5 ms·

Old Games Magazines

103 points by ritchie_13 2y ago

jay_kyburz 2y ago
I thought it was going to be more like this gaming mag. https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/Dragon%20Magazine%2C%20The%20Art%20of/ https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/Dragon%... ps. My era of gaming starts around issue 100ish.
- jhbadger 2y ago
  Unfortunately, "Gaming" and "Gamers" only refer to video games and their players in modern usage.
coreyp_1 2y ago
I feel the same towards the "Computer Chronicles", which, IMO, is the best example of unbiased tech reporting that I have ever seen. I still love to watch the old episodes. Unfortunately, even though I have most of the 20 year history of episodes, many are still missing. Internet Archive, Individual episodes. Unorganized except for seasons. Many different video versions. 965 Gigs: https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles Internet Archive, single zip file. Re-transcoded, better organized and documented as to Repeat, Missing, and foreign language versions. 83.5 gigs: https://archive.org/details/computer-chronicles-full-epidoses https://archive.org/details/computer-chronicles-full-epidose... If downloading from the Internet Archive, there is a CLI tool called "ia".
- boomboomsubban 2y ago
  >If downloading from the Internet Archive, there is a CLI tool called "ia". As that's not the easiest search target, https://archive.org/developers/internetarchive/cli.html https://archive.org/developers/internetarchive/cli.html
  - coreyp_1 2y ago
    Thanks! I was in between meetings so didn't have time to elaborate. I love the `ia` tool, but it drives me crazy that it can't resume a failed download. Some files are fast (~30 meg/sec). Others are painfully slow (~100 kb/sec). The same collection can contain fast and slow downloads. I had a file that kept failing when using ia, after about 6 hours of downloading at the slow speed. I switched to Chrome, which still downloaded at the slow speed, but Chrome would attempt to automatically resume the download, and if that failed, you can press a button to ask Chrome to try to resume it again. I have had to fall back to that clunky solution several times. My only other concern is that ia does not download files in parallel. Aside from my minor complaints, I'm thankful that it exists, and I have told other about it since discovering it myself in the last few months.
- dfxm12 2y ago
  There are a lot of episodes on YT as well, if you haven't already looked there. https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerChroniclesYT https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerChroniclesYT
  - coreyp_1 2y ago
    I know about it, but I haven't looked yet. In the large episode group, there are 658 episodes. The YouTube listing doesn't make it easy to search for a particular episode, though, and YouTube's compression is horrible. I face the same dilemma on Bob Ross' The Joy Of Painting. I would love to download them, and they are on YouTube, but the compression makes them look really bad. Well, that, and I'm not sure how to download a huge number of vids from YouTube like that. :/
tac19 2y ago
What will be the vital source of cultural history when people someday look back to where we are now?
- SllX 2y ago
  TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Instagram, Reddit, Wikipedia (including the Talk pages), KnowYourMeme and Urban Dictionary. Probably Discord too.
  - tac19 2y ago
    Those persist only at the whim of a corporation. There is nothing that preserves them, as they were at a given time, or keeps them in existence if their owner goes out of business or is cast out because of political feuds. Not that there is a perfect record of every cultural artifact before the digital age of course, maybe it'll all work out somehow.
    - SllX 2y ago
      Correct, but if you’re trying to capture today, these are the lion’s share of what you want to capture.
    - NoboruWataya 2y ago
      Indeed, a lot of potentially interesting physical media has no doubt been destroyed, and more still is surely sitting somewhere inaccessible to those who would like to access it. But there is arguably a higher risk in a world where everything sits on servers controlled by for-profit corporations. Which is why organisations like the Internet Archive are so important. If you are concerned about this stuff I would suggest donating to IA, or at least making offline backups of the data you consider to be important (both personally and culturally).
      - WalterBright 2y ago
