New Releases - 12/23

[Kiwi]

Kudos to Kiwi and everyone else for their help in preventing this piece of history from being lost.

Well, my advanced age  meant my first exposure to gaming or anything computing was via the Atari 800XL and Amstrad CPC home computers. At that point in New Zealand the older consoles like the A2600 had well and truly crashed. I went on to own Atari ST and Amiga computers and at the time I considered the Sega MD and SNES consoles to be rubbish. My first console was the Nintendo 64. I guess that's why my own magazine collection tended almost exclusively towards computers as opposed to consoles. While it's unlucky in that I haven't contributed a lot of console mags outside of those purchased specifically for scanning since starting the website I would say it's allowed me to contribute mags not normally seen on some other sites.

What does surprise me is that UK mags were predominantly game oriented back in the day while USA mags (RUN, Compute, Amiga World, Byte, PC Magazine etc) tended to be more productivity oriented yet they haven't got much interest on USA based websites. Nintendo Power, EGM, Gamefan is all people rave over. Very weird!! Maybe everyone left over there is too young to remember C64's?

Anyways, I'm happy to keep on pushing out computing mags so here's Commodore User #67 to remind us of the golden age of home computing IMHO.

[kitsunebi]

I think you solved it yourself - UK computer mags were game-oriented, USA mags were productivity-oriented.  Not many people get nostalgic for an ancient word processor they used to use, but lots of people remember old games fondly.  So they satisfy that nostalgia with mags featuring games - in the UK that means computer mags, and in the USA it means video game mags. 

The reason for the divide has been discussed before and basically comes down to finances.  The UK had access to cheap computers with gaming capabilities, and the USA did not, so kids there turned to consoles.  My family owned a PC, but like every family I knew with a PC, it was definitely NOT purchased for games.  Not in a million years would my parents have shelled out $1500-2000 for a game machine.  But as a family computer used for productivity...it was an investment.

[Kiwi]

Well, my first IBM PC, a 386DX-33 was purchased purely to play Chuck Yeager's Air Combat. Ahh! the good old days of DOS

Antic #14 is now available.

[kitsunebi]

Well sure.  But when you got that 386DX you weren't a grade schooler dependent entirely upon your parents' generosity for everything you owned.

LOGiN #358 is HERE.

[slider1983]

I guess that's why my own magazine collection tended almost exclusively towards computers as opposed to consoles. While it's unlucky in that I haven't contributed a lot of console mags outside of those purchased specifically for scanning since starting the website I would say it's allowed me to contribute mags not normally seen on some other sites.

I think in retrospect that was a blessing considering we now have all these computer magazines digitised, especially the Australian/NZ stuff which is much rarer to find now than something like Nintendo Power.

What does surprise me is that UK mags were predominantly game oriented back in the day while USA mags (RUN, Compute, Amiga World, Byte, PC Magazine etc) tended to be more productivity oriented yet they haven't got much interest on USA based websites. Nintendo Power, EGM, Gamefan is all people rave over.

Home computers weren't geared towards games in the US. The UK had a market for all this. The other thing is also a lack of exposure or popularity to other platforms outside of Europe. You ask a US gamer what gaming magazines from the 90's they are familiar with by eye and they can count them on one hand. Ask a UK gamer and they can remember more since there was more choice. On the Amiga alone I can list off memory at least five magazines. Someone outside of the UK would have more trouble doing that. I guess most preservation websites don't care much for magazines they never grew up with. A shame really.

[kitsunebi]

I guess most preservation websites don't care much for magazines they never grew up with. A shame really.

Not a shame.  Just the way it is.  I doubt you've preserved many mags you didn't grow up with, either.  Most scanners do exactly what Kiwi has done and preserve their own collections. That typically means mags they purchased in their home countries.  Dunno about the UK, but in the US, you were EXTREMELY unlikely to find any foreign mags on sale.  The first UK mag I ever saw on sale in America was Retro Gamer (a title aimed at adults and sold at a price only adults could afford.)

Kiwi is in the somewhat unique position of living in a country that apparently sold quite a few non-native mags (primarily from the UK and Australia, I imagine, though it seems he's also picked up quite a few titles from the USA.)  And I'm in the position of living abroad, so although I didn't grow up reading them, I decided to take up scanning Japanese mags simply because I have easy access to them (and no one else was doing it at the time).  But again, most scanners in the USA will scan USA mags and scanners in the UK will scan UK mags, not ONLY because those are the mags they care about most, but because those are the mags available to them.  Nothing wrong with that, and no one should feel the need to do otherwise.

[Kiwi]

It's a good thing I did create the OGM website all those years as it pushed me into trawling the local auction site for bargains on the magazines front. Over the years I was lucky enough to pick up several large auction lots of magazines, many of which I would never have bid for individually. PC World (NZ) and Bits & Bytes for example were just part of bigger auction lots and I acquired them for relatively modest prices. Now I'm thankful that I picked them up as it's nice to see local content in the download area.

Now, everyone wants exorbitant prices for magazines on the auction site. Add to that a complete lack of volume of computing/gaming content to encourage lower prices. I'm afraid the heyday of magazine auctions here well and truly over.

Still, I do have a LOT of mags still to scan so plenty to keep me going 

[Kiwi]

Micro User #07 is now available.

[Kiwi]

The May 1984 issue of Bits & Bytes is now available.

[Gregorick]

You ask a US gamer what gaming magazines from the 90's they are familiar with by eye and they can count them on one hand. Ask a UK gamer and they can remember more since there was more choice.

Just from a quick glance at what I have to scan in my pile next to the computer I can see 10 different Playstation-specific magazines. Some I have barely any recognition of. It's crazy how many magazines for a specific system there was here in the UK. My favourite console was the Saturn and that was obviously quite a catastrophic failure here but even that had four, fairly large magazines running at the same time.

As you can guess from my uploads, I am mostly concerned with 90's/00's UK console mags. Even in this space there seems to have been concerted efforts to focus on a few select magazines. That's why I have tried to concentrate on getting those magazines scanned that have literally zero footprint online like STATION, Engine and others.

[Kiwi]

That's why I have tried to concentrate on getting those magazines scanned that have literally zero footprint online like STATION, Engine and others.

Everyone has their particular likes/dislikes which drives their magazine purchases. I have very little PlayStation content, most of which is NZ/Australian, so your having UK titles, especially uncommon titles like those you mentioned is really great for the preservation scene.

The May 1984 issue of Your Computer (UK) gets scanned and added to the download area.

[Kiwi]

Commodore User #15 is now available.

[Kiwi]

The August 1984 issue of Bits & Bytes is now available.

[Kiwi]

Gregorick provides us with a scan of Complete A-Z of PlayStation Games #03 with Lara Croft looking particularly healthy on the cover 

[Kiwi]

Amstrad Computer User #35 is now available.