Your MegaZone Magazine Rack

[Blake00]

I noticed you're one of the very few websites preserving old copies of MegaZone magazine here:
http://amr.abime.net/issues_44

Am curious to know if any of the people who helped set that up are still here? And if you're interested in adding more content? (I'm guessing you're only interested in the early multi format era that covered Amiga and not the later Sega only era)

If so maybe we can help each other out as I have many issues from the multi format era and it looks like one or more of you guys have at least 3 pre issue 16 mags we don't have!

Also if others here are Australian, you have a good retro gaming mate who’s an Aussie, or you know a retro gaming influencer with Aus fans then maybe you can help with this preservation attempt too!

For those that have no idea what I'm talking about I’ve been working with others to try and digitally preserve copies of a great old Australian video game electronics magazine called MegaZone that covered PC & Amiga (with a particular focus on point & click adventures), Atari, Nintendo and a lots of SEGA stuff (it eventually became SEGA only in its final years).

At this point in time 42 of the 56 issues have been found and scanned by various collectors and myself leaving 14 issues still missing, all from the magazines earliest years. Many of the magazines found are missing their posters and some occasionally had supplement mini books that may be missing too. We’re also trying to digitize any MegaZone TV commercials out there on old VHS video cassettes as we have rescued 2 but know there are more (I remember seeing more as a kid).

More info about what MegaZone is and how people can help here:
https://blakessanctum.wordpress.com/...eds-your-help/

[Blake00]

Small update guys.. finally my efforts have netted a new find. A fellow named Colin contacted me over email and informed me that he has two MegaComp issues (pre-MegaZone Issue 2 and 4) and the first MegaZone along with several more early issues from 1990 (Issue 5 and what we believe is Issue 7 and 9). He's sent me pictures of all the covers however so far he's only scanned one mag for me and I haven't heard from him for a while since sadly so fingers crossed he does the others eventually. That one mag was MegaComp Issue 2 and sure enough it mentions the name change from MegaCom (Issue 1) which confirms the NLA records. The scan is not of the best quality but beggars can't be choosers so I've added it to The MegaZone Archive !



Another fellow recently posted a comment in one of my other threads about this search claiming that Issue 56 was not really the last one and that a few months later another issue appeared and that a letter he wrote to them was in it. I find that hard to believe as Issue 56 clearly states that it's the last plus I was a subscriber and the only thing I got sent to me from them after Issue 56 was a cheque in the mail refunding me the rest of my subscription lol!

On and yet another fellow sent me pictures of some sort of Sega bucket (called Mega Booster Pak) promotion that was associated with MegaZone. I can't see the word MegaZone written on them anywhere so I'm not sure about adding them to the archive at this stage. Maybe they were more of a Sega Club thing?

And finally I also saw some more little supplementary 'Mini Megazone' fold out booklets (similar to my one pictured below) on ebay recently. However the seller wanted 80 bucks EACH for them though so no one bought them. :/ In the end I just took his pictures from the sale, maybe I'll fashion them into something for the archives.

[Minuous]

Nice find there. I hope issue 3 turns up, I recall it had an interesting article about the Australian cracking scene.

[Blake00]

Sadly after giving me Issue 2 the guy went quiet.. so no Issue 4, 5, 7 and 9 after all.

[Minuous]

Issue #1 just appeared here...

https://commodore.bombjack.org/gener...om/megacom.htm

[Blake00]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Issue #1 just appeared here...

https://commodore.bombjack.org/gener...om/megacom.htm

OH MY GOD.. you sir are a friggin legend!!!

The one that started it all.. unbelievable!

I need to go have a chat with the fellow running that site!

[Minuous]

Issue #4 is here:

https://archive.org/search.php?query...rt=titleSorter

[Blake00]

Originally Posted by Minuous

Issue #4 is here:

https://archive.org/search.php?query...rt=titleSorter

You just linked me to my own collection mate haha. When you see me posting about preserving the mags I find, that is where I put them heh.

Thanks anyway though and jeez you're fast lol, as I literally scanned and uploaded that last night and haven't finished setting up its fields lol! Managed to bag it on ebay..

