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HUGE Lots Of Magazines in the FB group I belong to...


TresHombres

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I can't post the direct link because you would have to be a member of the AtariAge group, but the seller said that he would be interested in selling individual magazines as well as large lots.

Let me know if anyone wants to buy anything and I can contact him. I do have dibs on VG&CE's October 1992 issue, though, ha.

 

 

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I got him in touch with another RetroMags member (@TheRedEye) who was very interested in a huge bulk buy, and the poster said "Great! I'll be in touch with him soon..." and yet here we are now. 

TheRedEye said that when they buy these magazines that any duplicates are donated to us here. So it seemed like such a great situation. This seller gets a guaranteed bulk buyer of his magazines, and we end up benefiting from it, too.

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Dang - that would have been a hell of a haul. What's sad is that somewhere out there, in small town garage sales across America (and elsewhere), are lots of old game magazines just like this that some parent has set out to the curb with a free sign thinking they are not of value anymore. It would be a fun project - if I had the time and resources - to set out and hit up as many garage sales as possible and see if it's possible to score any vintage game magazines. It would be neat to make a thread on this site just for that, and anyone with garage sale finds could post their hauls there. In my experience with garage sales, it's pretty unlikely to just randomly chance across vintage game magazines. I think it wouldn't be a bad idea to chat with the host of the garage sale to see if they have any old game magazines laying around. Many people who run garage sales are empty nesters trying to get rid of their kids stuff, and you never know if Jonny had a pile of mags in his closet and maybe they didn't think those would be worth selling but would be happy to get rid of them.

As an aside, a few years ago I came across a yard sale that had a huge box of old car magazines in pristine condition (I think it was Road and Track) from the 90s. It was all free, and being a sucker for old magazines I took the lot. I can't imagine there are comparable sites for old car magazines, but you never know. If there were I'd donate them

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5 hours ago, E-Day said:

I'm glad that we have a good relationship with The Video Game History Foundation where we'll send each other duplicates. We should have done that years ago :)

Oh, does that still exist?  They haven't updated their site in over 8 months, so I wasn't sure.  I wasn't aware they were preserving magazines.  Of course, it's kind of hard to discern what they're preserving, since they don't seem to be making it publicly available.  Or I guess they could simply be amassing a large private collection of physical memorabilia, leaving the digital preservation and public distribution to us (and others like us)?  Again, it isn't clear based on the information on their site.

 

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16 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Oh, does that still exist?  They haven't updated their site in over 8 months, so I wasn't sure.  I wasn't aware they were preserving magazines.  Of course, it's kind of hard to discern what they're preserving, since they don't seem to be making it publicly available.  Or I guess they could simply be amassing a large private collection of physical memorabilia, leaving the digital preservation and public distribution to us (and others like us)?  Again, it isn't clear based on the information on their site.

 

Yes, they still exist.

TheRedEye is a member here, too. I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you messaged him (politely).

 

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19 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Oh, does that still exist?  They haven't updated their site in over 8 months, so I wasn't sure.  I wasn't aware they were preserving magazines.  Of course, it's kind of hard to discern what they're preserving, since they don't seem to be making it publicly available.  Or I guess they could simply be amassing a large private collection of physical memorabilia, leaving the digital preservation and public distribution to us (and others like us)?  Again, it isn't clear based on the information on their site.

 

They are active on Twitter almost daily. They spent the month of may or June at game informer digitizing a bunch of press release material they had stored away. 

They preserve physical magazines. I just sent them three issues they were missing last month. As far as I know they only scan pages that contain info on games and hardware to get the full story on a game. They leave full preservation to us and direct people to our site who are looking for scans. 

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7 hours ago, E-Day said:

They are active on Twitter almost daily. They spent the month of may or June at Game Informer digitizing a bunch of press release material they had stored away. 

They preserve physical magazines. I just sent them three issues they were missing last month. As far as I know they only scan pages that contain info on games and hardware to get the full story on a game. They leave full preservation to us and direct people to our site who are looking for scans. 

Ah, twitter.  No wonder I have no idea what they're up to.  And without a dedicated website where people can access the stuff they're preserving, I'll probably never know.😀

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7 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Ah, twitter.  No wonder I have no idea what they're up to.  And without a dedicated website where people can access the stuff they're preserving, I'll probably never know.😀

They are doing amazing work and are completely transparent. On their Twitter feed -- which is publicly available, even if you do not have a Twitter account -- they show off what they need, what they have gathered, and what they have preserved in their collection.

As for "access their stuff":

"The ultimate goal is to create a searchable, organized, always-online archive of verified, high-quality material that is accessible to researchers and historians as a public education resource."

 

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I'm fully aware that my aversion to twitter is my own choice.😀 I tried signing up once, and was somehow banned during the signup process.  Never even finished my profile. 😂  I've never been back.  Retromags is my twitter now.😉

Also, I've seen that quote on their website, but I thought it was all a hypothetical "at some unspecified date in the future" promise.  I didn't realize they'd already created a "searchable, organized, always-online archive of verified, high-quality material that is accessible to researchers and historians as a public education resource."  I suppose it's accessible via twitter, but they should update their website with a link to the archive as well - or at least include a note making it clear that the website/blog is strictly for accepting monetary donations and all content updates are only posted on twitter (for the benefit of old-fashioned curmudgeons like myself who simply saw an abandoned website and never even considered that scrolling all the way to the very bottom of the page and clicking the tiny twitter symbol was the only way to see what they've been up to for the past 8 months.)

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  • 2 months later...

I'd like to make a point about this "Video Game Foundation" stuff...

Gaming is a hobby. Nothing but a hobby. When you make it something else, you're distracting from what's important. Causes like social justice, medical research, research on the effects of consumer chemicals, etc. Gaming history is something for hobbyists, not a focus of tax dollars. That foundation, from what they describe, is creating nothing more than a wall behind which stuff will never be seen again by anybody but neo-aristocrats. Who gets to become a "gaming historian"? Those blessed with the cash from their inheritance? Beware what you endorse... because when you do so, you implicitly endorse that which is necessary for what you endorse to exist, which you may not be in favor of...

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2 hours ago, vgmax said:

I'd like to make a point about this "Video Game Foundation" stuff...

Gaming is a hobby. Nothing but a hobby. When you make it something else, you're distracting from what's important. Causes like social justice, medical research, research on the effects of consumer chemicals, etc. Gaming history is something for hobbyists, not a focus of tax dollars. That foundation, from what they describe, is creating nothing more than a wall behind which stuff will never be seen again by anybody but neo-aristocrats. Who gets to become a "gaming historian"? Those blessed with the cash from their inheritance? Beware what you endorse... because when you do so, you implicitly endorse that which is necessary for what you endorse to exist, which you may not be in favor of...

As with any museum, I think there is value in preserving things which exist only in singular physical form.  As you point out, these things can only be seen by those with the means of making themselves physically present in the same location as the museum, which will severely limit the number of people with access, but there's not much to be done about that.  If you want to see the Mona Lisa, you've got no choice but to go to the Louvre, the same as anyone else.  But it's still more accessible than if it was in a private collection.

So in regards to a video game museum, even though the number of people who could access it is quite limited, there would still be value in it existing to preserve certain physical objects like prototype hardware or what have you.

But I personally see no point in putting things like books and magazines in museums.  Their value is the information/content printed on their pages, not the pages themselves, so if a quality scan is publicly available, there would be little if any need to ever look at a physical copy.  What a sad state of affairs it would be if the only way anyone could ever read Shakespeare would be for them to travel to whatever museum housed the first edition copy of whatever play and request a research grant to look at the pages behind closed doors.  Sure, that's of value to some people, but to the world at large, it's the words themselves that have value, not the paper, ink and glue of the book they were printed in.  So when speaking specifically of game magazines, sites like Retromags are FAR FAR more important than a museum could ever be for the purposes of preservation.

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21 hours ago, vgmax said:

I'd like to make a point about this "Video Game Foundation" stuff...

