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[meppi]

Last updated: May 19

This will be a way to keep track on which magazines I'm currently working on myself.

I'll keep this first post updated as I progress along the way.

Even though I have done a variety of scans over the past couple of years, I have started over and will be rescanning all my old issues as well.
Not only are these new version being scanned and edited with better quality equipment, but the techniques I've been using have also improved considerably since I started doing the original versions several years ago.
My first scans were put out at a width of 1280 and later revised versions went to 1440, but starting with launching OoPA I will be putting all my new issues out at a width of 1920 pixels.
The reason for doing this is plain and simple: quality.
The only part I wasn't happy about, even with my later scans, is that when I resized the original files to 1440 JPGs you could see yellow artifacts pop up around the text on white pages. This had to do with compressing the data to a smaller format, but has been eliminated completely in the 1920 versions.

*Update* as quality standards move on, releases will now feature 2560 pixel versions which are the highest possible versions of these magazines scanned at 300dpi. These are the maximum quality we can offer since the actual scans are just a tiny bit larger, which gets cut off when cropping and straightening the pages.

magazines I'm currently working on:


Club Nintendo Volume 1 Issue 3 - 1989 (UK) - 20 pages - scanned: 20 - edited: 5

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CVG 177 - august 1996 (UK) - 100 pages + 16 freeplay - scanned: 22 + 0 freeplay - edited: 2 + 0

CVG 178 - september 1996 (UK) - 100 pages + 16 freeplay - scanned: 100 + 16 freeplay - edited: 0

CVG 179 - october 1996 (UK) - 100 pages + 16 freeplay - scanned: 100 + 16 freeplay - edited: 9

CVG 180 - november 1996 (UK) - 100 pages + 16 freeplay - scanned: 100 + 16 freeplay - edited: 0

CVG 181 - december 1996 (UK) - 100 pages + 16 freeplay - scanned: 100 + 16 freeplay - edited: 0

CVG 182 - january 1997 (UK) - 100 pages + 16 freeplay - scanned: 100 + 16 freeplay - edited: 0

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Dreamcast Magazine 5 - january 2000 (UK) - 116 pages - scanned: 50 - edited: 0

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Mean Machines 9 - june 1991 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 52 - edited: 18

Mean Machines 10 - july 1991 (UK) - 108 pages - scanned: 108 - edited: 0

Mean Machines 11 - august 1991 (UK) - 108 pages - scanned: 108 - edited: 0

Mean Machines 12 - september 1991 (UK) - 116 pages - scanned: 116 - edited: 0

Mean Machines 13 - october 1991 (UK) - 116 pages - scanned: 116 - edited: 0

Mean Machines 14 - november 1991 (UK) - 132 pages - scanned: 132 - edited: 0

Mean Machines 15 - december 1991 (UK) - 196 pages!!! - scanned: 196 - edited: 0

Mean Machines 16 - january 1992 (UK) - 148 pages - scanned: 26 - edited: 0

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Mean Machines Sega 1 - october 1992 (UK) - 148 pages - scanned: 45 - edited: 0
*I restarted this issue from scratch since I only scanned the first issue with the old scanner. So I might as well redo these 148 pages with the new one so the complete series looks exactly the same.

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MegaTech 4 - april 1992 (UK) - 84 pages - scanned: 84 - edited: 0

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N64 Magazine 7 - october 1997 (UK) - 108 pages - scanned: 108 - edited: 52

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Official Sega Magazine 1 - january 1994 (UK) - 132 pages - scanned: 132 - edited: 77

Official Sega Magazine 2 - february 1994 (UK) - 116 pages - scanned: 42 - edited: 0

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Official Sega Saturn Magazine 12 - october 1996 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 34

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 13 - november 1996 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 14 - december 1996 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 15 - january 1997 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 16 - february 1997 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 17 - march 1997 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 14

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 18 - april 1997 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 19 - may 1997 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 20 - june 1997 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 21 - july 1997 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 22 - august 1997 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