        > for-profit corporations Non-profits go dark when they run out of money, too.
classichasclass 2y ago
Computer magazines, too. I still have my personal library of COMPUTE!, COMPUTE!'s Gazette, Family Computing and Creative Computing, and various scattered issues of BYTE, Ahoy!, RUN and Micro 6502. They're a window into a different era, there's something about leafing through the well-worn pages that a PDF copy doesn't recreate, and they don't link rot. (They just rot if stored improperly.)
- WalterBright 2y ago
  I always had a soft spot for Creative Computing. I enjoyed their silly line drawings and the irreverent prose. In its later years it got kinda stodgy, though.
LorenDB 2y ago
Tangentially related: I wish there was still a good selection of tech magazines in print. Everything has moved to digital only nowadays.
- GuinansEyebrows 2y ago
  Imagine a print edition of LWN
JKCalhoun 2y ago
>... while the Internet Archive does contain patchy collections of scanned magazines, it is vulnerable to legal challenges from copyright holders. Yeah, been downloading those and other magazines while I can.
driscoll42 2y ago
RetroMags - hhttps://www.retromags.com/ https://www.retromags.com/ has 5218 various gaming magazine issues and strategy guides one can download to check out! Looks like the VGHF and RetroMags are working together from forum posts, with the VGHF doing a lot of work on making them more accessible than a raw cbz/pdf download.
throwaway37485 2y ago
Used to get C+VG in my teens. It would have reviews of new games as well as tips, maps, interviews with developers and game code to type in.
esafak 2y ago
The most memorable one for me was Zero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_(video_game_magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_(video_game_magazine)) because it did not feel like other games magazines. The writers displayed a more adult sense of humor, in my recollection. Have a look: https://archive.org/details/zero-magazine https://archive.org/details/zero-magazine
qw 2y ago
I subscribed to "CU Amiga" and "Amiga Format". I kept them for a long time, but had to throw them away when I moved a few years ago.
rl3 2y ago
I still have my December 1999 issue of PC Gamer. Always bet on Duke: https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/original/8/84192/1502605-700300_duke_bandwidth.jpg https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/original/8/84192/1502605...
JoblessWonder 2y ago
I used to devour GamePro magazines (and was against Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) for some reason.) I also randomly received a free subscription to the print magazine "Internet Underground" which really opened up my world to some new websites. Link to two issues of Internet Underground: https://archive.org/details/Internet.Underground.v02n06.June.1997 https://archive.org/details/Internet.Underground.v02n06.June... https://archive.org/details/InternetUnderground01Dec1995/page/n57/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/InternetUnderground01Dec1995/pag...
jjpones 2y ago
Nearly two decades ago, I spent my time as a young teen on a Korean MMO called Flyff. It was pretty cool to read a forum post from one of the EDGE writers gathering people's opinions on the cosmetics they liked using for their characters. I posted my reply and then a few months later got to see my post on print! A neat little core memory.
birdalbrocum 2y ago
When I was a kid, every month I was waiting to get the demo CDs of the Turkish gaming magazine "Level". It was such fun times. I remember in one of those magazines, they had a small tutorials for C++ to make games and it was the first time that I tried programming with games magazine actually.
racefan76 2y ago
Very cool what the VGHF is doing. In addition to magazines, old video game forums (old being early 2000s in this context) seem interesting to read from the few snippets I've come across.
stodor89 2y ago
Archive of all Bulgarian video game magazines: https://projectlazarus.bg/magazine-rack/ https://projectlazarus.bg/magazine-rack/
- rasz 2y ago
  Polish ones: https://stare.e-gry.net/czasopisma https://stare.e-gry.net/czasopisma
- mobilio 2y ago
  Благодаря! In English: Thank you!
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
kryptonomist 2y ago
French readers are blessed with Abandonware Magazines and more than 20k scanned magazines: https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/ https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/
apple4ever 2y ago
MacAddict and GamePro were my world! I was able to download them and a bunch from RetroMags

