Sean697

This issue is actually pretty interesting. Has a good internal tear down of the Dreamcast. Also an interview of George Romero. I didn't look this up but, I'm pretty sure he didn't make the Resident Evil movie. I guess that was going to happen at one time? Also Ocarina of Time review.

After I rename my files I just do physical issue check. It only takes a minute or two. I just open the pages in preview and arrow through them in order while turning the pages on the actual mag to ensure I have every page and they are in order. With these stapled issues I'm doing where I take out the staples not too much of a problem because I'm naming them 4 pages at time while I scan them. Hard to make a mistake but not impossible. But when you debind s glue bound magazine easy to miss a page if you don't go back and do the physical magazine check.

What I did is research the the best color scanners out of the box when I bought a new one last year. The scanner I got has top reviews for consumer level photo scanning for accurate color and features. A lot of it has to do with using an LED scanner light which generally gives more consistent results over time and has basically zero warmup. It's a a Canon LiDe model. So far on the test scans I've done it is extremely accurate. It can be improved by using a color profile though. As far as software color correction, I like John Smith use vastly different methods than our site guide. Mostly based on info that adjusting saturation etc. alters the original image. The only thing you should have to do is adjust you curves or levels with a good scanner. There are two methods I researched to get the best results. The one John Smith uses is called cutting off the tails. You go to the levels graph of the image and should show a series of humps that trail off on both sides towards pure white and pure black. And quick and easy method to get good color is to cut off the tails on eighter side. I use the sampling method that is a little more involved but supposedly more accurate. You apply a threshold adjustment layer to the image and slide it left and right to find the brightest and darkest pixels on your image and mark them. Then remove the adjustment layer and do a regular levels adjustment and use those marked pixels as your sampling points for your white and black levels. As far as the grey adjustment, you can apply an adjustment threshold layer to find the pixels on your image that are absolute grey and then sample them. But I find it easier at that point to just manually slide the grey point slider manually to tune the image to what looks best while looking at the original page. I save the level profile and use it for that magazine. The problem I have is maybe my mo it or is not calibrated , but the lower number I use on the grey point the better the colors look but tends to make the image a little darker, while higher numbers tend to make it brighter but offset the colors a bit. I think I've found the optimum point for my scanner now though at .9 grey level. If you look at the last three scans I did I purposefully used 3 different values to see how they would come out when I put them on my iPad. The Bonk issue in ,y opinion was the best. Lower grey level numbers tended to make the screenshots in the mag look a little dark. Overall I'm really happy with the results I get as when I compare them to the page there is little to know difference. Also I do my covers separate;y from the rest of the Mage mostly due to the different paper and I want nice looking covers. I am totally happy with all my covers on my scans. The only other tip is in the levels I set absolute values on the RGB levels from 0-255 to 10-245. This keeps the whites from looking too white in relation other elements and was another tip a lot of people use color correcting.

That's a very good comparison. And kind of emblematic of all the problems you can run into in getting a scan to have that right balance of color. I stress about this all the time myself. I'm still not completely happy with my results. In my scans the colors I think are really good but I still haven't got them to really stand out quite as much. When I do get them to so called pop more the colors become off from original and some of the colors look a little over saturated. There is definetly a fine balance.

That sounds great. I don't know if you know but Next Generation is also one of my favorite mags. I actually preferred it to EGM during the time they coexisted. The scan crediting thing I think goes back to maybe like a little over a year ago when we the site got an upgrade and a lot of previously credited stuff was credited to Phillyman in the DL section when uploading to our server. Plus I think John Smiths stuff he just submitted it to the admins here and they uploaded it as the team member structure wasn't really as in place as it is now. I looked back on his work in progress thread and he maybe did 6 Next Generations. I only mention because his stuff was top notch and he had like perfect alignment on the scans he did. I kind of looked at his scans as the kind of quality I'd someday like to match. He talked a little about the difficulty doing so in his work in progress thread. https://community.retromags.com/topic/9651-johnsmiths-work-in-progress/page-2#.Vu_Ej_BpZCk The ones I did DL were honestly spectacular scans. So I was just thinking I'd be hard pressed to see improvement on those particular issues. But I haven't looked at any of the others to compare. Although I do know, at least with EGM, a lot of the older stuff is kind of subpar to what is being released in the last 2 years so I know where you are coming from. But make no mistake I Would love to see any scan that is technically better updated.

I guess I'm sounding vague because in all honesty I've not had a chance to download to DL all the Next Gen stuff yet. So there is no actual criticism here. I've downloaded maybe 2 of the ones you've done to check them out and maybe 3 others that were new in the past year. And they were all great. I guess what I'm saying is I'd be curious to know what exactly you'd be improving on some of the scans if you are going to to replace them. (Better resolution? As an example.) There has to be some justification right?

No I just kind of wonder when you say your going to rescan all of them when some of them are less than 2 years old and a few were replacements of older scans already. Why would you replace a perfectly good scan on the site? Obviously older scans that are not great can always be improved upon. But why waste time replacing a good scan with another good scan?