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Sega Pro 7 - may 1992 (UK) - 92 pages - scanned: 92 - edited: 2

Sega Pro 8 - june 1992 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 2 - edited: 0

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Super Play 9 - july 1993 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 9

Super Play 10 - august 1993 (UK) - 100 pages - scanned: 100 - edited: 0

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GameFan
SECRET PROJECT VOLUME.1 - 100% completed
SECRET PROJECT VOLUME.2 - 100% completed
SECRET PROJECT VOLUME.3 - 100% completed
SECRET PROJECT VOLUME.4 - 15% completed
dead?......




CVG 168 - november 1995 (UK)
CVG 169 - december 1995 (UK)
CVG 170 - january 1996 (UK)
CVG 171 - february 1996 (UK)
CVG 172 - march 1996 (UK)
CVG 173 - april 1996 (UK)
CVG 174 - may 1996 (UK)
CVG 175 - june 1996 (UK)
CVG 176 - july 1996 (UK)

Dreamcast Magazine 1 - september 1999 (UK)
Dreamcast Magazine 2 - october 1999 (UK)
Dreamcast Magazine 3 - november 1999 (UK)
Dreamcast Magazine 4 - december 1999 (UK)

MAXIMUM The Video Game Magazine Issue 1 - october 1995 (UK)
MAXIMUM The Video Game Magazine Issue 2 - november 1995 (UK)
MAXIMUM The Video Game Magazine Issue 3 - january 1996 (UK)
MAXIMUM The Video Game Magazine Issue 4 - february 1996 (UK)
MAXIMUM The Video Game Magazine Issue 5 - april 1996 (UK)
MAXIMUM The Video Game Magazine Issue 6 - may 1996 (UK)
MAXIMUM The Video Game Magazine Issue 7 - june 1996 (UK)


Mean Machines 1 - october 1990 (UK)
Mean Machines 2 - november 1990 (UK)
Mean Machines 3 - december 1990 (UK)
Mean Machines 4 - january 1991 (UK)
Mean Machines 5 - february 1991 (UK)
Mean Machines 6 - march 1991 (UK)
Mean Machines 7 - april 1991 (UK)
Mean Machines 8 - may 1991 (UK)

MegaTech 1 - xmas 1991 (UK)
MegaTech 2 - february 1992 (UK)
MegaTech 3 - march 1992 (UK)

N64 Magazine 1 - april 1997 (UK)
N64 Magazine 2 - may 1997 (UK)
N64 Magazine 3 - june 1997 (UK)
N64 Magazine 4 - july 1997 (UK)
N64 Magazine 5 - august 1997 (UK)
N64 Magazine 6 - september 1997 (UK)

Official Sega Saturn Magazine 1 - november 1995 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 2 - december 1995 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 3 - january 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 4 - february 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 5 - march 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 6 - april 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 7 - may 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 8 - june 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 9 - july 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 10 - august 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 11 - september 1996 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 26 - december 1997 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 27 - january 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 28 - february 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 29 - march 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 30 - april 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 31 - may 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 32 - june 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 33 - july 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 34 - august 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 35 - september 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 36 - october 1998 (UK)
Official Sega Saturn Magazine 37 - november 1998 (UK)

Sega Pro 1 - november 1991 (UK)
Sega Pro 2 - december 1991 (UK)
Sega Pro 3 - christmas 1991 (UK)
Sega Pro 4 - february 1992 (UK)
Sega Pro 5 - march 1992 (UK)
Sega Pro 6 - april 1992 (UK)

Super Play 1 - november 1992 (UK)
Super Play 2 - december 1992 (UK)
Super Play 3 - january 1993 (UK)
Super Play 4 - february 1993 (UK)
Super Play 5 - march 1993 (UK)
Super Play 6 - april 1993 (UK)
Super Play 7 - may 1993 (UK)
Super Play 8 - june 1993 (UK)

[BarbieOnWeed]

Super Play 002 for the win! 

