Tanavin

I understand your concerns, really do. And I can totally understand why you want to stay away from that model, more power to you. Choice is a good thing. But I think any of these doomsday cases are highly unlikely. Any properly designed elastic computing structure can be restored through all manner of disaster scenarios - so the scenario of a server farm and all it's data permanently and irrecoverably going up in flames isn't plausible. Modern server infrastructure simply eliminates those scenarios. You can have service interruptions, sure, but complete loss of data. Nope. The scenario of Valve going under, or being bought out, or whatever manner of corporate evil you might want to imagine is certainly more plausible. And you're right about what the EULA states. But EULA's are not absolute, they exist in a legal gray area, expect the law to develop over time as challenges are made and the world transitions to digital. If Steam were to go under and leave some 125 million users up a creek without a paddle, you can bet there will be litigation from some of those, regardless of whatever the EULA claims. In a case that would affect so many with clearly identifiable damages I could easily see action to release server code to reverse engineer the service dependency, i.e. "jailbreak" the software. It might be a mess and take some time, but it certainly could happen.

Curious what year it was when you tried Steam that one time. Because early on it was certainly different, but there's some off 125M+ customers so they're doing something right.

This has already happened with countless games. And there are a growing number of stories where diligent fans have brought such games back to life. http://kotaku.com/how-star-wars-galaxies-fans-brought-a-dead-game-back-to-1751840627 The enterprise technology that powers the modern corporate world will eventually give consumers much more power to do this kind of thing far more easily (including reverse engineering server side code). Virtualization is one such example, where now anyone can easily encapsulate a physical machine into a file, and replicate or re-purpose in any number of interesting ways. The tech used for cloud infrastructure allows instantiation of not just physical machines but entire network infrastructures, replicating as needed. Leveraging these types of technologies to preserve entire networks much like we might preserve an iso image or a pdf will happen sooner than you might think. Technology is moving quickly.

Surprised at all the vitriol over Steam. Considering at the price point you can buy games at during the infamous sales, it's worth the trade-off over physical ownership. The consoles will always be one step worse from a DRM standpoint because they are closed platforms - walled gardens. They are indeed simpler, and the hardware is substantially cheaper. But most of us who are hardcore PC Gamers already have a solid PC because we do work with it as well. Just look at PC gaming revenue: http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/01/dont-look-now-but-the-pc-is-the-worlds-biggest-gaming-platform/ The numbers in the article are buoyed by ftp MMO's, but they also don't include retail sales. Not trying to prove superiority over anything, but rather that PC Gaming is a thing, albeit it might not be your thing. BTW, I play console games too, but lately not all that much.

Hey campers, Been around quite some time, but haven't logged on much. I've actually got a good collection of scanned mags / covers in excellent quality for quite a few of the missing issues on the site (especially several of the Amiga mags - I used to have an Amiga 500 and a 4000/040 back in the day). My question is that I did not do these scans myself, although a few of them are from originals I provided. Was reading the rule about self-scanning, wondering how strict you want to be about that for issues that are completely missing. I also did find some very old posts about the CGW museum scans, with complaints about their quality. While I understand they are not perfect, surprised we're not at least mirroring/linking in the interim (and marking accordingly). By the time they appear in better quality, we may very well all be dead. Not trying to claim glory for someone else's hard work, but rather see value in making sure preserved issues are in as many different places as possible - if only to ensure their survival. If you think that is amenable I could certainly contribute some of those Amiga mags (again scan quality may not exceed some of the CGW content). Barring that I suppose I could at least upload the cover images? Let me know your thoughts.

Bablefish - There are a bunch of copies available on Ebay ~ 10 bucks.

The screens just keeping getting better with each new generation, and that makes worlds of difference. Just go with a DS, unless you're trying to collect specific variants. I saw one of the golden Zelda GBA SP's at Nintendo World in New York. On display in the mini museum upstairs.

Gran Turismo was great. Gran Turismo 2 was awesome. The third one had its moments, but some sections of it seemed more work than fun (endurance races anyone?). It was just more of the same with graphics enhancements... When I picked up GT4... I found it... boring. Not too excited about GT5.

Hi, I'm Peter Graves... and I graduated... from the University... of Minnesota. Seriously, glad to be here. Like many of you, I've been deeply concerned with the preservation of gaming/computer history. Thankfully technology has provided us an alternative to constantly explaining to our wives why the gigantic file cabinets full of old mags can't go in the garage. I've been on a personal quest to have "less crap" in my home, and the work you guys are doing here is to be commended. Very much appreciated. I want to help however I can. There alot of different people out there trying to do the same thing. We need to band together. A couple of links some of you may or may not be aware of: DLH's Commodore Archive An amazing scan site for Commodore/Amiga fans. Commodore Magazine, Amiga World, etc. CGW Museum Computer Gaming World Museum, 1st 100 issues of CGW!