Same guy I believe on both. I guess he just stopped putting scans here. I believe he didn't like including the Retromags credit page on his scans. I'm just saying if the scan is really good already, not much point updating it instead of working on something else. I personally have not gotten around to looking at the next gen scans including the ones you've done yet. But I will eventually get to them. I just remember John Smith was meticulous on his scans fixing all the scratches and defects and alignment and the few I did look at from him were excellent. I would just see if any of our existing scans are bad, like no cropping, no editing, etc and update those.

I haven't looked at the quality on the older issues on these. But hopefully you are. I wouldn't waste to much time replacing existing stuff instead of new stuff unless it needs serious improvement. I on;y say this because some of the Issues JohnSmith did which were not early I believe I remember as being excellent and don't need updating.

Missing the Retromags credit page.

By answering this question.......... You all WOULD know.

EGM definitely did.

That's why it's an unofficial guide. They couldn't use official artwork. And legally probrably didn't want to use anything similar.

I recently aquired 3 issues of the official u.s. PlayStation magazine as a bonus in an auction I won to pick up an EGM. They are issues 47,53, and 78. All three bagged. All three Final Fantasy covers. My current scanner does not fit the pages I believe. It's a fairly wide magazine. I may get around to scanning these eventually. But if anyone wants to preserve these issues now and has the capability to do so, I'll be willing to send them to you for the price of shipping to be preserved. At least one of them has a demo disc inside. These are pristine magazines perfect for preservation. I'd rather someone who has a large scanner scan them now. But if nobody wants to do it I'll hold on to them for future scanning. I'm guessing shipping in the US. Would be around 6.00 for all 3.

Personally, I'm a little opposed to preserving video game books. It just doesn't seem in the spirit of the site to allow people's books to be posted. I kind of equate magazines as newspapers and periodicals that are not being preserved elsewhere. Strategy guides and the others seem fine to me. I have a whole bunch of those game genie code books. I never really thought about scanning them. Since they are just codes inside , they have been better preserved on websites that have the codes. Having a scan of the actual pages doesn't really serve a purpose. Something where oreserv9ng the information itself is far more coal valuable and worthwhile than scanning the actual pages.

I hadn't considered that as far a feeding them through document feeder. I flat bed scan everything so it doesn't really affect me. Although on that EGM 27 I didn't have any curled edges when I pulled it apart. Though I did on the game buyer issue.

Sorry after the first Kickstarter I got my 6 issues and didn't re-up as I thought it really wasn't worth it. And all my issues arrived in the mail super late. I beggining to think that Mike Kennedy is pretty flaky with his endeavors. (In addition to the Chamelon fiasco, I tried selling stuff on game gavel and got like nobody to buy my game as low as 30.00. Turned around and sold for 100.00 on eBay.) But I'd give it to you if I had it.

So looking at that 274.275. I wouldn't even combine that. It's really meant to be viewed as two single pages. The crossover on the map is so minimal that most of the design elements are made for single page viewing. You don't really gain anything useful combining that into one image. There is no image that is really split. And the text on each page is formatted as if viewing a single page. And since the map crossover is at such a small point what do you gain combining that you can't get with two single pages? Just my opinion.

You ever thought about finding an expert in Japan to ask? Or maybe a book off or something would have a publication list?

Ya hardball sucked. Maybe the only good accolade game was star control.

The votes have spoken. Next up is EGM 18.

I was trying to keep it under wraps I was working on 3. I only mentioned it to E-day and he said it sounded like a cool idea. Didn't mark the other two issues as scanning as I was working on these. You just gotta release Bonk,Sonic,and Mario Covers together.

EGM 19,22,27 are up on the main page. It took me about a month to do these 3. 27 was especially long because of the Sega Force mini mag included inside of it. So I figure that is about my pace right now. 3 a month, depending on magazine length and condition. I wanted to scan all 3 of these mascot covers together. I may think about changing out the Sega Force we have for download with the one in issue 27. Or at least updating the pages where this scan is better quality. But that can wait as I'd rather do new scans first. Also the Sega Force we have is an actually newstand version and not identical to the one in EGM 27. There are only a few pages different. Mainly the barcode on the cover and a couple of extra/different pages at the back advertising EGM subscriptions. Also I may have been able to do this quicker but I didn't have a favorable schedule this month. Plus I have NBA league pass this year to watch the a Golden State Warriors and the are having a historic season so I've been watching every game. Definetly prevented me from scanning more. What's next? I'll probrably look to see what EGM or Ultra Game players has the most votes and I'll do that next. But would be nice to have that most wanted list to refer to to make researching what has more votes easier.

Retromags Presents! EGM 16-Bit Mascot Cover Blowout!! Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 19 February 1991 Database Entry! Download Directly! Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 22 May 1991 Database Entry! Download Directly! Electronic Gaming Monthly Issue 27 October 1991 Database Entry! Download Directly!