[meppi]

Super Play 002 for the win! 

Getting close.

Actually, it would have been this weeks release were it not for the fact that the pages of this particular issue were extremely yellowed. So certain large sections of text needed to be cleaned up letter by letter, which takes takes ages as you already know. But they have to be in top condition before I'm happy to make them public.
This is probably the issue of SP that is in the worst condition out of the full 48 issues I have, so it should be a bit smoother sailing from here on out.

[BarbieOnWeed]

Yeah, and it is so worth it in the end.

[Addicted to Chaos]

This progress report looks out of this world awesome.

Future looks bright here.

[meppi]

Hehe, well you need to remember that I wasn't able to do any editing work for almost 6 weeks, so I was able to build up the scanning part a bit.
And starting this weekend I'm on a 4 week vacation so between long gaming session and watching lots of blurays, I'll be editing away.

[Addicted to Chaos]

Well it's good to hear that your not falling into the all work and no play catagory, and that your getting enough fun through gaming and relaxing through blue rays.

Lately I haven't been watching much of anything, besides the first Dragoon Ball series, before the Z. Only problem is that because I haven't seen them, and because there actually just as good as the Z series, is that I pay attention to it too much, and I'd rather be playing Shining Force 3 (bah, I started from the beginning and at Scenario 2 again) and surfing the web and stuff (just I pgraded my board and CPU + graphics card again... Just to run the saturn emu perfect. Man, I can't belive I lost my Saturn in the last move. What conspiracy is behind it? Most don't even know what it is?. Man I miss that wheel for racing games and 3-D pad for gaming )(Man, it was like the very first model too, bought it a like $500/whatever it was during the early launch)(So yeah, gotta look on EBay for another very soon).

[meppi]

It's been a while since I done this, but I was working on a certain page that I thought might not be recoverable due to the extent of the damage on it.
Seems that during printing there was a smear of ink that ran through a large part of the page.
Turned out that I was able to save the page after all, but it sure took some time reconstructing everything.

So this might give a little insight into the editing process and why it can take a long time before a magazine is ready to go.

I created an animated gif so that it's much easier to compare both before and after pages.
The downfall of using gif is that certain colors come out wrong and there's quite a bit of compression going on that isn't seen in the original files.

I'm gonna put the link here since the image is 2,7MB and thus might take a little to load.

http://www.outofprintarchive.com/GIF/CVG171.gif

[Nreive]

Yeah, I've come across similar printing faults when editing Mega Drive Advanced Gaming issue 1. Here, I found a few pages with white burn type marks across text and screenshots (each about one inch long). Very troublesome to repair.

[meppi]

Indeed, it can get real problematic at times.
Been discussing these issues with KiwiArcader for the past couple of weeks as he's been dealing with a variety of problems like this since he started scanning Zzap64.

I thought it might be interesting to people to see what kind of work exactly goes into a magazine when we talk about restoration.
Many seem to think that it's possible to slap a magazine on a scanner and have a release ready in an hour or two at most.
Always nice to have a bit more info on what takes place behind the scenes I think.

[KiwiArcader]

Hahaha .... don't get me started on this subject.

Seriously though .... these sorts of problems are endemic on the older UK publications like CVG, Computer Gamer, Crash, Zzap64 etc where they were printed on ,well, basically newsprint paper. You know the stuff ... that crappy low grade stuff normally used in daily newspapers. It's cheap compared to gloss paper stock and I guess at the time they weren't really thinking that people would be wanting to read these 20 years down the track or they would've keep the pre-press masters etc to create digital versions which most don't seem to have done.

Anyways ... page bleed is a majour issue with newsprint. And discoloration where oils from fingers have been absorbed. And even the grain of the paper is an issue on some mags believe it or not. Nothing like wood chips to cause scanner problems.

So yeah .... fixing these up requires a LOT of work.

