MegaUploads Shut Down, 99% of Retromags Collection Unavailable

[ajmetz]

Hey guys, I was just checking out your site, and attempting to check out some old issues of Game Players [i'm a Saturn fan and was intrigued by the Issue 53 June 1995 Saturn cover, although I also have fond memories of GamePlayers, having bought some issues back in the day, on import]...but would you believe it, my internet died!

So I take my laptop to a local hotel, and start using their wifi...

XD...only to find, now I've got the internet working, MegaUpload is down, >_<...

So, I've watched this whole nasty episode play out, =/, ...

...and it sucks I've only really discovered this community now, during these unfortunate circumstances.

That said, I used to be friends with the folks over at Spong.com - and for donkeys they've claimed to be a gaming museum, so I just popped on their forums and told 'em your hosting was down, and asked if Spong still saw themselves as a games museum and if so, should I suggest the Retromags.com lot approach them?

Well, here's Tim's reply:

http://forums.spong.com/index.php?/topic/570-retro-mags/page__pid__4221#entry4221

[E-Day]

We are still trying to work something out. Obviously none of the file sharing sites are a good idea because they are all dropping. But I have a couple of ideas on how to get content back up.

I am not familiar with Spong.com, and am not sure how a partnership would work. What was it that you had in mind?

[ajmetz]

Well, I thought they might volunteer to host the files for you, since they like preserving the history of games and stuff.

If you check their Team pages you'll see it's ran by old games mag staff too, - Amiga Format seems to be mentioned most.

I have no idea how a partnership would work - just have a chat with them and discuss it.

They're really friendly nice people, =).

They're also ran by/part of eleventeenth.com, who provide web solutions for games companies, so they know about hosting and stuff.

But y'know, I just like 'em 'cos they've got a good sense of humour, and I've met 'em a couple of times.

Whether they end up being the right solution for the current crisis or not, definitely pick up the phone or drop 'em an email, for a chat - they're great people! ^_^ They're headquartered here in the UK, but Stefan and Marcus live in the states I believe.

Am glad to hear you've got a couple of ideas of how to get content back up again, =). Makes me hopeful things'll soon be back up, one way or another, ^_^! Looking forwards to checking out the site more once all the content is back up, ^_^.

I've got tonnes of 90s mags myself - although admittedly my scanner is super slow, =/.

[E-Day]

I'll send them a message tonight to find out what they could do.

[KiwiArcader]

Hmmm ... hosting through someone else isn't totally ideal as you never know when they will disappear and while you could say that about filehosting companies they are fairly transparent about what you can do. Well ... until Megaupload going down they were. The other issue is if their provider does an audit like Dreamhost did to Retromags you may find everything disappears anyway. Catch 22 I guess.

You could approach Dreamhost and identify content that is able to be distributed legally ... all Newsfield mags ... Antic ... Analog/ST Log etc ... and see if they would then allow local hosting as they wouldn't be legally targeted but really ... most RM content isn't legal ... so filehosting companies or torrents seems the only way to go.

I do like Rapidshare though. They seem to have no concerns over the MU saga as it's BAU as far as they are concerned. One really great new addition is you can import files from other Rapidshare user links directly into your account so if that user dropped their files or they were taken down you still have them in your account. Pretty cool.

[ajmetz]

Well, I'm glad to see OldGamesMags is getting stuff back up anyhow, =D.

<3 Saturn Power, ^_^.

oldgamemags - soz, typo, =P

[KiwiArcader]

Yeah .... I decided I could sit around waiting to se what happens or take a chance. I decided on the latter

[E-Day]

We've reached a solution that I will be implementing on the weekend in limited capacity. If all goes well, I will continue adding files back until they are all eventually back online.

[badinsults]

Sweet, good to hear, E-Day.

[nyijedi]

I just found this awesome site a mere few days before Megauploads was shut down. Just my luck. I can't tell you how disappointed I was that the files became unavailable before I had a chance to really download and view them. I just signed up for an account on this website to tell the people who run it how grateful I am for maintaining the site, and for quickly working on getting the files back up somewhere else. I can't wait. Thank you.

[ajmetz]

Can't wait to finally check out that GamePlayers issue, ^_^ *hint-hint* ;-)

[terpsfan101]

A few suggestions about the magazines being added back to the download manager:

Store the cbr/cbz/pdf file in a zip archive, instead of 7zip? You can password protect zip files. And you are not gaining any extra compression with 7zip because you are compressing a file that is already compressed (cbr/cbz), and zip and 7zip achieve the same levels of compression with pdf files.

