meppi

That might be some good advice. I've heard before that the mag went though some changes and that they weren't for the best. So I might simply keep it to Nintendo Magazine System. Too bad really, as I probably loved the N64 period of gaming the most. I even have a couple of old Nintendo Magazines from the second set from way back, but it's been 10 years since I lost read them, so I don't remember much about it. Only that I liked the mag enough at the time to keep asking for it, but they stopped carrying it over here and instead started selling the exact same magazine, but translated in French. The magazine even lagged a month or sometimes 2 behind the original UK publication, probably due to all the translation work required...

Yeah that's true, I calculated that with the magazines I now have and the ones I'm still looking for I will know what to do for at least the coming 7 years, and that's if I finish one magazine per week. :whistling: That's why I'm only looking to complete certain sets right now, otherwise I'm simply starting series of mags that I know I'll probably never finish. So I choose the ones I myself love the most. Mostly the EMAP video game publications, since most of the great writers that worked on certain magazines migrated from one publication to the next within EMAP itself. So right now I'm only looking to complete the following, which I take as my responsibility: - Club Nintendo Magazine (UK/English) - Computer And Videogames (UK) - only the Paul Davies years right now, otherwise it would take forever, and I consider the Paul Davies years to be the best of the best when it comes to CVG. (from 166-214) - Dreamcast Magazine (UK) - should have the full set soon, as they should be underway right now. - Maximum The Videogame Magazine - finished - Mean Machines - only missing a couple issues - Mean Machines Sega - still missing about half the set - MegaTech (UK) - full set in my possession - Official Dreamcast Magazine (UK) - The complete set should be underway - Official Nintendo Magazine (UK) - lots more to collect here over the 3 different names the magazine has gone through - Official Sega Magazine - only missing 5 issues - Official Sega Saturn Magazine - full set in my possession - Super Play - full set in my possession

Nah, that's all right. I already have the complete set, so I got those covered. :grin: You can see here which magazines we already have. (well, more or less as it's not 100% up to date)

:grin:

Some of you might remember a great internet retrogame show called RetroCore, done by Yakumo for his site Segagagadomain. Last year he recorded the very last RetroCore episode, which was nr.32, in which he covered the following games: Dreamcast - Sakura Taisen 3 (Special Promotion movie) Dreamcast - Shenmue 2 (Special Promotion movie) Dreamcast - D2 Arcade - Wild Riders Sega Saturn - Need For Speed Sega Saturn - Burning Rangers Sega Saturn - Duke Nukem' 3D Sega Saturn - NiGHTS into Dreams (Game of the month) Sega Saturn - Hyper Dual Mega Drive - Aero Blasters Mega Drive - Golden Axe Mega Drive - Valis III Mega Drive - Zero Wing PC Engine - Aero Blasters PC Engine CD - Golden Axe PC Engine CD - Valis III PC Engine Super CD - Zero Wing PC Engine Arcade CD - Garoundensetsu Special (Fatal Fury Special) PC Engine - Final Soldier PC Engine - Space Harrier PC Engine - Download PC Engine - Paranoia PC Engine - Ninja Spirits PC Engine - Pop'n Twinbee PC Engine Super CD - Psychic Storm PC Engine Arcade CD - World Heroes 2 PC Engine Super CD - L-DIS PC Engine Super CD - Shubibiman 3 PC Engine CD - Horror Story PC Engine Super CD - Ranma 1/2 Mobile Phone - Shutokou Battle Evolution Mobile Phone - Star Ward mobile Pod Racer Mobile Phone - Ridge Racer Wide Screen Mobile Phone - Cotton Magical Night Dreams Now after a long absence the first volume of RetroCore is being made and will be up soon as you can see on the easer trailer on his frontpage. For those looking to catch up on the first series of RetroCore, you can either stream them online or download the from here. He covers just about every system as long as it's retro or at least has retro appeal. I for one can't wait i until the new episode is released! :grin:

What I find great about the Mario Kart games is that every single one has something unique which makes it still worth playing even though newer versions come out. Super Mario Kart: Battle Circuit 2 (my favourite along with block fort in the DS version), The regular couses are all simply perfect as well. Probably the best MK allround. (tied with the DS game for me I think) Mario Kart 64: I would have said block fort, but the DS version blew even this one out of the water for me. Moo Moo Farm, Rainbow Road, Choco Mountain and Sherbet Land are some unforgettable tracks. As well as basically the whole star cup. Mario Kart Super Circuit: Goes back to the SNES way of doing things. Along with many new tracks came a whole selection of classic ones, actually all the SNES tracks! How can you go wrong with that? :grin: The way how the coins that are littered around each track is implemented into the game adds a whole new reason to keep coming back to this one. Mario Kart Double Dash: Sadly my least favourite Mario Kart. Had a blast with the regular Championship mode but for some reason the game wasn't as memorable for me personally. Favourite tracks being the Yoshi track and baby park. Recently I've gone back to Multiplayer mode which I was very disappointed at when I first got the game, but I rediscovered bomb battle mode which I now really love. Mario Kart DS: From the revised Block fort which I've spent over 2500 battle games on against my best friend, and the regular courses along with some great choices of classics. The new challenge mode etc, this one pretty much is perfect for me. The only thing that could possibly make it better was that they simply put all the old tracks, battle circuits and different options in on game, which is something we will never see for various reasons. One thing that keeps it from being perfect is the online mode. Besides no battle mode and not being ale to drag items, the snakers killed this game for me. I actually learned to do it as well, but for some reason I hate playing the game that way, so I simply quit playing online. Too bad as for the first couple of months it was the best online experience I ever had with a game. Even with the news about the battle mode in the Wii version being changed into team only play, I'm pretty sure since the game is based around the same philosophy as the DS MK, that this will once again be one of th top MK games. Hopefully my gut is right on this one as I can't describe how disappointed I would be if it turned out to be a dud.

I thought about that as well, but sadly that won't do us any good. you see, at the back of issue 5-1 there is an add for Nintendo Magazine System, so you can see that they were already planning to guide the readers towards that magazine before they stopped making Club Nintendo's. The problem is that the issue they are advertising is already issue nr.4. So there was an overlapping period. I would be tempted to say that issue 5-2 was probably the final one since the seller had the complete Vol.4 set as well as 5-1 and 5-2. So he probably had them up to the very end. Along with the add for NMS, it makes perfect sense, but yeah, we can't be 100% certain about it as of now.

The first one of the new batch has just been uploaded. Club Nintendo Vol.5 Issue 2 - 1993 (UK) A bit of a special one for me, since I didn't know there were any issues released after 4-6 until I saw the auction for them. The Belgium version of this magazine stopped at 4-6 as far as I know since that was the last one Nintendo sent to me back in the day. Glad to see there were at least 2 more of these released in the UK before Nintendo decided that one monthly magazine would be enough. Which turned out to be Nintendo Magazine System. Enjoy. :happy:

15 pound for 5 magazines, so it counters the previous (very expensive) auction a bit. :happy:

Well I tried the macro thing out on the older scans I did before I started using macro's, but it seems that there is a significant quality loss if I try to resize them now. So sadly that won't be an option. The thing is, my scanner saves the images as uncompressed PSF files, which you can manipulate without losing any data, that is until you save them as JPGs. So it's best that once you've saved them as a JPG, you do as little work as possible on them, especially when it comes to resizing them. What you'll notice on my older scans when you look at the image sizes, is that the width is always 1280, but the height does vary since every page was cropped and then resized to a width of 1280 manually. When using a macro, the program (Photostudio 5.5 in my case) remembers the dimensions of your original resize which you can save as a macro. So when you crop the next image you can push F8 to run the macro, which will use the same specifications to resize this picture as it did with the last one. That way every page has the same dimensions, which comes in handy when putting CDisplay in 2 page mode, as every page will be just as tall as the next one. On the older scans this wasn't the case and while it's not at all a problem for regular viewing, I find it an easy and clean way of working, so I have used it for all my scans since I found out about the option for using macro's.