103 points by ritchie_13 2y ago

I thought it was going to be more like this gaming mag. https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/Dragon%20Magazine%2C%20The%20Art%20of/ https://archive.org/details/DragonMagazine260_201801/Dragon%... ps. My era of gaming starts around issue 100ish.

jhbadger 2y ago
Unfortunately, "Gaming" and "Gamers" only refer to video games and their players in modern usage.

coreyp_1 2y ago

I feel the same towards the "Computer Chronicles", which, IMO, is the best example of unbiased tech reporting that I have ever seen. I still love to watch the old episodes. Unfortunately, even though I have most of the 20 year history of episodes, many are still missing. Internet Archive, Individual episodes. Unorganized except for seasons. Many different video versions. 965 Gigs: https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles https://archive.org/details/Computer_Chronicles Internet Archive, single zip file. Re-transcoded, better organized and documented as to Repeat, Missing, and foreign language versions. 83.5 gigs: https://archive.org/details/computer-chronicles-full-epidoses https://archive.org/details/computer-chronicles-full-epidose... If downloading from the Internet Archive, there is a CLI tool called "ia".

boomboomsubban 2y ago
>If downloading from the Internet Archive, there is a CLI tool called "ia". As that's not the easiest search target, https://archive.org/developers/internetarchive/cli.html https://archive.org/developers/internetarchive/cli.html
- coreyp_1 2y ago
  Thanks! I was in between meetings so didn't have time to elaborate. I love the `ia` tool, but it drives me crazy that it can't resume a failed download. Some files are fast (~30 meg/sec). Others are painfully slow (~100 kb/sec). The same collection can contain fast and slow downloads. I had a file that kept failing when using ia, after about 6 hours of downloading at the slow speed. I switched to Chrome, which still downloaded at the slow speed, but Chrome would attempt to automatically resume the download, and if that failed, you can press a button to ask Chrome to try to resume it again. I have had to fall back to that clunky solution several times. My only other concern is that ia does not download files in parallel. Aside from my minor complaints, I'm thankful that it exists, and I have told other about it since discovering it myself in the last few months.
dfxm12 2y ago
There are a lot of episodes on YT as well, if you haven't already looked there. https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerChroniclesYT https://www.youtube.com/@ComputerChroniclesYT
- coreyp_1 2y ago
  I know about it, but I haven't looked yet. In the large episode group, there are 658 episodes. The YouTube listing doesn't make it easy to search for a particular episode, though, and YouTube's compression is horrible. I face the same dilemma on Bob Ross' The Joy Of Painting. I would love to download them, and they are on YouTube, but the compression makes them look really bad. Well, that, and I'm not sure how to download a huge number of vids from YouTube like that. :/

tac19 2y ago

What will be the vital source of cultural history when people someday look back to where we are now?

SllX 2y ago
TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Spotify, Instagram, Reddit, Wikipedia (including the Talk pages), KnowYourMeme and Urban Dictionary. Probably Discord too.
- tac19 2y ago
  Those persist only at the whim of a corporation. There is nothing that preserves them, as they were at a given time, or keeps them in existence if their owner goes out of business or is cast out because of political feuds. Not that there is a perfect record of every cultural artifact before the digital age of course, maybe it'll all work out somehow.
  - SllX 2y ago
    Correct, but if you’re trying to capture today, these are the lion’s share of what you want to capture.
  - NoboruWataya 2y ago
    Indeed, a lot of potentially interesting physical media has no doubt been destroyed, and more still is surely sitting somewhere inaccessible to those who would like to access it. But there is arguably a higher risk in a world where everything sits on servers controlled by for-profit corporations. Which is why organisations like the Internet Archive are so important. If you are concerned about this stuff I would suggest donating to IA, or at least making offline backups of the data you consider to be important (both personally and culturally).
    - WalterBright 2y ago
      > for-profit corporations Non-profits go dark when they run out of money, too.

classichasclass 2y ago

Computer magazines, too. I still have my personal library of COMPUTE!, COMPUTE!'s Gazette, Family Computing and Creative Computing, and various scattered issues of BYTE, Ahoy!, RUN and Micro 6502. They're a window into a different era, there's something about leafing through the well-worn pages that a PDF copy doesn't recreate, and they don't link rot. (They just rot if stored improperly.)