EDIT: Oh wait.. that was Issue 9 I did last night. Issue 4 I put up a week or so ago after someone kindly scanned it and sent me the pdf over email. I did make some updates to it last night though which appears to have broken the thumbnail so I better go fix that!

Few other recent additions too. Will do a proper announcement later as I'm still editing and uploading stuff!

[Blake00]

Hi guys! Time for that new update as we’ve had some great new developments on the SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive Project ! Unfortunately Colin is having some problems with his scanner so I still don’t have all the issues he offered however others have come forward and I’ve been able to score some big additions to the The MegaZone Archive !

First I’ve gotta start with the best one. Big thanks to @Minuous for letting me know plus David & his friends over at DLH’s Commodore Archive for uploading the file and giving me permission to copy, because WE HAVE ISSUE 1! Yes really, the first issue from the late 1980s that started it all! And sure enough as suspected issue 1 was called MegaCom without the P on the end (before it was changed to MegaComp and then MegaZone).


I’ve also been contacted by Mick Elliot who had the super rare Issue 4 of MegaComp (the final issue before the name change to MegaZone) and kindly offered to scan it for me. This means we now have every issue before the name change to MegaZone except Issue 3. Fingers crossed we score that one one day too!


Then I got lucky on ebay when I saw someone was selling a massive collection of MegaZones and I noticed 2 of them I didn’t have in my physical collection, Issue 9 and Issue 22. So I contacted the seller and negotiated them taking those 2 out and selling separately to me! Issue 22 is already in the online archive however Issue 9 is not! So I’ve scanned it in high quality and added it to the collection! Love that Arnie Total Recall cover!


And finally, as mentioned in my last update I’ve also managed to bag some more super rare MegaZone subscription & game catalogue foldout booklets. They were being sold on ebay or an utterly ridiculous price I was unwilling to pay. The seller had no interest in dropping the price however thankfully they did complete scans of ever page for the sale pictures. This allowed me to download them, rotate them (they were all wonky), and clean them up a bit to make them readable. They’re far from perfect but they’re readable which is the important thing. I’ve labeled them as Issue 5 and 20 supplements however I’m only guessing which issues they came with due to their similar content (Issue 5 the first MegaZone is still missing from the archive but Colin has sent me it’s cover).


There are now only 10 issues missing from the MegaZone preservation collection (issues 3, 5-8, and 11-15)! Well most likely 10 lol as there may be a mythical Issue 57 out there! A fellow on this forum claims the summer issue 56 was not really the last despite the issue saying it was and all subscriptions (including my own) being canceled and refunded. He says a final issue 57 showed up at news agencies however he’s sadly lost his copy. Can anyone else confirm this mystery issue exists? Anyway, big thank you to everyone for their help! Make sure you visit the The MegaZone Archive to see these latest additions.

[dreamkatcha]

Are you aware there are some stray games review pages taken from Amiga Action lurking in at least a few of these PDFs? Some examples can be seen in issues 19 and 20. I don't think a cross-publishing relationship was in place so suspect something went wrong.

Thanks for sharing anyway. I'm enjoying checking out what the other side of the globe had to say about so many of the things that shaped my childhood.

One thing that leapt out at me is an ad for the Atari Lynx. It's totally alien to the UK marketing industry to reference other brands. Here they mention Reebok Pumps and a particular model of skateboard/deck in the headlining slogan.

There's also an interesting section on Sega's wordprocessor cartridge. Not something you'd naturally associate with the company that gave us the Mega Drive and Sonic.

[Blake00]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

Are you aware there are some stray games review pages taken from Amiga Action lurking in at least a few of these PDFs? Some examples can be seen in issues 19 and 20. I don't think a cross-publishing relationship was in place so suspect something went wrong.

Thanks for sharing anyway. I'm enjoying checking out what the other side of the globe had to say about so many of the things that shaped my childhood.

One thing that leapt out at me is an ad for the Atari Lynx. It's totally alien to the UK marketing industry to reference other brands. Here they mention Reebok Pumps and a particular model of skateboard/deck in the headlining slogan.

There's also an interesting section on Sega's wordprocessor cartridge. Not something you'd naturally associate with the company that gave us the Mega Drive and Sonic.