I know from reading the introduction book that arrived last week that OS X can do all kinds of batch conversion things and much much more with it's Automator program. But that won't help anyone here sadly enough. So what I did (only for my own cbr for now) was to to extract them with winrar. You don't have to rename them to rar first to be able to have winrar open them. you can simply rightclick - open with - winrar on the cbr and it'll do just fine. Extract the images which normally should be inside a map, but that's not necessary, and then zip the file back up by choosing add to archive... and change the zip at the end to cbz before clicking ok. 1) 7Zip would probably work just fine, but the thing with JPGs might be that since you already compressed the files by saving the original scans as JPG files, you'd lose even more detail by choosing a higher compression setting. So I prefer to use the store compression option, which seems to leave the archive and therefore the pics alone and don't compress them any further. You can even set Winrar to create zips as standard. First right click on a file and choose add to archive... then choose ZIP instead of RAR as your archive format, also set the compression method to STORE. Now click on the profiles tab and choose the first option: SAVE CURRENT SETTINGS TO A NEW PROFILE. There choose SET PROFILE AS DEFAULT and then click ok. If you now right click on an image folder, or any other file for that matter, Winrar will automatically set the options to ZIP as a STORE compression. 2) Putting a renamed ZIP or RAR file in another ZIP or RAR file with or without another file won't create any problems. As long as people remember to unpack the first zip or rar to get to the CBZ/R inside. :wink: For files that are too large to upload on rapidshare in one piece I simply create the CBZ as normal and then RAR it in a multirar file, since you can't do this with ZIPs. But that way, people still get to download them from rapidshare and keep the faster ZIP created CBZ as well.

Well the new Club Nintendo issues just came in, so now I have 10 magazines laying here, ready to get scanned. :grin: I must say that I'm actually surprised at the 5.1 and 5.2 issues as we never got those over here in Belgium. One with a Super Mario Kart cover and the second one with a Starwing (Starfox) cover. I'm wondering if there ever were any issues after that... Club Nintendo Vol.5 Issue 3 - 1993 (UK) etc. If anyone knows this it could be quite helpful. Once these are released we will almost have 2/3 of the complete set. :grin:

Probably payed a bit too much for them,but at least we have a couple of the missing Mean Machines mags now. There were some crazy people bidding over 20 pounds on several magazines, so I simply could grab all the ones I wanted. :ermm: Issue 1: Issue 3: Issue 6: Issue 9: Issue 17: So we are only missing issues 2,4,5 and 8 now. :happy:

Free at last!!!!!!!!! I'm free at last!!!!!! Damn you Philly! Damn you and your gigantic porn collection! :grin:

Yeah, I'm using winrar right now, but in a month or 2 I'm getting my Macbook Pro and I've read that you don't even need an extra program to create zips in Mac OS X. Right now I'm using the store compression option as it seems to leave the content intact and not compress anything further. I'm going to start going through my own scans soon and extract the CBR renamed rars and repack them into CBZ renamed zip files, which CDisplay reads automatically as well. I'll probably even going to resize the first couple of issues pages since I'm now using a macro to resize the pages so they are all the same dimensions, depending on which magazine is scanned of course. That way if you'd like to view them 2pages at a time, they will match up a bit better as well. :wink: I never use the 2 page display option myself as it's sometime too hard to read the text on a 15".

Depends on what settings and program you use to create the PDFs I guess... But that's a very interesting point you make about rar files. I have recently noticed that zip files pack and unpack much faster than rars. Never noticed that before... Just tested it out with a CBR vs a CBZ as well, and the pages load much more smoothly. We should make a note of this and from now on zip the image folders and rename them CBZ. I might even start redoing my own CBRs since I always used rars up till now. the only place where I still need to use rars is to upload multi part magazines to rapidshare since they won't take files larger than 100MB and I can't seem to create multi part zips for some reason. But still, inside those rar files would still be a CBZ which is just a renamed zipped image folder.

