Full set of Amiga Power scans (and other mags) available for download

[dreamkatcha]

I thought a few dozen issues were going to be MIA for eternity, then I stumble across them here. Well, it was news to me anyway. Shame about the resolution in some cases... beggars-choosers etc.

[dreadnought]

Phew, that is quite awesome. Thank you. Somebody should let Bombjack know, it fills some holes in his collection.

[Biscuit]

Thanks for the link. Been wanting to plug those gaps for ages. Just need to grab more of the higher quality ones from Archive now, for the best set.

[dreamkatcha]

My pleasure. Nice to know others are still getting a kick out of reliving the wonderous world of AP.

The off-the-wall content-padding that made it to press towards the end still cracks me up. It's hard to tell if the writers were fulfilling contractual obligations to deliver x number of pages until the mag's inevitable demise, or they truly believed they could turn AP into a general entertainment publication with some sporadic Amiga features.

As bona fide Amiga content dwindled, complaint letters flooded the feedback pages... as if AP staff had any control over the volume of new game releases and news. Bizarre times! I can't imagine the same thing happening today, say, if Microsoft went bust and developers/publishers abandoned the Xbox en masse. Surely Future Publishing or whoever would pull the plug and pay the staff redundancy settlements.

[lilwshu]

There was a good if slightly overlong interview with Cam Winstanley recently which explained how they kept going - unsurprisingly as long as it remained profitable they let the writers get on with it. When it stopped being profitable they binned it and the staff were reallocated. Annoyingly I can’t find the link to the interview.

I have a full set of AP mags if anyone has any rescan requests.

[dreadnought]

Originally Posted by lilwshu

I have a full set of AP mags if anyone has any rescan requests.

Oh, for sure. I think the best current set available is from Bombjack's site: https://commodore.bombjack.org/amiga...miga-power.htm

It's not as great as some other HQ scans, but not too bad and definitely better than that latest find.

He's missing quite a few issues though (you can see them in red on that page) so it could be a bit of work.

[tarr]

Can't download anything from that site

[dreamkatcha]

Originally Posted by lilwshu

There was a good if slightly overlong interview with Cam Winstanley recently which explained how they kept going - unsurprisingly as long as it remained profitable they let the writers get on with it. When it stopped being profitable they binned it and the staff were reallocated. Annoyingly I can’t find the link to the interview.

I'd love to check that out if you can find it. These guys were heroes of mine to the same extent as the game devs.

That makes sense; don't pull the plug until the fat lady goes bankrupt and can no longer afford a mic. It was like the magazine publishing equivalent of the wild west for a while there. Anything goes. How liberating to be given carte blanche to write about whatever. Age-appropriate caveats aside.

[ma693541]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

I thought a few dozen issues were going to be MIA for eternity, then I stumble across them here. Well, it was news to me anyway. Shame about the resolution in some cases... beggars-choosers etc.

Download doesn't work on this site.

[dreamkatcha]

It's very flakey, but it still works for me. Sometimes you have to click and then wait 10 seconds or so for it to respond and offer to download the files. There are four ways to download. Right-click and then select download from the menu, use the menu at the top of the screen, double-click the files, or use the set of three dots you can click on towards the right side of each file to bring up options. The latter method only seems to be available via mobile mode. Definitely a weird, inconsistent interface anyway.

[lilwshu]

Originally Posted by dreamkatcha

I'd love to check that out if you can find it. These guys were heroes of mine to the same extent as the game devs.

That makes sense; don't pull the plug until the fat lady goes bankrupt and can no longer afford a mic. It was like the magazine publishing equivalent of the wild west for a while there. Anything goes. How liberating to be given carte blanche to write about whatever. Age-appropriate caveats aside.

I found the interview link, turns out it’s a year old so you may have already heard it:

https://www.maximumpowerup.com/episo...am-winstanley/

[dreamkatcha]

I don't know how I missed this first time round. That's tomorrow's commute entertainment sorted, thanks very much. I'm looking forward to this.

[stainy]

Site is working fine for me.

