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Missing: Finnish magazines


Zaltys

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Not sure if I'm just using the search function incorrectly, but the site seems to completely lack Finnish magazines? Such as:

- Pelit (major one, been running since 1993 or so)
- Mikrobitti (first published since 1984, still running but has became much more mainstream -- and uninteresting -- after 2003)
- Printti (one of the oldest, and already archived over at https://www.flickr.com/photos/pelittaako/collections/72157650727960712/ )
- C=Lehti (archived fully on Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/c-lehti )
- Enter (Mainstream, never bought this myself, but it ran from 2000 to 2006.)
- Kompuutteri Kaikille (Was renamed to Kotimikro in 2004, still running. Started as a hybrid gaming/software/hardware magazine, but has become focused mostly on hardware over the years.)
- Micropost (hobbyist magazine 1983-1985, very low print numbers. Never seen a copy of it myself.)
- MSX Uutiset (hobbyist MSX magazine; first issue is on Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/MSXUutiset11987 )

There's also a couple of 'magazines' published by game stores:

- Com Club (little known monochrome publication by long-defunct Com 2001 game store, included the catalog of the store but also game reviews, news, etc. Here's one scan from Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/comclub199303 )
- Trioposti (published by Triosoft game store, who are still active. Started as a small leaflet, became magazine-sized over the years, full of reviews, and ran for a couple of years during the golden age)

Not quite sure if the last two fit the scope of this site, but the rest do. Is there any particular reason why they're excluded, or is it just because of lack of contributors? I could upload some covers for the gallery at least, if the entries were added.

By the way, one modern Finnish magazine worth mentioning is Skrolli - https://skrolli.fi/en/. It covers wide range of topics, including retro gaming and computers. Too fresh to be included in this database, but I suspect that some folks here might be interested in it. It's made for (and by) hobbyists, most of whom have been gaming since 80s or earlier.

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Oh, and there's a few others that I failed to list.

- Pelaaja (100% gaming focused, been running since 2002.)
- PC Pelaaja (separated from the former in 2005 and ran for a couple of years, focusing on PC gaming while the other focused on consoles.)
- Joyboy (Another game store magazine, ran from 1994-2001. Never seen this one myself.)
- Pelimestari (Finnish translation of Games Master, ran from 1998 to 2005).
- PC Gamer Suomi (Finnish translation of PC Gamer, ran from 1998 to at least 2000,. not sure for how long)
- Nintendo-lehti (Finnish translation of Nintendo Power, ran from 1990 to 1994.)

I don't see the last three as a high priority for archival, since the English versions have been scanne.

There were also some short-lived Finnish Playstation 1 & 2 magazines that I know next to nothing about.

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The focus here is mostly on english and to an extent japanese magazines... which just means you are the best person to take on the job of managing a finnish section! I am sure covers and database entries would be welcome. And if you are brave enough for scanning, that would be fantastic!

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I am not the best editor, but I was already planning to upload some of them to the Internet Archive. So might as well upload the scans here, too.

The few that I can scan, anyway. Lets see, by the mag:

- Pelit: Not the top priority, this already has a tribute site over at http://www.jukkaeronen.com/web/fantasya/pelit.html. But I have already digitized some of the earlier issues for my own use. Like with some other magazines, I was thinking of uploading one of the oldest issues to the Internet Archive and seeing if somebody files a takedown for it. If it's still there after a few months, I'll think of uploading more.
- Mikrobitti: I own most of the older issues, but won't be scanning them. The magazine is still being published, and the publisher has digitized the oldest issues (1984-1989) and is selling them - https://www.mikrobitti.fi/retrobitti.
- C= Lehti: Already fully on Internet Archive, though could use some better scans. I'll probably rescan a few issues, and if I do then I might as well upload them here. 
- Com Club: Already scanned and uploaded what I have on hand to the Internet Archive. I might be able to find a couple more issues in storage.
- Trioposti: I should have some issues in storage, but haven't found them. Will scan whatever I find... eventually.
- Enter: Can't scan, never owned a single issue and I haven't seen any in flea markets for the past decade or so.
- Kompuutteri Kaikille: Same as above.
- Micropost: Never seen a single issue, the mag is probably completely lost to time by now.
- Joyboy: Same as above.
- MSX Uutiset: First issue is on the Internet Archive. I used to own a few more, but seem to have lost them over the years. Might still turn up somewhere, though.
- Pelaaja: Never owned many of these, was more of a fan of the competing Pelit-magazine.
- PC Gamer (Suomi): Same as above, and it's nearly identical to the UK version anyway. 
- PC Pelaaja: 2005 is not quite retro enough for my tastes, but I own most of the issues. The mag is no longer being published, and high on my to-scan list. It had relatively low print numbers, so might as well make sure that it gets archived.
- Pelimestari: Didn't even know that this existed before I checked wikipedia.
- Nintendo-lehti: Nintendo Power is already fully archived, and this is just a translation with very few additional articles (and those are mostly fan art and pen pal sections). Might still scan what I have some day, but not a high priority.

Come to think about it, there's also the Pelit vuosikirja (Games yearbook) which ran from 1987 to 1991. Large-sized publication that was full of game reviews. Would warrant a separate entry, since it's not strictly a part of the Pelit lehti (more of a precursor). Those yearbooks are legendary over here. I'll be able to scan one of them. I have a couple more, but those are in tatters (and full of scribbles). Not suited for scanning. And I likely won't find replacements, those go for $100+ on the Finnish ebay equivalent. (...like I said, those are legendary. Most midaged gamers remember them from their childhood.)

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If I've understood correctly, I can't do anything before the main database entries are added. And that it'll take a lot of work to add even a single entry. So... priorities.

Pelit, Pelaaja, Pelit vuosikirja, and PC Pelaaja are the ones that probably should be added first. Since those had gaming as the main focus. I'll dig up a list of issue numbers if needed, just lemme know.

Mikrobitti and C-Lehti are about 50% gaming content.

Printti was only about 20% gaming. No reviews, but occasional maps and solutions. Not sure if site-relevant.

Don't know enough about Joyboy (probably 100% gaming), Micropost, Enter, and Kompuutteri Kaikille: the last two are likely gaming-light.

As for the hobbyist / game store 'magazines': Trioposti and Com Club were mostly focused on games, MSX Uutiset was gaming/hardware.

And as I mentioned, Nintendo-lehti, Pelimestari, and PC Gamer (Suomi) are translations of English mags and therefore not high priority for archival. Not sure if those are even worth adding here.

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7 hours ago, Zaltys said:

If I've understood correctly, I can't do anything before the main database entries are added. And that it'll take a lot of work to add even a single entry. So... priorities.

Pelit, Pelaaja, Pelit vuosikirja, and PC Pelaaja are the ones that probably should be added first. Since those had gaming as the main focus. I'll dig up a list of issue numbers if needed, just lemme know.

You are possibly the only member of this site to know anything at all about those mags, since the only mags most members here have access to are from the USA.  So adding information about them would be entirely up to you.  Unfortunately, due to the way the site is structured, I'm not sure that you (being a regular member) would actually be allowed to add issues to a database.  So you would have to gather all information about a given magazine, arrange it in a spreadsheet, and email that to someone able to input it into the site (by whom I mean @Phillyman - I no longer have the ability to create databases, so don't ask me!😋

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Retromags Curator
On 8/18/2019 at 6:20 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

(by whom I mean @Phillyman - I no longer have the ability to create databases, so don't ask me!😋

britney spears no GIF

This has been fixed, also if you just give me a list of all the Official magazine titles, I can create the categories and then give you permission to fill in the records.

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11 hours ago, Phillyman said:

This has been fixed, also if you just give me a list of all the Official magazine titles, I can create the categories and then give you permission to fill in the records.

I'm going to start with ones that focus fully on gaming:

- Pelit - started in 1992, with eight issues per year. One of the oldest gaming mags worldwide that's still being published, nearly at the 300 issue milestone.
- Peliasema - 1998 to October 2001, 29 issues, console-gaming focused.
- Pelaaja - 2002, monthly. Still published, passed the 200 issue milestone a few months back.
- Pelit vuosikirja - 1987 to 1991, one per year, two in 1990 and 1991. 
- PC Pelaaja - December 2005 to March(?) 2007, 22 issues. 

So that'd be a whole lot of database entries. 😐

Other than those, rest have various problems. Such as Joyboyno point in adding the mag, when I haven't managed to track down a single issue and have no idea how many there are in total. And early years of Mikrobitti were about 80% gaming and gaming hardware, but like I mentioned, those have been digitalized by the publisher and are being sold.

Then there's the mags that were only partially about gaming. Not sure if these fit the scope of the site.

- C=Lehti (1987 to 1992, 29 issues, Commodore-focused. Sample issue here:  https://archive.org/details/C-Lehti-1987-3/ :: about 40% gaming-related content. Already fully scanned on IA.)
- Com Club (1992 to 1993? I doubt it passed the 20 issue mark. Published by a game shop, mostly text reviews plus the store catalog taking up third of the 'mag'. Sample issue - https://archive.org/details/comclub199206 )
- Trioposti (1988 to 19??. Another game store magazine. It started as 40-page B&W mag with reviews and articles, but by end of 1992 it had turned into a simple leaflet with nothing but store catalog in it. Not sure how many issues there were that could be counted as a magazine. Sample issue, not that you'll get much out of it without being fluent in Finnish - https://archive.org/details/trioposti198801 )

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1 minute ago, sCZther said:

I feel like anything you add to the database is valuable. At worst the info will be somewhere :)

Yeah, I know there are already sites out there covering gaming mags in Brazil, France, Italy and Germany.  Dunno about Finland, though.  Can't say I've ever looked.😀  But if there isn't already such a place...well then why not here? 😉

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  • 4 years later...

 I don't think this attempt to cover Finnish magazines has gone anywhere, as about five years have passed since the first post by Zaltys, and there isn't even a "Finland" entry in the database.

In any case, I strongly support the suggestion. I am biased here, as some of the magazines mentioned were important reading to me during my "formative years as a gamer", but I think adding those would make a number of people happy. At least two, Zaltys (whoever he is) and me, and two is a nice number too! 😄

But even objectively speaking, those magazines have a big part of gaming history in them. One unique feature in the Finnish magazine scene is that unlike US/UK/some other country magazines which come and go and are very short-lived, Finnish magazines tend to be very long-lived and often remain in print even after changing publisher.

Just the two "big ones" Pelit (=Games) and Pelaaja (=Gamer) are among the longest running game magazines in the world.

  • Pelit started in 1992 (or 1987 if you count the yearly books as the starting point) and it is still going on, with the latest issue being #335.
  • Pelaaja started in 2002 and it is still going on too, with the latest issue being #253. (As a bit unrelated comment, Pelaajacast is the longest running active Finnish-language podcast, starting from 2008 and the latest episode being #329, and there are a few special episodes without a number).

And both magazines have had some spin-off magazines, which add at least 100 additional magazines to the overall count. So just those two magazines have over 50 years and about 600 issues combined. That alone makes them worth adding to any magazine database, if anyone asks me.

The other magazines that Zaltys mentioned (and few that he didn't mention) are more debatable.

 

On 8/19/2019 at 1:20 AM, kitsunebi said:

You are possibly the only member of this site to know anything at all about those mags, since the only mags most members here have access to are from the USA.  So adding information about them would be entirely up to you.  Unfortunately, due to the way the site is structured, I'm not sure that you (being a regular member) would actually be allowed to add issues to a database.  So you would have to gather all information about a given magazine, arrange it in a spreadsheet, and email that to someone able to input it into the site (by whom I mean @Phillyman - I no longer have the ability to create databases, so don't ask me!😋

As it happens, there are at least two of us who know something about them!

I would be more than happy to edit some information about them, but it seems a bit complicated if it's done like that. Is that still the case? Adding one magazine would require two people to edit the information?

Anyway, I would be willing to help with that, if I can. If I can't enter anything directly (which would be understandable), I would need at least some templates/instructions on how to do it. I'm not sure how fast and how much I am able to participate, but probably more than what has been done until now. So at least one magazine issue entry guaranteed! 👍

I am also able to arrange some actual magazines to be scanned at some point. I have been able to save some magazines from being trashed, and I can probably find some cheap issues from local shops/auctions. But that's a topic for later discussion, I think.

 

On 8/29/2019 at 1:01 PM, kitsunebi said:

Yeah, I know there are already sites out there covering gaming mags in Brazil, France, Italy and Germany.  Dunno about Finland, though.  Can't say I've ever looked.😀  But if there isn't already such a place...well then why not here? 😉

If there are such sites, I have missed them. There are some sites that have some content available, but nothing that is properly organised, and some sites don't pay any attention to actual scanning quality. I suppose having something over nothing makes sense, but something better would be nice to have.

And indeed, I think it's a good idea to have a site like this to cover more content. If everyone is re-inventing the same wheel over and over again, with a different language or whatever, it seems like waste of time and resources.

 

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6 hours ago, PixelBoy said:

I would be more than happy to edit some information about them, but it seems a bit complicated if it's done like that. Is that still the case? Adding one magazine would require two people to edit the information?

You definitely can't create the Finland category or a category for a magazine not already in the database, but as for whether or not you have the ability to add individual issues, you can test that easily enough.  Here's a random, completely empty database:

https://www.retromags.com/magazines/fra/joystick/

If you see the blue "add new issue" button on the right, then you would be able to add entries to the database once created.

Screenshot 2024-02-03 at 07-52-05 Video Game Magazines.png

If you can't see that button, then yeah, it would be up to someone else to add the entries, though I believe you would be able to edit them and add missing information.  Hopefully you're able to add the issues yourself - most things that get done around here get done by the people who have an interest in doing them, since it's not like it's anyone's job, or anything.

And if you've got cover images, once a gallery is created you can upload those as well.

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15 hours ago, MigJmz said:

We would need more info about these magazines like starting date / end of them , how the monthly format were published, and the years to add db entries to them for starters. 

I can find at least some of the information by using different sources, if I have some idea about how to do it. That's what I meant by templates and instructions earlier.

An earlier post describes that in theory: "So you would have to gather all information about a given magazine, arrange it in a spreadsheet, and email that to someone able to input it into the site."

But that doesn't tell what information exactly, how to place it and organise it in a spreadsheet, and then I would also need to know the email address where to send it.

And when it comes to information about individual issues, it makes a big difference if they can be sent one by one, or maybe divided into calendar years, or by having over 300 issues all in one.

 

11 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

If you see the blue "add new issue" button on the right, then you would be able to add entries to the database once created.

If you can't see that button, then yeah, it would be up to someone else to add the entries, though I believe you would be able to edit them and add missing information.  Hopefully you're able to add the issues yourself - most things that get done around here get done by the people who have an interest in doing them, since it's not like it's anyone's job, or anything.

And if you've got cover images, once a gallery is created you can upload those as well.

I don't see that button unfortunately. That's understandable though, as I just created my account and unlurked.

How is that supposed to work? Is it something that gets activated after a number of posts (like some forums have 25-50 posts), or after some period of time (like some forums have 1-6 months), or does it need to be activated by moderators only in selected cases?

I was able to see that Edit button on already existing issues, and it even opened a page where I could edit information. Obviously I didn't try to save anything, so I don't know if it works all the way or not.

I can find some cover images for sure. But once again, I need instructions on how to do it.

Is it OK to use covers from official digital editions, is it OK to rip covers from places like Archive.org as temporary placeholders, or if I scan something myself what kind of scan settings should I be using, what is the right pixel and file size, and so on.

At least some magazine issues which are listed but don't have actual magazine scans have a disclaimer that they are temporary cover images, so I guess that there are at least two kinds of images: temporary and final. Final images are probably taken from the scanned magazines, which makes sense, but what should the temporary images be like?

 

And even though I am getting ahead of things here, is there a guide on how to edit those individual issue descriptions? I have checked some, and I can't really find a pattern there.

For instance, some magazines have reviews listed, some magazines have reviews and scores from those reviews listed, and one magazine had simply the index page scanned as an image. So is there the right way vs. many wrong ways to do it, or if it's properly describing the magazine content, more or less anything goes?

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In order for the database to be created, you need, at the very least, knowledge of how many issues there are and when they were published.  For a magazine that was monthly without interruptions or extra issues (i.e. 12 issues per year), as long as you know when the first issue was published, the dates on subsequent issues are easy to figure out even without having access to all of the issues for reference.  For anything published irregularly or more often than monthly, gathering correct publication information becomes much more difficult unless you can reference all of the issues.

Filling out every single field, especially the contents, is not necessary, though appreciated.  That information can always be filled out at a later time, as well.  Step one is getting the database created in the first place.

As for gallery covers, they can come from anywhere, but try to use a high resolution image.  Anything you see marked as temporary is likely a low res image since nothing better could be found.  When covers found online or elsewhere are in rough condition, it's preferable to clean them up in Photoshop or other editing software before adding them to the gallery.  Gallery covers should be treated as if they were our own magazine scans - quality is a priority, so we don't need someone's camera snapshots of a mag from an eBay listing showing up in the gallery.  Only when there is no better option available should a subpar image be used, and those should be replaced at a later time if a better scan becomes available.

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10 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

In order for the database to be created, you need, at the very least, knowledge of how many issues there are and when they were published.  For a magazine that was monthly without interruptions or extra issues (i.e. 12 issues per year), as long as you know when the first issue was published, the dates on subsequent issues are easy to figure out even without having access to all of the issues for reference.  For anything published irregularly or more often than monthly, gathering correct publication information becomes much more difficult unless you can reference all of the issues.

Unfortunately it will be harder rather than easy.

For instance, Pelit has had years when it had seven issues per year, eight issues per year, ten issues per year, until it became a monthly publication. And that's when an interesting feature of the Finnish magazine scene comes to play: magazines which have "12 issues per year" very often have only 11 issues. 🙄

January issue is 1/[year] and December issue is 12/[year], but during the summer months there is an issue called 6-7/[year], meaning that there's only one actual issue covering two months and two numbers. And no, that issue is never twice as big compared to the normal issues...

But be that as it may, I have started collecting what information I can easily find and I am organising it in a spreadsheet. In some cases I must do some educated guessing about some things, but I hope possible mistakes can be corrected later.

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