Oh wow, that sounds like a lot of trouble. I'm glad the magazines I'm working on haven't had any fold out covers or adds or any other confusing stuff. It would take me a month to get a magazine out if they did. :wink: Then again, I don't debind them unless it's absolutely necessary. Although that does bring it's own possible problems. But I'm used to them now and I found a couple tricks.

Ian Livingstone's Deathtrap Dungeon: 3 NHL Breakaway 98: 7 Disgusting arm injury Sega baseball game: 11 Sega Netlink Nuke explosion: 13 This Month/Next wave: 15 Diver (blue/black): 17 MDK: 25 Starfox/Libido: 27 Tiger Uses the force: 31 coming soon N64/Saturn.Playstation list: 35 Belly dancer with sword : 39 Auto Destruct/Alundra: 47 arm+dogtags ONE: 53 Albert Odyssey: 59 give it to him/ pink donought : 67 Clayfighter 63 1/3: 69 Aerofighters assault: 73 oddworld abe's oddysee: 81 Big teeth 1: flared nostrils to smell fear: 87 Big teath 2: all controlled by a brain... : 89 silhouette of dead guy on pavement/maximum force: 93 Marina's Pest controll/mischief makers: 99 GEX/ gekko arm surgery: 101 Time crisis: gun: 103 time crisis: little boy with box: 105 Wayne gretzky's 3D Hockey 98: 109 Red/black nuke/ ONLY 10% of...: 111 bug riders/ troll on flying bug: 117 tank/ mass destruction SHOOT: 121 F1 pole position 64...this october: 127 green crocodile/ brown fuzzy thing/ you see a new adventure hero: 133 2 green things (frog?)/your enemies: 134 Croc/ see a new set of luggage: 135 This was a strange foldout add, so the numbers don't match as they should as the add folds out the wrong way for some reason... NFL gameday 98/$10 off: 137 purple page/ASCII: 145 dynasty warriors/ Shu who?!: 153 anime girls with big breasts ;p/ Cowcaizer: 161 do the hero thing/ hercules: 163 HUMILITY TASTES A LOT LIKE ASPHALT: 165 black/red page YOU'RE NEXT/ sideways printed: 169 Naki gun shooting tv with blood coming out: 175 Face full of rings/ SEGA sonic jam, hard stuff: 182 Major Kusanagi drawing/ Ghost In the Shell/ Playstation magazine add: 189 Next month/ EGM²/ ISSUE100: 202 Pink add page: Japan Videogames on the top: 204 WHite add page with tiny print/Funco mail order on top of the page: 205 Game CAve/ imports software/ lots of screenshots: 207 Shark teeth in glass: 208 Marvel superheroes/ wolverine in front: last page: 210 phew, what a boring job... I wouldn't want to be in your place Philly if you have to do this for every issue... :dizzy:

Well Wii Ski does have some lovely looking levels. :wink: No idea how it plays though.

Just came across some wonderful videos of battle mode as well as regular gameplay. Thanks to Aussie-nintendo: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x4prkt_ma...mode_videogames Looking at the 12 player teamplay battle mode, first thing that came to mind was that we should definitely have a topic for Wifi battles so we can get some competition going. I'm so hyped for this game, it might become my favorite Wii game if things turn out the way they seem to be. The only thing I regret is that battle mode doesn't seem to include N64 Block Fort nor SNES Battle Circuit 2. Guess that might have been to perfect... I would probably never have left my couch ever again. There's also some great details and discussion going on in this topic.

