PixelBoy

I don't know how some specific magazine did this or that (or at least magazines you are talking about, I know how some non-English language magazines did it), but using a little bit of creativity can go a long way. For instance as already briefly mentioned, you could use a Y-split cable and have whatever goes to the TV also going to a good quality VHS recorder. Then you can simply run the tape forward and backwards to find a good screenshot, pause the image, take a screenshot or snap a photo with your camera, and you have a very good screenshot. And games which had internal pause, or platforms that had some cheat cartridges available with pause functions, certainly helped too. And before Internet was a common thing, magazines in different countries could publish same screenshots, and very few people noticed that they were recycled. So, magazines which had some international connections, such as having a foreign language version, simply could use the same screenshots as the original magazine did. No need to take several screenshots in many places.

I use Samsung Galaxy tablet, and I can recommend such a device. Works nicely with comics, and can be used to browse Internet, run games and apps. The downside is that it's only a tablet, so it's not specifically designed as a book reader.

Here's an update about the Finnish magazines. My plan was to do only some background research and maybe forward some magazines to people with scanners, but there have been some unexpected developments, so the short version of the story is that I will be scanning magazines myself. I have received some magazines for free, for instance, someone was moving and was about to throw magazines away, unless someone wanted them, and I took them. I have found some magazines in auctions relatively cheap, and the best part is that many times the sellers have given some free bonus magazines, in one case the free bonus magazines were actually rarer than the magazines I was actually paying for! There have been strange happenings, like when I was bidding for a pile of magazines, but the price got a bit too high for me. A while later I unexpectedly happened to cross paths with the guy who actually won the pile, and he only wanted a couple of magazines from what he had bought, and he sold me most of them cheaper than the auction price was. And as I wrote earlier, I was not going to do any scanning, as I didn't have a good enough scanner. I happened to find a professional A3 size scanner that was on sale much cheaper than the actual price is. I thought it was a pricing error, but I decided to order it anyway. Soon after I made the purchase, the price was raised, not once, but twice, and you can't currently buy the scanner at all, which is a strong indication that it was a pricing error of some kind. Whatever the case there may be, I actually did get my scanner for a cheap price, and it's a very good scanner! So now, unexpectedly, I have a few piles of magazines and a scanner, it's almost like some kind of destiny was putting all these pieces together. I am probably able to upload something soon, but first someone would need to create those database entries for new magazines and a new country. So, who's the person to send information and details about these magazines to?

I have no idea what's going on there, but you can try a few things to rule out possible causes, some more likely than others. 1) Power down the scanner completely, unplug it, and reset it to factory settings. This will rule out internal firmware issues etc. 2) Install a different driver. Either try some generic driver, or use some newer or older version of the driver you are currently using. This will rule out driver issues, obviously. 3) Try scanning using different resolutions and output in different file formats. This will rule out the possibility that the problem would somehow occur only using the scan settings you are using. 4) If you happen to have another copy of the same magazine, try scanning it for comparison. This will rule out the possibility that there is something wrong with the first copy that is somehow messing the scan results. This doesn't usually happen with magazines, but is a common problem with postcards etc. 5) As ridiculous as it may sound, if possible, have someone else scan that page with your scanner. This will rule out the highly unlikely possibility that you are doing something wrong and don't notice it. If after all these steps those lines are still there... well, you have a broken scanner most likely. Try to have it fixed under warranty. I had once a digital camera that somehow sucked dust inside the lens, which appeared in all pictures. I got it fixed for free. Maybe something similar is going on here.

I can't speak for any site, but CBZ/CBR is basically a ZIP file with a weird file extension. You can create it without any additional programs, assuming you have a relatively recent operating system that has some "zipping features" in it. It also works in reverse, you can use those files as if they are just ordinary ZIP files. You can extract images from them, and browse them with an image browser, if that's the most convenient way for you to read them. With PDFs all that would be much more difficult. Of course, PDFs do have certain advantages that CBZ/CBR files don't have. Especially PDFs with OCR'd text are extremely useful. Back when Starlog Magazines were still available on Archive.org, that was actually my favourite file format. You can read articles from the magazine, and if you see something quotable, just select the part you want and copy-paste it. But as nice as that is, CBZ/CBR format offers more possibilities for custom-made reading. For instance, if you want to create a special magazine of your own, let's say you want to have all contents pages of some magazine in the same place, you can simply copy those scanned pages and make a new file that has only those pages. It's not impossible to do the same with PDFs, but again, more difficult.

Magazines and reviews have evolved, perhaps matured. Back in the day there were four game reviews on one page, these days one game review can take four full pages. So today's reviews are more thorough and try to cover some background, whereas the early reviews were more like "it's a nice game with nice graphics, four stars". I suppose I was fortune enough to read magazines which had good writers, so I can even today quote some things they said about the games they reviewed. That's not to say that screenshots weren't important. Some magazines had some black and white pages to keep their printing costs lower, and those pages were always disappointing to read, because it was very difficult to see what the game really looked like. Yeah, you can find everything online. Magazines still have their purpose, if you are looking for something beyond latest game reviews. They have articles that are well researched and unique, such as covering gaming culture in some specific country, or visiting some interesting museums/shows, or finding connections between entertainment simulators and real life training simulators, and so on. And all kinds of histories of some companies or people who made an impact in the business. Even game reviews are interesting. Not so much to read about some game specifically, there are plenty of YouTube channels which review all kinds of games, but to see which games some magazine has chosen to be reviewed, and from what point of view they are covering it. I am probably in the minority, but I think it's always interesting to go through a magazine, page after page, and see what they have chosen to use their limited space on in that specific issue. (I am also often disappointed to see that they don't cover almost any traditional adventure games.)