Funnily enough the absolute worst mags I have in my collection are my ANTIC mags. OMG .... later issues were made on even crappier paper than the UK mags and they just go yellow brown across the whole page. Shockers to fix. Still thinking about how to fix those ....

[Addicted to Chaos]

It's been a while since I done this, but I was working on a certain page that I thought might not be recoverable due to the extent of the damage on it.
Seems that during printing there was a smear of ink that ran through a large part of the page.
Turned out that I was able to save the page after all, but it sure took some time reconstructing everything.

So this might give a little insight into the editing process and why it can take a long time before a magazine is ready to go.

I created an animated gif so that it's much easier to compare both before and after pages.
The downfall of using gif is that certain colors come out wrong and there's quite a bit of compression going on that isn't seen in the original files.

I'm gonna put the link here since the image is 2,7MB and thus might take a little to load.

http://www.outofprintarchive.com/GIF/CVG171.gif

You know I always like to see these. But wow, this fix-up looks crazy hard to do. Like how you have to clean screenshots too.

There ain't much I can say than thanks to you all that take their painstaken time to fix these. I obsolutely love the standards established here at OoPA, and I'm glad others are willing to follow it too. So I always wish this place and it's contributing members the best, for makig me and others very happy.

[KiwiArcader]

Sometimes it can be a difficult thing to get it right with this whole preservation thing. Triverse, Meppi and I have often bounced thoughts on "Just how far should one go" when dealing with cleaning up magazines etc. Sometimes we disagree and this is one where we do tend to differ.

I personally believe that when you take the raw scans and then clean them up to the point where they look like a digital edition, that it has changed from preservation to immitation. By that I mean that when you buy a paper based mag you inherit the imprefections that come with that medium ...those being paper quality, sometimes slight alignment issues, color imperfections, even ink smudging on occasion. You can clean them out completely when creating the digital version for here or RM but it's these imperfections that make the hard copy what it is. So I prefer to leave slight imperfections untouched ... little missing ink spots on a screenshot for instance ... as to me it gives the reader a more realistic to the hard copy experience when they read it. This doesn't mean I leave rips on pages etc ... those need to be fixed for sure ... just that I like a little bit of the original mag look about them. Otherwise you might as well just retype the whole mag yourself and paste in the original screenshots for a digital version.

This is why the Zzap64 issue in particular has been particularly difficult for me. The grain in the pages on this were so bad as Meppi can attest with the examples I posted ...  that in order to defeat these issues I've ended up with an almost digital looking version. And my Amiga World submission at RM recently where the magazine was so clean that out came out looking like that anyway. Aaaggghhhh!!!

BTW .... quality is an issue that is usually individual to the person scanning/compiling ... not so much a particular website. Some of the guys on another site go to very similar lengths as Meppi/Triverse in an effort to bring everyone a quality magazine to enjoy. I just enjoy contributing positively .... there's not too many of us doing this so everyone submitting stuff should be applauded for taking the time/effort to do so.

[meppi]

Oh I understand, but I'm not trying to make webpages out of them.
In fact we've been talking about this very point on several occasions, depending on which magazine I was starting to work on.
I want to keep the texture and feeling of the original magazines as much as possible, that's why we went with the 1920 versions for instance. The lower resolution ones were leaving out some of that textured feel and sometimes even replaced it with artifacting, especially around the text.

What I do want to accomplish is to restore the pages with white or black backgrounds to as state that they were when they were first released.
Now not every magazine had this look when it came out, just look at the old CVGs (1-130 or so), these never did have that perfect white look, so in that case I wouldn't use the bleaching technique. And probably not even restore the black section either.
But I would use another technique that removes some of the yellowing from the white pages without disturbing the texture.

It all depends on the magazine in question.
If you take a OSSM or Super Play and look at it in direct sunlight then you'll see that white backgrounds are actually completely white and black backgrounds fully black.
That's why I'm incorporating the bleaching technique in these ones.
I've done many tests on EGM issues as well and came to the conclusion that bleaching just looks wrong for those.
So if I were to start on EGM's I'd go for the anti-yellowing technique which makes this magazine look much more natural.