You think a scanning accident is more likely than a cross publishing arrangement? lol

I didn't do those ones but I've looked and considering every page in issues 19 and 20 are numbered and have the magazine name written on the bottom I don't think it's a scanning accident.

In this era of the magazine's history it was being worked on in the same offices as Sega Ozisoft (who were also the main distributor for a lot of non-Sega computer stuff in Australia too eg probably Amiga) and some of the staff on the mag actually worked for Sega (hence the lack of Nintendo coverage haha). Eventually Sega would take full ownership of the mag but still continue to publish Amiga content (likely due to those connections). So I'd say that they had the necessary connections to arrange use Amiga reviews from Europe. I know a guy that worked there during this time so I can check with him to be sure though.

Anyway I'm glad you enjoyed the read! There's certainly some rare gems covered in those mags (ie crazy sega extensions that never made it out of Japan but back then they thought/hoped that they might lol).

.

[dreamkatcha]

Update: I kept digging and found acknowledgement of Amiga Action's review contributions on page 5 of issue 10.

As the proud holder of a PHD in Doingstuffinawaythat'snotpropershoddyology, I have to point out that the glaring contrast in DTP styles with no explanation sticks out like a sore thumb.

Looking again now more closely, I can see that those Amiga Action pages are referenced in the index (albeit without attribution), yet the original page numbers have been obscured to ensure the reader's attention isn't drawn to them being out of sequence and the fact that they were taken from Amiga Action (each of the original page number boxes includes a reference to the magazine's title). After the inserted pages, MegaZone's number sequence commences as though the previous ones had been re-numbered.

Also, the Amiga Action accolade/recommendation triangles have been replaced with MegaZone ones, removing the league rating reference, which wouldn't have made any sense unless that feature was reproduced too. Then in the summary box, the articles' authors have been removed to anonymise them. Again, the league roll call is missing. Nevertheless, they forgot to remove the 'Action info' headers.

Yes, so clearly not a recent scanning accident, but a deliberate effort to republish content. With permission I expect, but surely they could have done it in a more professional way and without dismissing the original writers' contribution?

This sort of thing occurred in the UK too, though in those mags you'd tend to see a conspicuous acknowledgement of the contents' origins and an explanation of a 'sister' mag relationship if one existed.

In contrast, in some cases, you'd see the same reviews crop up in an Atari magazine with all reference to the Amiga removed. Incidentally, was that Amiga Action/ST Action? I can't remember now.

I wonder how many indigenous MegaZone readers imported Amiga Action from the UK and spotted the regurgitated content? I'd be a bit miffed if I'd paid for some of the same articles twice.

[Blake00]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

I wonder how many indigenous MegaZone readers imported Amiga Action from the UK and spotted the regurgitated content? I'd be a bit miffed if I'd paid for some of the same articles twice.

Yeah I wonder that too as a lot of UK magazines did get imported here so it really wouldn't surprise me if someone got a Amiga Action mag and a Megazone, saw the same articles and thought "what the.." haha!

Just had to go edit my older posts in this thread to change all my links to the archive itself as unfortunately some bloody musician decided to call themselves Megazone and someone's backed up their stuff to archiveorg resulting it their music appearing in my magazine collection. :/ So I've gone in and edited all 56 rescued items in the collection to have a new 'more specific' author/creator name of "Megazone Magazine" which should hopefully stop any future mixups with other people using the word megazone in their stuff!

Basically I changed this:
https://archive.org/search.php?query...rt=titleSorter

To this:
https://archive.org/search.php?query...rt=titleSorter

Oh and no new exciting magazine finds to report sadly!

.

[Blake00]

Hey guys, It’s been a long break since the previous project update as I hadn’t had much luck over the last few years sadly, however I’m happy to announce that things have changed and I’ve finally received a bunch of new donations to the SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive Project !

Firstly the awesome Colin May who previously donated the rare issue 2 has successfully scanned issues 5 and 6 which were the very first issues after the final name change from MegaComp to the one we all knew and loved, MegaZone! To successfully obtain these rare early issues is such a great achievement. Thank you Colin!