Oh and this was actually one of the auctions that we were watching and collection donations for, but since it went for so little, I'll take care of this one myself. That way the money can be used for other mags. :happy: *edit* Seemed like Philly didn't want to have any of that, so we both paid 50-50 like we agreed before. :grin:

Hehe, no problem. They are not to big and can also be scanned in one go, unlike something like OSSM which have to be stitched back together afterwards. So they should be coming out rather quick once I get them in the mail. I'm actually editing Club Nintendo Vol.4 Issue 2 - 1992 (UK) right now from the former batch. You can expect this one tonight or tomorrow night at the latest. :wink:

Guess luck is on my side today. 12 issues of Club Nintendo Magazine, 7 of which we don't have yet for under €10 shipping included! :clover: 1991 VOL 3, ISSUES 3,4 AND 6 1992 VOL 4, ISSUES 1-6, 1993 VOL 5, ISSUE 1 and 2, 1 MAGAZINE IS CLUB NINTENDO CLASSICS

For me it all started with the Benelux version of Club Nintendo magazine, which I got bimonthly for sending in a registration form for me NES. A couple of years later it transformed into a subscription magazine, so I signed up for that. Then in 1993 I stumbled upon a small shop which apearantly carried import games, but at the time I was completely oblivious to the imports scene. As a matter of fact I never found that little shop again. I got lost somewhere when I came across it first. :laughing: There was where I first saw the NeoGeo AES system, playing Last Resort. From that day forward I had always dreamed about owning an AES. Picked up a French magazine called Joypad there, which covered just about everything, including Japanese games. So I immediately fell in love with it. I only recently found out that they completely copied the British Mean Machines magazine back in the day, (just look at the layout of the reviews for instance) which was quite a shock for me and part of the reason why I started hunting for the full sets of MM and MMS. :happy: A couple of months later when going to my local toy shop where I picked up all my games at the time, the son of the shopkeeper, who worked in the capital picked up a copy of EGM and let me take it home to read through it. Being in English it immediately had the advantage that I could more or less fully understand everything that was written, so that was a big plus in and of itself. Bugged my local newsy to get the magazine in, so that I didn't have to always wait for the issues from the other guy. After a year or 2 I noticed a magazine called Computer and Videogames at the newsstand and picked it up, this was issue 166 and while it was not bad, it certainly wasn't near as good as EGM at the time, so after getting 167 and seeing the same things, I stopped buying it. Then a year later I picked an issue up again, this was 180. To my amazement this was a totally different magazine then it was the year before. I fell in love with it and bought it religiously until the crew got booted out 3 years later to make the magazine appeal to the casual gamer. Came across the Official Sega Saturn Magazine while I was at my regular import shop. (Thanks to reading CVG, I had taken the step to get myself a Saturn, so as many of you will know, many of the best Saturn games are japan only. So it was only natural that I slowly started delving deeper and deeper into the import scene) Sadly, the issue I picked up was issue 36, so the next time I bought the magazine it was already time to say goodbye. I almost always picked up Nintendo only magazines as well, since they tend to have great features and lots of specials. (I'll have to make a couple more wiki sections for those soon after i dig them out. :wink: ) A year or so that CVG died as well (to me at least) as I described above. So I tried various different magazines like Games Master, Power unlimited and many others I can't even remember, but they were all pretty much worthless to me after being used to such great mags. After all this I started buying the unofficial Dreamcast magazine from the UK, which was very good, but just not the same. Well, nothing has been the same after that quite frankly. Had a couple of Official Dreamcast magazines, but those were very hard to find and very expensive. Also a couple of DC-UK mags, but I don't remember too much about them. Which brings us to today. In the last several of years I've watched how the old crew from Joypad all left, and how the mag turned into an EDGE wannabe magazine. Not surprising since it's been taken over by Future. So last month I finally canceled my subscription after many, many years. Now the only new magazine I buy, and subscribe to is RetroGamer, which I wish would do more import coverage and less computer games. But that will probably never happen... In the meanwhile I'm trying to catch up to some of the classic British magazines which I have recently discovered. And I actually get a much bigger kick out of reading those than any other magazines that was written the last 5 years. But being a retrogamer probably has much to do with that. Now if you don't mind, I'm off to find a publisher for this small novel. :tongue:

Can't wait to see some of these pop up on the download manager. :grin: