After months of behind-the-scenes deliberation, infused with a ridiculous amount of name-calling, indian leg wrestling, and wedgies, the administrators have reached their conclusion and are now ready to share it with the rest of the community.
Presenting: RETRO MAGS!
Ruminate with us for a bit. You'll notice that nowhere on the site does it specifically state we are set up to only scan and host old magazines about computers and video games, and every so often we'll receive a request from a user inquiring about whether or not we handle this or that sort of publication, or help finding out-of-print periodicals of various sorts. Fishing magazines. Car magazines. Science magazines. There's a magazine for everything, and if there isn't now, then there probably was in decades past.
It's true!
Literally starting today, Retromags is going to become your one-stop shop for everything related to old school magazines. Hobbyist publications, consumer reference, news and entertainment...it's all coming both soon and now. Just think: your dad may finally track down that issue of Organic Gardner he read as a lad! Your grandmother may thrill to a digital version of the doll collector's monthly she subscribed to twenty years ago! Those classic 80's knitting patterns? They're going to be here too! Vintage Wrestling quarterlies, 1960's era Hot Rod publications, celebrity gossip rags from back when the hair, the shoulder pads, and the feuds were larger than life?
Forget download limits. These files are big, beautiful, and cleaned up to current-year specs as best that we (and Photoshop) can accomplish. To prove we aren't kidding, we've got a handful of brand new releases we've been holding back on for this very announcement.
Only you guys could make it possible, with your contributions of time, energy, and cold, hard cash. Especially that last part. Thank you, anonymous donor who wishes to remain anonymous for that sudden infusion back in February.
Obviously this is going to require a bit of a site overhaul. Expect to see some serious changes to the way things like the databases are structured as we get things in line with the new, expanded concept. We're aiming to add roughly a dozen different categories per week, then new sub-categories within them similar to the way the gaming magazines are currently broken down by area of release, then name of publication. It's a lot of work, and not something which can be done all at once, but we're going to push on as best we can.
Limited site downtime and outages may occur infrequently as we make these changes. The forum software is robust, but we're going to be subjecting it to an awful lot of stretching in directions we aren't sure Invision means for it to stretch. Errors may crop up here and there, and if so, we hope you'll be patient with us. If it all goes as planned, these relics of yester-year will be hosted, preserved forever for future generations to marvel and laugh at. We spared no expense scouring the seedy underbellies of auction sites, hunting for the weirdest, tackiest, most off-beat examples we could find to show we mean business when we say, "At Retromags, we scan it all!"
Sincerely - Phillyman, E-Day, Areala, and the rest of the Retromags staff!