WalterBright 2y ago
I always had a soft spot for Creative Computing. I enjoyed their silly line drawings and the irreverent prose. In its later years it got kinda stodgy, though.

LorenDB 2y ago

Tangentially related: I wish there was still a good selection of tech magazines in print. Everything has moved to digital only nowadays.

GuinansEyebrows 2y ago
Imagine a print edition of LWN

JKCalhoun 2y ago

>... while the Internet Archive does contain patchy collections of scanned magazines, it is vulnerable to legal challenges from copyright holders. Yeah, been downloading those and other magazines while I can.

driscoll42 2y ago

RetroMags - hhttps://www.retromags.com/ https://www.retromags.com/ has 5218 various gaming magazine issues and strategy guides one can download to check out! Looks like the VGHF and RetroMags are working together from forum posts, with the VGHF doing a lot of work on making them more accessible than a raw cbz/pdf download.

throwaway37485 2y ago

Used to get C+VG in my teens. It would have reviews of new games as well as tips, maps, interviews with developers and game code to type in.

esafak 2y ago

The most memorable one for me was Zero (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_(video_game_magazine) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_(video_game_magazine)) because it did not feel like other games magazines. The writers displayed a more adult sense of humor, in my recollection. Have a look: https://archive.org/details/zero-magazine https://archive.org/details/zero-magazine

qw 2y ago

I subscribed to "CU Amiga" and "Amiga Format". I kept them for a long time, but had to throw them away when I moved a few years ago.

rl3 2y ago

I still have my December 1999 issue of PC Gamer. Always bet on Duke: https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/original/8/84192/1502605-700300_duke_bandwidth.jpg https://www.giantbomb.com/a/uploads/original/8/84192/1502605...

JoblessWonder 2y ago

I used to devour GamePro magazines (and was against Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) for some reason.) I also randomly received a free subscription to the print magazine "Internet Underground" which really opened up my world to some new websites. Link to two issues of Internet Underground: https://archive.org/details/Internet.Underground.v02n06.June.1997 https://archive.org/details/Internet.Underground.v02n06.June... https://archive.org/details/InternetUnderground01Dec1995/page/n57/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/InternetUnderground01Dec1995/pag...

jjpones 2y ago

Nearly two decades ago, I spent my time as a young teen on a Korean MMO called Flyff. It was pretty cool to read a forum post from one of the EDGE writers gathering people's opinions on the cosmetics they liked using for their characters. I posted my reply and then a few months later got to see my post on print! A neat little core memory.

birdalbrocum 2y ago

When I was a kid, every month I was waiting to get the demo CDs of the Turkish gaming magazine "Level". It was such fun times. I remember in one of those magazines, they had a small tutorials for C++ to make games and it was the first time that I tried programming with games magazine actually.

racefan76 2y ago

Very cool what the VGHF is doing. In addition to magazines, old video game forums (old being early 2000s in this context) seem interesting to read from the few snippets I've come across.

stodor89 2y ago

Archive of all Bulgarian video game magazines: https://projectlazarus.bg/magazine-rack/ https://projectlazarus.bg/magazine-rack/

rasz 2y ago
Polish ones: https://stare.e-gry.net/czasopisma https://stare.e-gry.net/czasopisma
mobilio 2y ago
Благодаря! In English: Thank you!

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

kryptonomist 2y ago

French readers are blessed with Abandonware Magazines and more than 20k scanned magazines: https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/ https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/

apple4ever 2y ago

MacAddict and GamePro were my world! I was able to download them and a bunch from RetroMags