Not sure if you've bought any of the new EGMs yet, but if you did, look very closely at the pages with white backgrounds.
You can clearly see the wood fibers and even grains woven into the paper.
So this would be another example of a magazine I would never use the bleach approach one.
Not that it would be necessary at this point either since it's brand new. And not that it really matters at it won't be scanned anyway either.

It really just depends on a case by case basis.
For some magazines one technique is perfect, while on another similar one it looks awful and on even others, I need to find a middle ground  of sorts.

After all, I'm not trying to go the George Lucas route and try to give people "the true version of the magazine as it should have been in the first place" if you know what I mean.
That means, errors that were in the original publication will stay, even if it's something that's missing which could be easily fixed. Yet errors that occurred after the magazine was released (tears, spots, discoloration, etc.) as well as printing errors which didn't affect the full run of a magazine will be cleaned up.

[KiwiArcader]

I absolutely agree with that approach as well.

In the case of the Zzap64 issue .... the paper quality has necessitated a huge cleanup on those pages with white backgrounds as the text has been impacted significantly. And although I don't like it I have to admit that whitening those pages has made sense as they are markedly improved as a result. The other pages ... those with coloured backgrounds with no/marginal white text area's have simply been colour corrected and by and large left alone. The result is a mag that looks very nice imho and far, far superior to the existing versions out there.

Five pages to go for editing and then I'll create a 1920 version and upload it for you. Not far off now ....

[meppi]

Looks like CVG171 is certainly pushing my editing skills to the test.

I refrained from starting to work on the cover because it seemed like an impossible task.
I was actually contemplating releasing the magazine when it is finished with the cover as is, well relatively speaking of course.
But then I started giving it a shot as I know I would.
Didn't think about it actually. Just put up 2 podcasts after each other and went to work with a blank mindset.
After just under 4 hours of nothing but editing this cover, here's the result.

I haven't resized the image down beneath 1920 as it took away too much detail.
But again due to using gif as a medium, certain colors don't look quite right and artifacts can be seen that aren't on the jpg version.
Still I think the difference should be obvious.

http://www.outofprintarchive.com/GIF/CVG171cover.gif

I hope you all enjoy this peek behind the scenes.

Now I need a bit of a break I think.

Oh and give the page time to load, the image is about 5MB.

[Nreive]

Nice work there. It's nice to show people just how much work can be involved in the clean up process of these scans.

[Addicted to Chaos]

I hope you all enjoy this peek behind the scenes.

I like "meppi behind the scenes," scenes meppi.


Sorry for the late reply, it's just that I wrote this post allready soon after you made it, only to lose it due to a power failure. Needless to say, since I wrote so much, I was too lazy to redue it.

Heck, I was too lazy to sign in again since my password wasn't saved due to that powerfailure till now.


Anyways, I'm just gonna simplify what I can remeber I wanted to say;

- something about hoping that CVG was gonna be your next release, and it was.
- and that I was looking forward to a none biased against Sega Saturn magazine very much. Especailly as I recall looking back at the EGMs I had collected in the past that EGM was alot more biased against Sega Saturn then I remebered. And heck, there where alot of magazines against Sega Saturn.

I think another magazine that treated Sega Saturn equally or better than the Sonly Playstation was probably (Ultra) Game Players (I have 3 issues of these), and the example that proves these is these 2 reviews, from two same issues;
1) is Nigths 93% VS Crash lame or far too overated-dicoot 83%, and 2) Daytona 90% Vs Ridge Race 82%. And you all know that all other magazines scored opposite for these games.

Also, looking in another issue's review overview/collection of past issues, they have VF2 at 99% with the quote "There's many reason why this game has been given our highest score ever! If you own a Saturn and don't own this game, you're just plain stupid!"

