marktrade

Retromags Presents! Game Player's PC Strategy Guide Volume 3 Number 2 (March/April 1990) Database Record Download Directly! Scanned By: marktrade Edited By: marktrade & kitsunebi77 Uploaded By: kitsunebi77 Subscribe to our New Release Feedburner email!

Scanning for limited use is not an offense. There are vast library scanning projects happening all the time without permission from creators. Scanning and making public a searchable database has been ruled as transformative and therefore the same as original work in the eyes of American law. It is legitimate commerce. I am unfamiliar with any specific protections for the Library of Congress, but if that is true then it is even more to your benefit to share in that protection by having an account at archive.org. Retromags and OldGameMags are effectively private libraries that can partner with other libraries and share private use. Retromags is a little more private because of limited membership, but there are pathways to legitimacy for all scanners. This is not uplifting work. It is very lonely and unfulfilling, when you're always wondering if your hard work is going to be taken away or worse that you'll be punished for it. Working under that condition is unacceptable to me now. That it was ever acceptable to me gives me some embarrassment, but I started with desire to see certain magazines digitized and a critical level of impatience while waiting for someone else to do it. No, a publisher does not have a right to keep me from enjoying a copy of one of its magazines that I own on a tablet and it certainly does not have a right to keep me from being able to search its entire library digitally, whether it's from my collection or someone else's. Anyone who says you can't do that, whether the magazine is GameFan or some other work the creator has asked not to be scanned, is in the wrong. One might wish to refuse to scan and make searchable GameFan out of respect to its creator, but it would not be out of respect for the law. I haven't used my real name at first for the reasons you mention but later on as I learned more I wondered if I should. I experimented with a patreon to see if anyone would try to shut me down and they didn't. Instead I found increasing support. Not nearly enough to make it a career, but some of it was there to make me consider the possibility and if it is worth pursuing as a lifestyle. The events of 2017 convinced me that it was not for me.

For what it's worth my advice is to talk to Jason and establish a formal means of recruiting his help instead of continuing bitterness and antagonism. I've managed to work well with everyone— you, Jason, Retromags, anyone willing to help. I have felt very lonely in that regard. It's depressing to see people ignore and resent each other's resources toward a common goal. Instead of seeing someone sharing your scans as a "ripping off," I invite you to see it as an effort to share the responsibility. You are regularly looking for better hosting. That is exactly the advantage Jason offers. Make an OldGameMags account on archive.org and drop a link in the description of every upload along with a donation link. You wish me good health, but it challenges my sanity that you bring such a grievance to me. Maybe I am wrong and it is to your advantage to maintain a negative attitude. Maybe your name really will go down in history as a leader against other people trying to share your scans. I do not remember offhand the names of any scribes or librarians in history, or any monk that painstakingly copied the Bible by candlelight in medieval Europe. I tell people about about my scanning hobby and they're very bored by it. Even the people who are interested in gaming and gaming magazines look at me and wonder why I would put so much money and resources into it. After doing it for a couple years, I wondered the same and am finished. Game journalists are not exactly heroes to be remembered either (although they may have looked that way when we were younger) so, no, I don't think anyone will remember any of our names. None of us even use our personal names except for Jason and he's still very behind the scenes. He doesn't take personal credit and has publicly admitted to a kind of digital kleptomania. Frankly I'm thankful for it because it's a healthy trait in a librarian. I have tried to lead the way toward legitimacy. There is legal precedent for earning money from scanning game magazines and transforming them into a searchable digital database. The only barrier is practicality. Do what you gotta go. Start patreons. Register as a nonprofit. Deduct your expenses from your taxes. This is neither immoral nor illegal. You're doing a lot of work and should get credit. You should also work together.

I believe I've scanned all of them, but not edited them. I contacted Phillyman in October and asked him to let me know if there's any unfinished business I need to take care of and I never received a response. As for my lack of engagement here, I faced my mortality multiple times in 2017 and it was extremely disquieting. Figuring out how to live when I may die tomorrow and move forward from scanning is very difficult because it means giving up on a childhood dream and letting some people down, but I will do it because I have to. Sean697's Playstation mags are still in my possession and I will take care of those. Most of Areala's magazines have already been uploaded and I will deal with those responsibly as well. I can't think of anyone else who has sent me mags that I haven't scanned. If there's anyone reading this who has unfinished business with me, please get in touch by PM'ing me.

Won't that break Famitsu, which has more than 1000 issues? I recall kitsunebi77 suggesting that we sort by an 8-digit issue date starting with the year (yyyy-mm-dd) and thinking that was a solid idea. Issue number inconsistencies are a lot more common than people realize. Just a couple weeks ago I encountered it in CyberSurfer, where the issue number on the cover was inconsistent with the issue number on the page footer because of an apparent oversight.