Obtaining these issues has also confirmed that my original assumptions of the October & November 1990 issues being issues 9 & 10 respectively were incorrect as Issue 6 is dated August so there can only be one possible issue 7 between it and the Oct issue I’d said was 9 meaning it must actually be 8, which then means the Nov issue 10 is actually 9 too! The reason I had to originally guess those numbers was because many issues in that period did not say their number and until now I had no issues near Oct/Nov 90 to compare them to and on top of all that the magazine switched between monthly & bi-monthly multiple times during the early 90s making very difficult to predict. Some of my predictions / issue number allocations may still be wrong and only obtaining more lost issues will help reveal the truth! Anyway the good news is Colin has also kindly provided me with the missing 4 pages from issue 8 (formerly 9) so anyone who’s previously obtained this issue (pictured below) will definitely want to re-download it!



The next piece of utterly awesome news is something I never thought would happen! Project fan Sean Paul kindly let me know about a passionate TV archiver named FlemishDog (check out their channel to see other awesome content they’ve rescued) who was in possession of not 1 but 2 more MegaZone TV commercials for Issues 26 & 27 and were in the same style with the same cool music as the Issue 25 commercial I’d previously found on my own tapes and added to the collection a while back. I know there’s another one of these out there too as I remember another similar advert in my childhood but with Captain Kirk in it, so I’m guessing it was for Issue 24 as that contained a review of Star Trek 6. With awesome folks like FlemishDog archiving tv adverts maybe one day I’ll see it again!



Well that’s pretty much everything for this update. Colin has actually given me more but I’m holding off on that as well as holding on to some more MegaZone subscription cards I’ve found as I want to save them for a future update where if all goes well another excellent fellow who shares our passion for preserving retro video game mags named Forgotten Worlds (check out his channel to see other awesome content he’s rescued) has kindly offered to scan several more MegaZone magazines not currently in the collection! So fingers crossed the next project update containing all this good stuff won’t be too far away!

Sadly I almost managed to obtain yet another missing MegaZone issue I’d never seen before a few days ago dated April 1991 (possibly Issue 14) but was defeated in the ebay auction. I don’t know what’s happened (although I suspect I only have myself to blame by raising awareness for this magazine and making people remember it again) but up until a year or so ago you could buy a MegaZone magazine for 10-20 bucks (AUD), yet now days I seem to be battling with other collectors who are willing to spent 100-150 bucks on a single mag which is just crazy. I’m on a low income so I just can’t justify spending that much on an old video game mag despite how passionate I am about them and my desire to scan them for this preservation project. What’s even more annoying is that I sold 2 mint condition still sealed copies of MegaZone a few years back for around 25 bucks each, so god knows how much I could have got for those now! So anyway if you’re a fellow MegaZone collector who wins an auction for a mag you haven’t seen in this archive, then odds are you’ve beaten me to it! So congratulations, but please, I hope you consider scanning your prize for the preservation project otherwise it could be lost to the world forever. Some consolation though is that the seller took a photo of the cover so I’ve taken a copy of that, so if anyone out there sees a mag looking like this one then please contact me as we need it!



There are now presumably only 7 issues missing from the MegaZone preservation collection (issues 3, 7, 10-11 and 13-15)! Hopefully one day we’ll get these final issues backed up and preserved! Big thank you again to everyone for their help! Make sure you visit the The MegaZone Archive to see these latest additions.

[Blake00]

Also FYI I've repeatedly tried to edit post 9 in this thread to update the issue 9 change to issue 8 and every singe time I try I get:

"Database error
The English Amiga Board database has encountered a problem.
Please try the following:
Load the page again by clicking the Refresh button in your web browser.
Open the eab.abime.net home page, then try to open another page.
Click the Back button to try another link.
The eab.abime.net forum technical staff have been notified of the error, though you may contact them if the problem persists.
We apologise for any inconvenience."

[TCD]

Originally Posted by Blake00

Also FYI I've repeatedly tried to edit post 9 in this thread to update the issue 9 change to issue 8 and every singe time I try I get:

Sadly it's a known problem: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=114328
RCK is working on it, but he's a busy person.