Yeah, I know they sound a bit rude there, but this whole mag has this pretty crazy and very cool sense of humor. So it fits OK if you've read more of that issue. But at least they seem like hardcore gamers.


Though when it comes to my favourite US magazine, GameFan, I know there where at least some hardcore Sega Saturn loving reviewers there + some others really love 2D gaming too.


And yeah, I'm trailling off yapping about my fav system again... Oh well, I don't mind.

[meppi]

If you have trouble with a lost password or anything like that, you're always able to to contact is through admin@outofprintarchive.com btw.
Might come in handy one day.

Oh, I agree that many magazines were very biased or at least partly biased against the Saturn for some reason.

I think the French Joypad was one of the magazines that loved the Saturn as well.
Although it's been a very long time since I read it.
My French seems to have gotten worse than before and to be honest is wasn't that good to begin with.

Didn't know that about Game Players. Never had the opportunity to buy it here back in the day.
Don't really mind those kinds of comments. Sure they aren't strictly "professional", but it sure shows the passion of the person who wrote it.
Just read the Mean Yob section in the Mean Machine magazines to see what rude really it.

[Addicted to Chaos]

Yeah, I could never fully figure out why many magazines had at least some bias against Sega? I mean it was pretty obvious, I'm not losing my mind, am I? But why? Was it that many developers they've talked to complained too much in regards to how many more extra hours they've been up just because they're working on a Saturn project instead of a much simpler PSX with not as much programming talent required? (Well, even if you where a talented programmer, your chances of fully pushing the Saturn was still slim. I always recall that 1 out of 100 programers - Yu Susuki interview). Or that developer talked to magazine staff that they couldn't get the Saturn do display graphics equal to the PSX so it must of been inferior right off the bat?

Basically if the developer influenced the magazine industry when they game to view their cames or interview them? (would of loved to have been an Magazine editor walking in on developers). I mean it is possible. I even recall reading a Lobotamy interview online that said they had a very early Quake version on PSX running better at one point, and that PSX is better. Yet their PSX port of Powersalve is inferior (though in that interview is was said otherwise too ). So what's up?

Or was Sony's deeper pockets/brand name all that magazines saw? I know the Sony brand was strong, but it shouldn't of been that strong for true/closer to hardcore videogamers. And weren't magazine editor supposed to be the most hardcore gamers?... But then again I can think of some magazines that definately did not have gamers working for them either.



But in the end I guess I'm just love figuring out as many of the little details of the rise of Sony & Fall of Sega as possible (and hey, I owned and played them both while they were still fresh. And it's not to say that I'm all Sega biased either as I liked many games on all 90's systems. Especially the 32-bit era - Hence can't live without a PSX either, just that Sega was treated too unfair). That's why I'm so interested in reading these old magazines to see as many perspectives as possible on this great mystery.

[meppi]

I think one of the biggest issues when it comes to Sega bias in the Saturn era was that a lot of people felt burned with the Mega CD and 32X and for some reason couldn't look past that.

Several writers actually wrote things like this in their features or reviews at the time, so I'm willing to bet that this had a large role in the Sega bashing that sometimes went on.
It really shouldn't have happened that way as a previous system really shouldn't be a factor into how a new system gets rated.
It should only be done on the software library of the system itself.

[Addicted to Chaos]

Yes, you've got a good point there. And read things like this in magazines alot too (like from readers in the letter section too).


Now this reminds me as to what software made me buy my systems too;

http://www.outofprintarchive.com/forum/index.php?topic=837.0#new

[Celine]

Yeah, I could never fully figure out why many magazines had at least some bias against Sega?

Well Sega went from selling 20 and more ( way more ) million Genesis in western markets to 3-4 with the Saturn.
The market in the west wasn't large enough to get a full support behind.

Editors choose the side that give them bread and it was the PS1 that time ( N64 had too few games to covers while Saturn became quickly a non-factor ).

[meppi]

Well, I finally finished one of the harder pages I've ever done.