I happened to find an excellent article about Swedish gaming magazines. Here's the link: https://martinlindell.com/2024/01/07/svenska-speltidningar/ It's quite recent too, written just over a month ago, and it covers presumably all Swedish gaming magazines at least by name. An excellent read for anyone who is interested or who wants to keep track of magazines that would be nice additions to preservation projects like Retromags. The article is in Swedish, but those who can't read it in the original language can use Google translate or something else, the article seems to translate without bigger issues.

I don't know about guidebooks you are looking for, but I know something about Japanese language and machine translations, so I can guess what's happening there. Japanese language doesn't have "V" or "C" and all words are composed of syllables. This is what creates something called "katakana English". When you transliterate "vulcan" to Japanese, it becomes "barukan". If you do the same with "balkan", as it happens, it also becomes "barukan". Japanese readers would know which is meant from the context. Now, when some machine is trying to translate katakana words into English, it really doesn't know if the word should be "vulcan" or "balkan", it could also be "Barkan" which is a product name for many different products. Balkan is probably the best guess the machine can make. If and when AI systems become more intelligent, they can make more educated guesses in the future.

That will get nice whole separate pages, yes. But it is also possible to pull the staples out and leave the magazine intact. Obviously it would be much harder to scan those big sheets, but the plus side is that you can put the staples back through the same holes again. And if you were careful enough when removing staples, you can even use the same staples. That way you can reconstruct a magazine that had 100% health bar to begin with to have a magazine that has maybe 90% health bar. And this has of course nothing to do with the OP question, to which I have no real answer.

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.

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. 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?

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. 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. 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.

That sounds nice. I think more magazines from all over the world is a good idea. A while back I was actually trying to find some Swedish game magazines for a reference in something I was doing, and all I could find was a (presumably) incomplete list of magazines, with no actual issues anywhere. I hope the lack of responses here isn't a sign of lack of interest in this. I'm not sure if this project is going on anymore, as I couldn't even find that Twitter account (but that could be just my bad social media skills, I'm not active in those things). But assuming and hoping the work is still going on: lycka till Hanna!

That is a bit redundant. Nothing wrong with the thought behind though. But basically the conclusion is the opening statement re-worded, and much of the other content is simply repeating over and over again that magazines are full of information about "the industry", which should be obvious, unless you browse them for the pictures. And in the video game context those are information as well, especially back in the early days when magazines were the only place to see real screenshots of new games. AI is useful for many things, but games aren't really one of them. Simply asking some chat thing about best titles in some specific genre is going to provide a list of games which aren't necessarily anywhere near the genre you asked about. I wonder if some AI actually read all those magazines, would it learn to be more intelligent about games and the industry?

I can't speak for others, but I think that would be interesting. Magazines in different countries have slightly different styles, so just looking at how they look like, how the page layout looks like, what kind of pictures they are using, what kind of ads they have, can be fun, or even educating. And in the near future there will be AI tools that can easily (attempt to) translate an article or a page from a magazine, so the language barrier is at least getting a bit lower to cross. Yeah, that's true. I was very slowly downloading Starlog Magazines that they used to have, and one day all the Starlogs, except one random issue, were simply gone. In hindsight, I should have downloaded them all in one go, but as they had been there for a few years, and referred to in many web articles, I would have thought they were there more permanently. I managed to get more than half of them, but the rest I had to get from elsewhere, with much lower quality. I don't understand why there were deleted. I haven't seen those magazines being on sale again anywhere or some company starting to re-publish the magazine. So why where they pulled from the Archive, who knows.

I come here to download magazines to my personal collection. I admit that there was over a year when I didn't visit the site or download anything, but I'm catching up at the moment. I think Retromags is great because although there are sites with more content, and there are sites with slightly better restoration quality, Retromags offers a mix of good quality and wide selection. I have found obscure magazines that I have never even heard about. "Obscure" being a relative term here obviously, because I come from a non-English-speaking country. I also very much like how Retromags allows to download stuff without registration, and even torrents of some content. If a site claiming to preserve gaming culture is forcing to do registrations and all that, it feels wrong to me. I can understand that in some cases it can be a legal safety cushion, but as most of the stuff is available anyway on Archive.org or somewhere else, it feels a bit unnecessary. I decided to register here after many years, because I might be able to participate and contribute in some small-scale fashion (not scanning, I don't have such hardware), mostly with non-English publications, like a bunch which I just randomly saw online that was going to be trashed, but I managed to save them... for now, at least. But anyway, as I hadn't said so before, I can say it here and now: your work is appreciated. Thanks for all the hard work you are putting into this. I do feel a bit saddened when some download counters aren't even going over 1,000, I think more people should be reading these magazines, but maybe most people just want a single issue or two, and not everything available.