kitsunebi

1 hour ago, MigJmz said:

Ok cool. I'm improving all of the double ads so there's lots to add in the gallery

Speaking of which - to anyone looking to upload ads to the gallery - Single page ads are easy - after making sure we don't already have the ad in the gallery, just correctly title the ad and upload it with any pertinent information in the description box (I like to include basic information such as the game's genre, developer, publisher, and publication date.) 

Double page ads should be joined together as seamlessly as possible before being added to the gallery.  However, in the past, certain people uploaded a bunch of double page ads without joining them together - they simply uploaded page 1 and page 2 as two separate uploads.  My goal is to ultimately replace all of those with properly joined ads, so if you see a two-page ad that has been uploaded as separate pages, feel free to upload a joined version, and we can delete the single page versions later.

2 hours ago, MigJmz said:

One of my changes I decided is to make the dual ads join together. I hate how it looks when viewed double paged in a comic book reader. The reason there not joined is because  of the fold out ads and the stupid subscriber insert card

Not sure I understand what you're saying about foldout ads and insert cards.  As for joins, if you make them into a single picture first, they look fine viewed in two-page mode.  Just merge them into a single pic (will take some photoshop magic) then cut away the second page.  Crop the remaining page perfectly (zoom way in so you can see the pixels) and save it.  Then, using the crop tool again, open up a large empty space next to the first page.  Paste the second page there, and crop out the first page.  Save.  Now the pages will look just as seamless in two-page view as they did as a single image.

3 hours ago, MigJmz said:

As for the page sizes and quality I do make it smaller for archive.org. I think they hate big files i don't know. For future releases i'll try smaller quality bigger resolution as you said.

Nah, they don't care.  I've seen people upload unedited raws of 600dpi scans there where the cbr is nearly 2 GB.  Regarding your scan, since you've only scanned it at 300dpi, you could have saved it at 3200px high and quality 9 and ended up with a higher quality file that took up less space than 2200 saved at 12.  You did notice that saving a file at quality 12 actually makes the filesize bigger than the original, right?

3 hours ago, MigJmz said:

Thanks for adding some of my ads to the site!

You can thank me for doing the work to join the ads, but there's no need to thank me for adding them to the site like that's something special.  You or anyone else is free to add to the galleries whenever you like.  The only reason I'm the only person to upload things around here is that everyone else is too lazy.

Many more edits to come?

Er...so why release it if it's not finished?

Anyway, thanks for the scan, finished or not.  PC Gamer is always welcome. 

BTW, some quick advice (for your future rerelease of this file):

1.  I noticed that you've saved all the files at quality level 12.  This is very wasteful, space-wise.  The difference between an image saved at 12 and an image saved at 9 is barely perceptible, if at all.  If it's the best possible quality you're after (regardless of filesize), you'd be FAR better off saving the images at a higher resolution, rather than a higher compression quality level.  In other words, rather than save the images at 2200px high, quality 12 (as you did here), you could save the images at 3000px high (or whatever), quality 9.

Personally, I save at 2500px high, quality 9.

Bottom line - a larger image (pixel dimension-wise) is a far better use of filespace than an excessively high compression quality level.

Btw, I ran the file through a batch process in Photoshop, re-saving everything at q9 and bumping the black level up to 10 (a small correction that I personally find preferable on this particular scan).  The resulting cbr file is only 238MB and looks identical to the original (well, slightly better in my opinion due to the black level tweak.  but had I left that alone, they would look the same.)

2.  Tiny advice here: I realize that you've arranged the pages in the order in which they are printed, but for fold-out pages such as the Star Trek ad at the front, it's best to number them so that images which should be next to each other are in sequential order.

Also, if you don't mind me asking - did you do something weird to the cover?  It looks strange to me, like the blue was painted in with the fill tool, making the shadows look weird.

Btw, I also went ahead and joined the two double-page ads for that Star Trek game, which on the first join at least required quite a bit of real estate to be created with the content aware tool, but I think it looks pretty decent for creating part of an image out of nothing.

10 hours ago, Areala said:

CD rentals though...there was a time when that might have been a useful service. I mean, I admit, that time was 'twenty-five years ago', but still...somewhat entrepreneurial.

Especially in Japan, where at the time a normal CD sold for $30.

Also, btw, Japan is probably the only technologically advanced country in the world where CD sales are still higher than digital sales.  In Japan, "twenty-five years ago" is right now.  But at least CDs are for more reasonably priced these days.  Now they only cost $25.

On 7/31/2017 at 5:15 PM, fami said:

Financially, I'm not in a really good spot right now, but I think if I could find easily a way to thank you for your work I would give you what I can as donations or whatever. To be honest I just found your post, seeking to find a way to support your work. Obviously I can't say for sure but maybe a lot of people who use what you worked for, feels the same way. So maybe try to work on that instead of quitting ? Also Forget what I just said if there is a way to support you which is easy findable, I might have missed it... as I said I'm very new in here

I wouldn't ever want people to pay me.  That would put too much pressure on me to do more, and I don't have enough free time as it is.

