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Welcome to Retromags, the vintage video game magazine archive
Welcome to Retromags, the vintage video game magazine archive. This site is all about digitally preserving video game magazines from yesteryear. You'll find hundreds of full issues to download and thousands of scanned magazine covers. Game magazines used to be incredibly important to the game industry, and while those days are long gone thanks to the Internet and World Wide Web, that does not mean those old magazines shouldn't be remembered and enjoyed today. This site allows you to do so easily and digitally. It's a nice alternative to having to have boxes of magazines stored in your house if that's something you don't want.
We are always looking for help, be it scanning or donating magazines, or contributing to the site in other forms. It costs nothing to be a member of this site. We do not sell anything on this site, and there are no ads. There are no profits made on this site; any money that is ever obtained by this site goes towards the cost of hosting the site.
A Note to Publishers and Content Owners
This site is set up to digitally preserve video game magazines from 1999 and earlier for current magazines. The rules for defunct magazines vary on a case-by-case basis. We do this because issues of these magazines are not readily available from publishers/content owners. While we don’t have legal permission, we operate in a way where we do not release anything that will reduce any potential income for you, or magazines that are available from you, nor do we release scans that are of a quality that may reflect poorly on you. So far this has worked, with several publishers/content owners basically ignoring our existence.
However, if you wish that we do not make content that you legally have ownership available on this site, just let us know and we will remove it. While we would prefer permission, we will fully oblige with your wishes concerning your content. This is a hobby we do out of passion and love for the video game magazines of yesterday, and not worth legal battles of any kind.
How do I view .CBR/.CBZ files? What are they?
CBR and CBZ files are Comic Book Archive files. They are basically archive of jpegs that are viewable using a specialized program. the R and Z at the end of the extensiononly signifies if the file is a RAR file or ZIP file, though you can change the extension to either and should not have any problems.
One of the best programs to use to view of scans is CDisplay. This will allow you to view all the CBR/CBZ files on the site. Alternatively, you can open the CBR/CBZ with an archiving program like 7Zip, WinZip or WinRAR to extract the JPEGS if that tickles your fancy more.
Why are there no Diehard Gamefan magazines on this site?
Dave Halverson, the content owner and copyright owner of Gamefan, has made it known to the community that he does not wish his magazine to be scanned and hosted on any site. Any issues we had on here have been removed, and no new issues are allowed.
Why are the issue numbers for GamePro different than what the cover says?
With the April 1996 issue of the magazine, GamePro started putting the issue number on the cover. However, the issue number was 10 higher than the actual issue count; the March 1996 issue was issue 80 and the April 1996 issue was labeled as issue 91. The reason for this is unknown, but it probably stems from them counting their special issues, such as 16-bit Video Gaming and Celebrity Video Gaming, in the issue count. In any case, we use the actual issue count of the regular magazine, and not the one printed on the covers.
Is the Forum Arcade / Attack System ever going to return?
Hopefully. Currently, only a beta version exists that will work with the current forum software version. The forum software can be fickle sometimes, so I am reluctant to try out beta software with it. Hopefully a stable version is released soon.
What is the site Out of Print Archive? Are you affiliated with that site?
Out of Print Archive is another game magazine preservation site that was started by two members of this site. They wanted to go in a different direction than Retromags. While there was some animosity between the two sites in the past, all is well, and everything is sunshine and rainbows. You can learn more about Out of Print Archive on their web site.
How do I scan and submit a magazine?
All that information is available in the Scanning Guides on this site, available here, or through the Guides link in the top menu.
If you have more questions that you think might be asked a lot, submit them here!