Gaming is a hobby. Nothing but a hobby. When you make it something else, you're distracting from what's important. Causes like social justice, medical research, research on the effects of consumer chemicals, etc. Gaming history is something for hobbyists, not a focus of tax dollars. That foundation, from what they describe, is creating nothing more than a wall behind which stuff will never be seen again by anybody but neo-aristocrats. Who gets to become a "gaming historian"? Those blessed with the cash from their inheritance? Beware what you endorse... because when you do so, you implicitly endorse that which is necessary for what you endorse to exist, which you may not be in favor of...

For a lot of people, it's a hobby they are passionate about, to the point that they want to go beyond just playing the games. That is why things like the Foundation, this site, the hundreds of forums on games, and all the YouTube channels that talk about games exist.

And anyone can become a historian. We could be considered historians of printed game magazines because that is what we focus on. We don't consider ourselves that, but some people could, and we probably could if we wanted to. There is nothing to stop us, and no "test" to take in order to say we are. Our credibility would speak for itself and either back us up or bury us. But that's not the point.

Clearly the people who run and work at the Foundation are really really passionate about game history. And they are not hiding anything behind any wall. They post footage or rare games they discover on YouTube and constantly post stuff on Twitter. Just because everything they have archive and found isn't readily available this instant doesn't mean that they are hiding it or will never share it. That defeats the purpose of the entire project. I honestly don't see what the objection to the VGHF is. Would you rather it didn't exist at all and that any information they find would remain lost or unknown?

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It's behind an "academic wall". Here's the thing: university libraries across the United States keep their old mags, of all topics, in an archive. But they have a habit of, after a certain time, restricting access to their older materials or of denying photocopies of those mags to anyone who isn't sponsored by a college. It's like that huge stack of games Byuu (the author of Higan) had mailed to him for "preservation": the data from those ROMS will be scanned, but it'll likely the copies will never find their way onto the internet in a publicly available form (at least, not for another 60-70 years). Only greyer projects like this one make abandoned media available to the public.

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On 11/5/2019 at 2:03 AM, kitsunebi77 said:

As with any museum, I think there is value in preserving things which exist only in singular physical form.  As you point out, these things can only be seen by those with the means of making themselves physically present in the same location as the museum, which will severely limit the number of people with access, but there's not much to be done about that.  If you want to see the Mona Lisa, you've got no choice but to go to the Louvre, the same as anyone else.  But it's still more accessible than if it was in a private collection.

 

I agree! I am passionate about aspects of (Canadian) history, and I routinely travel great distances just to visit specific museums to see particular exhibits.  I have spent a great deal of money on this (travel, accommodations, meals, admission chargers), but I very much enjoy the hobby, so it is money well spent. 

 

There are some amazing private collections as well -- one local collector, who was profiled in a magazine, literally has his own museum -- but as I will never be able to view them, they might as well not exist. 

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On June 8 2019:

"Today we have something really special to share with you - a prototype of the unreleased UWC (also known as Universal Wrestling Corporation) for the NES, courtesy of Stephan Reese and Frank Cifaldi from the Video Game History Foundation!"

https://hiddenpalace.org/News/Universal_Wrestling_Corporation_(Unreleased_NES_game)

 

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10 minutes ago, vgmax said:

I'm grateful but the existence of VGHF frankly did little to enable it.

I think there might be some interesting bits to debate in your original argument, but I find this particular statement to be a little silly.  It sounds like they were directly involved in the ripping and release of the data.

And anyway - Retromags did absolutely nothing to enable me to scan the magazines I've scanned.  I bought the mags, I bought the scanner, I *ahem* acquired Photoshop...and then I did the work.  Does that mean that Retromags serves no purpose?  I could have uploaded my scans to Zippyshare or whatever and emailed my friends the link.  Eventually it may have spread to enough people to become widely available...or maybe not. 

Perhaps having a central site drawing attention to and providing a home for such preservation efforts is just as valuable as the preservation itself when it comes to making things widely available.

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