TheRedEye

On 11/14/2023 at 8:16 PM, Areala said:

I got this!

The major magazine publishers were often working with prototype or pre-release copies sent over by the game developers. In the cartridge days, there wouldn't be any plastic shell housing the games, they would be the printed circuit boards with the appropriate ROM chips soldered in place. You generally couldn't play these versions on a standard consumer console, so the magazines would have special versions of the hardware (like the dev kits of today) that would allow them to play these versions of the games. These were intended to be hooked up to a computer monitor rather than a television, so it was easy for the magazines to use a monitor attached to a computer running screen capture software, and grab whatever images they needed, then clean them up using Photoshop.

The dev kits for portable systems did not include screens, so they too would be hooked up to a monitor just like the standard consoles, which is how they got such clean screen grabs of the games without any of the screen blur or other graphical issues seen, for example, on the GameBoy.

*huggles*
Areala

Hey! Sorry but I'm going to have to correct you here, what you're describing didn't start until the original Xbox.

First of all, EPROM PCBs work fine in retail systems, and there's just no such thing as a special review system for cartridge-based games (other than the capture units for portable systems that you described). CD-based systems (post-Sega CD) had copy protection, and so there were special debug units to play burned discs, but nothing about them did any video capture. As you mentioned, portable systems had special units for capture, but until the DS these special units just spit out standard television video.

How editors captured screens depends on the publication, year, and environment. Nintendo Power took photos of a CRT in a dark room until about issue 20, when they switched to a video printer, before finally settling into using a video capture card on a computer (I'm not sure when this switch occurred, since video printer stuff looks so similar to digital capture). They almost always captured in pure RGB, and had modified NES units to do this. EGM also took photos at first, and is famous for its photos at trade shows, but for in-office capture they switched to capture cards on Macintosh somewhere around issue 9 (and like Nintendo, they modified their systems for RGB video to get the best quality). They also would sometimes record gameplay onto video tape and capture the frames they wanted afterward.

If you want to go back further than Nintendo Power, most of the early 80s stuff was using publisher-provided screenshots, most of which were actually hand-drawn and not actually capture of a game. Computer magazines took photos, either directly or with a really neat device called a "film recorder," which was basically a tiny CRT inside of a box with a 35mm camera attached. I don't think video game magazines used these, but I think some PR/marketing/back-of-the-box shots did.

The switch to digital capture came at around the same time that magazines switched from paste-up layout to digital. Pretty much every video game magazine was using video capture cards and doing all-digital layouts in QuarkExpress by 1993 or 1994, give or take, and did so until the systems did their own internal capture. At least some (and maybe most/all) of them usually had a foot pedal so they could easily capture screens while playing, instead of having to reach over and hit something on the keyboard.

The first system to have any kind of frame buffer capture, as I mentioned, was the original Xbox debug kits. You had to network it in to a computer and hit a capture key there. It became standard in the 360/ps3 era, just as it became standard for users.

You too, huh? We're just down to that and the following issue, I wonder if that's coincidence or if it's just a time of particularly low circulation.

On 7/7/2022 at 5:16 PM, E-Day said:

There are 80 in the batch that The Video Game History Foundation had scanned. They need to be renamed but I can eventually make the PDFs available, though they will eventually show up on Internet Archive from the VGHF. They'll show up here as CBZ files as well at some point.

I just wanted to chime in and say that there's no guarantee these appear on the internet archive, because Future consistently pulls its content down from there.

Okay in that case people should upload their 600ppi originals to The Internet Archive so when someone in the future actually needs a high-res screenshot of a lost game or whatever they don't have to find the magazine again. Not trying to make demands or anything, just contributing to the conversation about scan size etc. and why there might be a need for higher res, especially if you're already doing that work.

Late to the conversation but I think Retromags should stick to a DPI standard instead of choosing an arbitrary pixel width. By hard-defining pixels we're losing the metadata that tells us how large the scan was physically, whereas if we just set a smaller DPI, Photoshop etc. would still report the exact physical size of the page. I also think DPI should be 600 minimum, which is typical museum/library scanning standards, but think we could get away with 300 if it's a server hit etc.

The magazines are not in a private collection, they're owned by the nonprofit I run and are in a library that will eventually be open to researchers for free. Just because I don't have the time to scan full magazines (or the willingness to destroy any binding in our library copies) doesn't mean they're lost, it just means they're not scanned.

Sorry, I don't have time for full magazine scans, just helping in the ways that I can. We have tons of covers here that aren't in the database, I think I have some ideas to justify spending a couple days cranking through them...

Also a correction: I have the September 1993 issue, it just says "September 1993," not Aug/Sept. as in the database.

One more, but I don't know if this counts. It's technically an oversized annual (I have a 1992 issue as well...there's another on ebay if anyone else wants to nab it), but inside has a typical letter from the editor saying it's the final issue of PCGames, and even references "last month's issue."

I have an issue not in the database. I flipped through the stuff before and after it to see if there were any back issue thumbnails to see if others were missing but there aren't any.

Here's the best scan I could squeeze into the 1MB upload limit!