Just remember that any of the weird artifacting that is present in the finished version, as well as in the original, is due to using the GIF format to create the looping image and will not be in the final jpg.

http://www.outofprintarchive.com/GIF/MAXIMUM7.gif

[Addicted to Chaos]

Yeah, I can't believe you did and were able to do that page.


Also, were you trying to get another copy/issue (to no avail), or was the task to daunting, as to why this last issue is so late?

Either way, that's some fine work there, no doubt (showed my brother too, and he was just as shocked as me). And really shows off your mad skills and attention to detail/high quality... not to mention dedication!

[meppi]

That was indeed the problem why I put off this issue when I had done the previous six.
I ran into those pages and didn't think it would be possible to do them.
So I started looking for a new copy, but this particular one seems very hard to come by.

At first I didn't even know that there were seven issues of MAXIMUM, as I was told by someone who sold me the first couple of issues that there were only six.
Until Richard Leadbetter himself actually corrected me on the MMM board and told me there were in fact seven issues.
As a matter of fact, this is one of the issues that Richard gave me from his own personal collection so I'm not sure if I would have been able to find one otherwise.
The last issue had a pretty low print run as I recall due to them knowing it would be the final issue as EMAP was pulling the plug on it.

This particular page was done over the course of 4 days actually since it was such a huge job to get everything back together.
The worst part is that page 42 has the same problem, although on the other side, so luckily there isn't as much text damaged.
The problem there is that the text that was damaged is in smaller print which is even harder to recreate and replace.
As for the images, they are so damaged that it's nearly impossible to recreate them perfectly.
This seems like the only concession that I had to make up till this point, but to be fair, no one probably would have known if I didn't post the comparison.

That's what I've mentioned time and again, that it's the work of the one who cleans up the page to make it look like he didn't even have to touch the page to begin with.

[KiwiArcader]

I'm in awe of the effort you put into this stuff at times.

I have so many issues to get through I am pretty much in 'scan them, clean them up to  a level I am happy with then upload them' mode otherwise I'll never get through the huge collection I have. I know it sounds lazy but I am a lot older than most people here and have less time to get them out there before I go senile or die of old age etc so I'd rather get them out and let younger people do a little bit of touchup work if they feel it needs it. Not to say I'd put out crap or anything .... just that I want my mags, which are the old UK stuff, available given some of them are nowhere to be seen on the 'net ... RISC users, BBC micro's as an example.

BIG thumbs up to you for your efforts though ... 

[jaytheham]

Hey Meppi, Ive been wondering how you´ve been scanning N64 Magazine, are you taking the issues apart to get flat pages or are you removing the spine distortion in post-processsing?

[meppi]

Sorry for replying a bit late here.
I've been very sick these past few days so besides not being able to work on new releases, I've barely been online.

I don't cut up the magazines.
The way I do it for the N64 magazines is to scan each page from the left as well as from the right side and then join them back together in Photoshop.
When the spine is in the center of the scanner I put a bit more pressure on the lid than I usually do, which results in the spine looking close to perfect.

As far as I know this is the only way to get the spines to look flawless, besides cutting the magazines up or getting a very expensive A3 scanner.

[Addicted to Chaos]

Haven't been around lately either (so I got's a bit of catching up), but it sure sucks to hear you haven't been feeling well lately.

But on the bright side, I hope you are well enough to enough some of the rest your getting.


So... what's up meppi, and what's ailing you? When do you think you'll be better? Can you still enjoy some gaming/reading/TV? (Or maybe some good medication to make TV better. I know when I was on T3's for 1 week for having 4 wisdom teeth out, watching TV great!) Me, I've decided to dig out my old (1994 to issue 107) GamePro issues for out in the open to read every now and then, and am currently playing & really enjoying Shining the Holy Ark for my second time (since around 1 1/2) years for the Sega Saturn. You know of/played this game?


Well, reply whenever. And I wish you well soon.