I got into scanning because I was on a "mission" to get every issue of a magazine scanned as well. I learned it's a very large, time-consuming, and expensive project, which is why there are so few people in the world who do it. If it's something you really care about, we will welcome your help!

I'd say you've contributed quite a lot, particularly with Famitsu. I think you even agree that we have the most comprehensive Japanese magazine DB on the net, and we've just started!

Nearing a complete collection of Game On! USA. The first six issues have been uploaded. The seventh and final issue will be uploaded tonight. https://archive.org/details/GameOnUSA Even still, since the DB is what I value most about Retromags, I'm holding off until its status quo. I don't want to mess anything up.

Something else I wanted to mention about archive.org and large files. The BookReader web app from the Open Library, which archive.org uses in its fullscreen reading interface, is a dynamic application that re-renders each page from the source file to whatever size your browser window is set at or to whatever zoom level you're in. So you can access all the benefits of 600 DPI without having to download the entire file.

It's the only one I have. I'm not looking for more right now, but maybe someday?

Finally decided to use Twitter to post updates. https://twitter.com/marktrade_scans

I like the way you think! Continuing to upload magazines to ADO, including some obscure ones not in our database like PC Ace, PC Simulations, and CD-ROM Power. Some more issues of Electronic Entertainment. Today will be another one along with an issue of Computer Player. I'll upload Retromags versions and make the corresponding missing mag threads eventually but still sort of waiting for the site changes to stabalize.

I've been experimenting with using my iPhone camera on a stand to "scan" some pages. I was thinking it might be useful for pages that are printed in some special way, like holograms or reflective coloring, or with posters that don't go through my scanner well. It's actually possible to use the panorama feature on the iPhone to get a picture of a long poster by keeping the camera stationary and just moving the poster underneath the camera. It takes some practice and I'm still working on it. However, I'm definitely going to start using my camera more often to document the appearance of magazines still sealed in their original bags. @Sean697 recently sent me some he wanted scanned and I've been procrastinating on them, but I know for sure that before any scanning I want to get good pictures of them before taking them out of their bags. What sort of standard should I be shooting for, though? Natural lighting? Midday or dusk? Black or white background? I don't know, there's definitely an art to it with room for differing perspectives.

There might be some PDF rendering options you can futz with to make it easier. It's certainly a downside of PDF that they are not rendered the same in all programs. Anyway, back on topic, I have another issue coming in the mail, Game Player's PC Strategy Guide Volume 2 Number 2.

Remember you can just download the 30 MB PDF to save space! Perfectly readable and searchable too. You don't have to download anything and can read the magazine right in the browser. The 600 dpi master file is large as to accommodate OCR, deriving text files, and future-proofing. It's not intended for personal collections.

Volume 1 Number 2 exists as "The Game Player's Guide to MS-DOS Computer Games" and has been scanned! https://archive.org/details/GPGMSDOSCGVol1No2

My scanner alone was over $4000. The software to use the scanner was $600 (it's a production scanner meant for corporate use). I've spent about $3000 just on magazines. Plenty other supplies and costs go into everything. If I am super lucky and don't lose any patrons, maybe I break even in five years. After only two months, I'm not exactly counting on that to happen.

S.T.U.N. Runner. I liked everything about it, but the fact that it was only a quarter and always open during visits to Chuck E. Cheese as a kid added to the feeling that it was made just for me. I can't not play "my" game, right? It's a one-player game, so if I was there with a friend, then we'd play the TMNT arcade game or The Simpsons. During visits to Six Flags, the go to game was Virtua Fighter 2, because I couldn't find it anywhere else. My friends would always chastise me. "Why are you playing arcade games? We came here to go on roller coasters!" And I told them they could still go on a roller coaster and meet me back in front of the VF2 machine, the most beautiful thing in a thousand-mile radius. They just didn't get it. Going to the movies, I definitely had to stop and play Star Wars Episode 1 Pinball. Same deal, though. My friends or family would say, "we came here to watch movies." Okay, go watch your movie, then! I'll play the game, lol. Although I think any reasonable person would admit that Star Wars Episode 1 Pinball was over a hundred times better than the movie.

I suppose technically it's called "The Game Player's Guide to MS-DOS Computer Games." That's Volume 1 Issue 2. I'll still focus on scanning content that falls within Retromags guidelines and have never been halfway to making a profit.

Apologies for being very silent lately. Had a lot of stuff I had to figure out, some personal, some actually related to scanning. I never stop challenging myself. I've lost over 120 lbs. since Pokémon Go came out last July and have about 50 more pounds to go. It really seems like those are the hardest. I scanned an issue of Game Player's PC Strategy Guide and have an issue of Game Player's MS-DOS Strategy Guide coming in the mail. Little by little we'll conquer this magazine. Today is an issue of Dimension-3. https://archive.org/details/@marktrade https://www.patreon.com/marktrade