They're mailorder catalogs from Ultimate Games Club with really really minimal editorial, kind of like the first issue of Game Informer. Issue 4 with Ghoul School was stuffed in an EGM poly bag. #3 is Fist of the North Star, I've never seen 1 or 2.

2013 does exist in print form, I just confirmed it, but it doesn't look like it was ever distributed digitally for whatever reason. Poking around as best I can to see if the PDF still exists.

(I'm ex-UBM and still friends with everyone involved with GCG)

Nintendo Power didn't publish ads, so it's not Nintendo Power. If it's a video game magazine I suspect GamePro, EGM, Game Player's, and VideoGames & Computer Entertainment, in that order.

Typically I just get them if I happen to see them cheaply but I am now ravenous about this stupid Bugs Bunny cover I didn't know existed until 30 seconds ago.

Hello,

This publication went under a ton of titles, the earliest one I have is v1 #2 from 1988 called "The Game Player's Guide to MS-DOS Computer Games." Much like their Nintendo publication it changed a lot, and has titles like "Game Player's PC Strategy Guide" and "Game Player's PC Buyers Guide" too.

I think you guys are making this more complicated than it needs to be. We're talking about two separate publications here:

Game Player's was a multiplatform magazine from Signal Research that ran from 1988 to 1991. It has a clear beginning and end.

Game Player's Nintendo Guide was a Nintendo-only magazine. After it was acquired by Future, the magazine became multiplatform as of issue 6-6, dropping Nintendo Guide from its title.

Ultra Game Players is the same magazine, same numbering scheme, same focus, but with a title change.

Game Buyer immediately follows Ultra Game Players, but has its own numbering scheme.

If it's important to separate these magazines, I suggest the following:

Game Player's (the original Signal Research magazine, stands on its own)

Game Player's Nintendo Guide (covering 1-1 through 6-5) becomes:

Game Players (starting with 6-5), becomes:

Ultra Game Players

Game Buyer is then its own separate publication.

Whichever way this database handles the change from EGM2 to Expert Gamer/Electronic Games to Computer Entertainment/Electronic Fun to Computer Fun/VG&CE to Video Games should be the same way it handles Game Player's Nintendo Guide to Game Players and Game Players to Ultra Game Players - same publication and numbering scheme, but a title change.

Whichever way we handle Electronic Games (90s) to Fusion to Intelligent Gamer should be the way we handle Ultra Game Players to Game Buyer - continuity of publishing schedule/staff, but new numbering scheme.

So even if they get separate magazine entries in the database, they should continue to follow whatever numbering they had, or at least whatever numbering the publishers used. Game Buyers starts at issue 1, I think. Even if it's just UGP renamed, it should follow whatever they numbered it. Maybe. I don't know. No magazine has been more confusing to keep track of than Game Player's.

Sort of related, does anyone know what volume of the Game Players Encyclopedia Of Nintendo Games this is? I have never seen it before. Currently for sale on eBay for US$50.

That's just the first one. In addition to having a confusing numbering scheme. Game Players also reprinted the same content sometimes with different covers.

Title changed name a few times, as I'm sure you know. The first issue to merge Nintendo Guide and Sega Guide into a multiplatform magazine was 6-6, June 1993, which says "Game Players Nintendo Sega" on the cover, but is referred to as the premiere issue of Game Players in the editorial. The redesign for issue 72 drops systems from the title completely.

So the numbering adds up (mostly) in my collection. Here's how the Game Player's Nintendo Guides numbers break down:

Nope, that's maybe 2/3 of them, not complete. I've got a busy night but I'll try to sort this out for you.

If that's the case I'd recommend separating game players from Game player's (with the exception of that 1 issue) and continue numbering into ultra game players.

I also recommend that, I'm just not 100% clear on the numbering. But yes, I am staunchly of the belief that original Game Player's is a separate publication from the later Game Players. I think this numbering scheme is legacy from the old Magweasel site.

So it should go Game player's and end numbering at issue 27 in sep 91? (Or oct 91 when changes to game players)

Then game players Nintendo guide which ends at June 93 at issue 49.

Then game players at June 93 should pick up the new numbering from there at 50?

Which then goes on to ultra game players in Oct 96 at issue 89?

The only thing is the game players numbering in our database begging get with June 93 (presumably you'd call that 50) comes up to 74 before they start to but issue numbers on game players with 72. Unless our database is wrong. Like for example we are missing game players April 94. Maybe there never was one. That would put the numbering at one off.

...I'm starting to confuse myself. I have all of them, let me go home and literally start counting spines and trying to figure out where their numbering scheme came from.

This is the final issue of the original multiplatform Game Player's which, ironically, dropped the apostrophe that month as part of a redesign that lasted exactly one issue:

http://www.retromags.com/magazines/category/usa/game-players/game-players-issue-28#.VnNB9BUrJaQ

Game Players Nintendo Guide and Game Players Sega Guide continued on from there as their own separate publications, but then merged together into one unified Game Players magazine in June 1993, which continues (I believe) the numbering system from Game Players Nintendo Guide.

I believe this is because the database considers Game Players to be a continuation of Game Player's (note the apostrophe), which is not true. Game Players is a numbered continuation of what started life as Game Player's Strategy Guide to Nintendo Games, which standard vanilla Game Player's folded into.