Do not compress the downloadable archives. The cbr/cbz file inside the archive is already compressed. The file size of the downloadable archive is actually larger when using compression, instead of store. Plus it will de-compress faster if you use "Store" as the compression level, whether you're using zip or 7zip. With pdf files, I can see using compression as you will save a little bit of space.

[E-Day]

The files will be stored in a .7z archive for the simple reason that it will prevent the file inside the archive from being visible without the password. That way if someone from the site's host downloads one of the magazines from the server and tries to open it, they won't see what is inside unless they come onto the site and find the password. granted, the password won't be hard to find at all, but it's one extra step and precaution.

[terpsfan101]

Don't compress the 7zip file, if it contains cbz/cbr archive. Use "store" as the compression level. Here's a test I just ran using Nintendo Power 127. Notice how the 7zip file is larger and takes significantly longer to compress and decompress when using compression.

Nintendo Power Issue 127

File Size: 261,470 KB (255 MB)

File Type: cbz

Compression:

Archive, Level, Compression Time, Archive Size

zip, store, 2 seconds, 261,470 KB

zip, best, 15 seconds, 261,476 KB

7zip, store, 1 second, 261,470 KB

7zip, maximum, 1 minute 58 seconds, 262,906 KB

Decompression:

Archive, Level, Decompression Time

zip, store, 2 seconds

zip, best, 2 seconds

7zip, store, 2 seconds

7zip, maximum, 25 seconds

[E-Day]

I know.

[E-Day]

Issue 1 of Nintendo Power is now available again. You will need to have 7-Zip (portable version here) in order to extract the magazine. The password for the archive is "R3tr0_Mags!" with the quotes.

More magazines will be following.

[terpsfan101]

Didn't mean to lecture you. I'd hate to see what those 7zip compress/decompress times would be on my old Celeron with 256 MB memory.

[Kombatologist]

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned, but will everything be restored or is anything missing? Perhaps myself and others could help restore what's missing if that's the case.

[E-Day]

Terpsfan101 uploaded a bunch of stuff, which I am currently downloading. I am going to sort through it and then figure out what is missing. Anyone who wants to help by uploading stuff to the FTP can contact me with the scans they have, and I can tell them what is still needed. My goal is to get everything back online.

[Shotking]

Terpsfan101 uploaded a bunch of stuff, which I am currently downloading. I am going to sort through it and then figure out what is missing. Anyone who wants to help by uploading stuff to the FTP can contact me with the scans they have, and I can tell them what is still needed. My goal is to get everything back online.

I have managed to save NP issues #1 to #40 (which was far as I got before Megaupload was nabbed) Their all in PDF file format. Do you still need them?

[KiwiArcader]

All the PDF files on the site were pretty much uploaded by me as most everyone else here uses/likes .CBR files. Now that I run my own site E-Day 'may' prefer to stick with .CBR versions for continuity reasons. I have Nintendo Power 1-120 from this site all in PDF format though so if you want RM to stick with CBR's I can always upload the PDF's over at OGM.

[E-Day]

I have managed to save NP issues #1 to #40 (which was far as I got before Megaupload was nabbed) Their all in PDF file format. Do you still need them?

All the PDF files on the site were pretty much uploaded by me as most everyone else here uses/likes .CBR files. Now that I run my own site E-Day 'may' prefer to stick with .CBR versions for continuity reasons. I have Nintendo Power 1-120 from this site all in PDF format though so if you want RM to stick with CBR's I can always upload the PDF's over at OGM.

I indeed want to stick with CBR/CBZ, but also am not against having PDFs as an alternative secondary format that exists along side CBR either.

Anyone who wants to upload them to the FTP here can send me a private message and I'll give them the credentials to the FTP upload server to do so.

[badinsults]

I indeed want to stick with CBR/CBZ, but also am not against having PDFs as an alternative secondary format that exists along side CBR either.

Anyone who wants to upload them to the FTP here can send me a private message and I'll give them the credentials to the FTP upload server to do so.

Are the file extensions fixed on the files? I noticed a lot of the Nintendo Power scans are zip compressed, but had a CBR extension for some reason (note that I downloaded them years ago off a torrent).

[E-Day]

Are the file extensions fixed on the files? I noticed a lot of the Nintendo Power scans are zip compressed, but had a CBR extension for some reason (note that I downloaded them years ago off a torrent).

I haven't touched any of the files yet. I doubt I will go through and test each file since there are hundreds of them.

[Pseudo3D]

I do prefer PDFs as well, would be nice if there were both formats and I didn't have to go through and convert them.