On 7/31/2017 at 5:15 PM, fami said:

I didn't research too much about it so sorry if it's a dumb question, but I wanted to ask too if you knew any place where I can learn how to scan stuffs as cleanly as possible ? I'm willing to give it a shot, especially when I will have money too. Because I just found out old issues of japanese video games magazine are pretty expensive and rare. But I might want to try it too, see if I can provide content too.

One day I want to make a guide on how I scan and edit mags.  For now, you can find E-Day's scanning guides under the "support" menu at the top of the page. 

A good scanner is a big help.  I use a Fuji ScanSnap ix500.  Beyond that, you need editing software.  I use Photoshop CS6, but I think there are free alternatives available (though I have no experience with them myself).

Took you long enough.  We're about the same age and I haven't bought a new game since 2005.

I'd like to think I've outgrown gaming (nobody wants to be outgrown by something).  I still play something from time to time, but it's almost always an older game that I never got to play back in the day, and it's mostly that leftover sense of nostalgia that drives me to do so.

But that's fine.  So long as you have other things to fill your life with, you're golden.  I could lament the fact that I no longer enjoy sitting in front of a screen clutching a piece of plastic for hours on end, but at the end of the day I think I'm much happier spending my life the way I do currently.  You're right that back when we were young, games had a sort of magical ability to leave strong impressions and memories that we still carry with us.  Now when I play a game, even if I "enjoy" it at the time, it doesn't really create a lasting memory, and ultimately amounts to wasted time, sort of like watching television.  I'd much rather spend that time engaging in professional endeavors, spending time with friends, or seeing the world, all of which create much stronger and longer lasting memories I can cherish.

But hey...gaming.  Let's just be grateful for the good times, yeah?

This was the first of your videos I've watched.  The intro is a bit long, but once you actually get started it was pretty good.  Maybe a chapter break at the 1:30 mark so viewers can skip the opening credits? 
Anyway, an exhaustive publication-order SW read-through has always been something I wanted to do, but though I started one, I only got up to about 1995 before moving on to other things.  To many books/comics! (and let's be honest, a lot of them are mediocre at best.)  Still, I hope you keep at it.

I'm hopefully optimistic that it will prove more difficult than it's worth to sign into law anything that takes away rights that have already been given.  Getting those rights in the first place has been a long battle for many people, and once gained, taking them away again would be indefensibly cruel and hateful.  While some people out there are quite comfortable basing their lives on an agenda of hate, I like to think that any attempt to sign such an agenda into law would rally so much sympathy and support as to make it untenable.  But I could be being naive.

I, too, hope that Trump dispenses a different kind of leadership than the one he promised in his campaign.  Hell, so do some of the people who voted for him.  "He didn't mean it, it was just to get votes."  Well, we can hope so, at least.  I think we take all politicians' promises with something of a grain of salt.  But it's interesting how we usually respond to politicians' grandiose promises by saying "Yeah, that would be nice, but it'll probably never happen/never make it past Congress," whereas now some people are saying "Don't worry - he didn't mean anything he promised, he's gonna do all kinds of awesome stuff, he just never talked about it."  As if every time he opened his mouth during the campaign, people just tuned it out and imagined what they wished he was saying instead (and wished so hard they actually believed it.)

Still, however he handles the actual presidency, it won't mollify the damage his rhetoric has caused and is continuing to cause as his impending ascendancy to power foments those baser feelings of hatred and fear amongst the extreme left of his constituency who are emboldened to be more open with projecting their fears and prejudices in harmful ways upon innocent people.

However, I think you'll find that your friends are going to be there for you in stronger force than ever before.  It's sometimes all too easy for those of us living lives relatively free from discrimination to overlook the plight of others less privileged.  But if Trump's rhetoric has fanned the flames of prejudice, it has also elevated our awareness of it, and there will be a stronger outpouring of support for those hurt or disenfranchised by that prejudice than we would have seen "pre-Trump."  So no matter how things turn out, never let them take your hope, and those of us at your back will do what we can to alleviate the fear.

Speaking as a fellow introvert, don't forget that your strongest ally is also yourself. Everyone else might have to seek their safety in numbers, but we've got that turtle shell to protect us. There's certainly no shame in using it - it's a natural asset.

I'm usually a love-em-and-leave-em game player (too many games in the sea to spend time playing on ALL the difficulty levels), but if a harder difficulty offers something the others don't, I'll play that one. There's nothing worse than finishing a game only to realize that you didn't see the real ending because you weren't playing on the hardest difficulty level. Warn me of that in advance, dammit!

The first game that I enjoyed playing at all difficulties was Goldeneye. The different mission objectives made it feel as if I was having a different experience each time rather than just playing the same mission with tougher enemies.

On a related note, the original PC version of Monkey Island 2 is the first game that compelled me go back and play the easy mode to see what wasn't included. Described on the box as "normal mode - for game reviewers," the easy mode had different solutions to a lot of the puzzles (or took them out altogether), making it sort of entertaining to breeze through after having finished the more difficult mode (which is actually the real "normal" mode).