in preference to using other peoples scans as I have better control over the quality etc. I did upload the Issue 1 copy after cleaning the WOS scans up etc but somehow it died in the process and never became available on this site and Phillyman didn't look into it so I was unsure whether to try again or not.

As a 40+er I am more interested in the older magazines having grown up on Atari/Amstrad/Amiga's etc and there is a distinct lack of contributions in these areas. So I thought my concentrating on those area's would be beneficial ... but the lack of feedback makes one assume it's a wasted effort on most of the people visiting the site.

[Phillyman]

Sorry if I sounded a tad grumpy but the lack of feedback makes it hard to know where to concentrate ones efforts on.

I would personally say to concentrate on scanning the magazines that interest you the most, As they get put into the Download section Google will index them and when people do Google searches on those magazines, they will be referred here. Nothing is a wasted effort, I am always looking for ways to branch out with other publications.....and as you post them people will find them.....

As a test....Go to Google and do the following searches

"Nintendo Power Issue 49"

"EGM Issue 56"

"Sega Visions Issue 4"

"Gamepro issue 99"

"PSM Issue 4"

In all of those random searches, Retromags shows up as the first or second link.......Now try some of those Atari magazines.....and you will see Retromags does not show up. Remember a big portion of our new users come from Google.....So as you fill up the Download section with Atari magazines.....we will see an increase of Atari fans

Anyways I hope you dont decide to throw in the towel......I grew up at the end of the Atari age and would like to see some of that early stuff around here.

[triverse]

Just do as I do, pick something you like personally and go with that. Just so happens I enjoy my Gamefan issues immensely and had plans on archiving them digitally anyhow (all I do for this site that is extra is the zipping and nfo file). I have recently posted asking for suggestions as to what to scan so that I don't burn out on Gamefan's but I mean, I am already going to scann all of this stuff anyhow, so no biggie. Just do what you enjoy doing.

I remember an episode of Thundercats where Lion-O helped some alien that speaked another language with a major problem and Lion-O got mad because the alien took the gift from Lion-O without saying thanks. Panthor (I think that was his name) told Lion-O that if he did it for someone to say thanks then he did it for the wrong reasons. I am not trying to poke at you Kiwi, I am just saying, do it for yourself first.

I do want to say thanks to anyone and everyone that has donated anything to the site. It is appreciated and enjoyed by many.