[arcanist]

That final issue brings back some memories. I remember seeing it on the shelves for an uncomfortably long time, as the newsagents had nothing to replace it with.

From their AB3D2 review: "With games of this quality, there's no reason why the Amiga can't conquer the PC!" Yeah, about that...

[Paul_s]

I've a full set of original APs at home in archive condition (including the rare 'Game Massive' cover. Really need to scan them all).

Just looked in my PMs and I have one from Shoonay talking about this in 2011!

Anyone know of a good industrial scanner that would bring out the best in them?
Budget wise I'm open to all options so cost isn't an issue for something good.

[dreamkatcha]

It would definitely be fantastic to have a pristine, high-resolution collection of every issue if anyone is up to the challenge without having to destroy their copies.

After listening to the interview I see I was half right then. Carry on producing an entertaining mag and hope enough people continue buying it to turn a profit. No real contractual obligations to fulfil on either side. Sink or swim.

It's hard to tell if it would have worked had Amiga games kept trickling in to maintain the core focus, obviously to a lesser extent than ever before. Maybe if AP was the only outlet left from which to source your Amiga game news pre-internet, people would still have bought it. I suppose economies of scale would have made it difficult to reduce the price, reflecting the diminished content.

Reading the 'Do the Write Thing' pages during the twilight years and retro gamers' opinions in hindsight, you can see that reception to the new approach was polemic. Lots of people ran with it, embracing the random creative writing/gibberish, while others abandoned ship because they couldn't cope with anything other than straightlaced, pure Amiga content.

Circulation numbers fell from about 60k in its heyday to 18k right before AP's demise. Most of the ads were placed by game publishers and if they’re no longer publishing Amiga games…

...and who else would want to invest in a publication with a rapidly declining readership and no clear USP? That's kind of what Look-In and Fast-Forward were; general pop-culture mags. I can't remember if they'd already folded by this stage. Obviously not remotely in the same league and shouldn't really be mentioned in the same breath, but you get my point.

Reliving the journey brought all that woeful melancholy flooding back.

It would be interesting to find out where all the writers are now to see what works/pays the bills in 2020. Shouldn't be difficult with a bit of Googling (plus Cam touched upon this topic in the interview). I doubt they struggled to find other outlets.

[lilwshu]

Most of my set are quite well-thumbed and it's made up of combining my issues, my wife's issues and an almost complete set I bought about 15 years ago, and I still have a letter from J Nash that accompanied my prize for winning an In The Style Of. It and YS were the only magazines I would read cover to cover multiple times.

I stopped buying it at issue 58 when I got a PC that could run Doom and early console/arcade emulators, and could only afford one computer mag a month with my paper round money. I still loved reading the features like the JFK and Real Life Doom ones even when the games ran out, and even the game reviews remained hilariously funny until the end.

I find the earlier, more strait-laced ones a bit heavy going in comparison.

[dreamkatcha]

Maybe 'pristine' as I said was a bit optimistic. I suppose the main thing is that everything is clear and legible and scanned at a decent resolution. Some of the scans I've seen look like they've been dropped in a muddy puddle and left to rot for several months. The text is still clear enough to read, but it's not a fun experience, as it should be.

I noticed Stuart Campbell attempted to compile a complete AP set a couple of years back and uploaded the result in CBR format. He didn't entirely succeed, but it's another avenue to explore. Anyone interested can check out his 'Wings Over Sealand' blog.

Yes, the difference in quality across the range of old games mags is like night and day. Some were little more than comic book depth PR exercises where you couldn't trust the honesty of the reviews and then at the other end of the scale you had AP. Some of the Spectrum mags were fantastic as you say. Even some of the ones that weren't necessarily trustworthy were at least entertaining.

Where concept reviews are concerned I'm of the view that 'anything goes' is fine as long as you also cover the salient points re: the game for anyone who actually wants to know if it's any good or not. What's clever and most challenging is if you can spin-off into something bizarre/funny and still somehow make it relevant to the game in question. Anyone can say "I don't care about F1 racing, let's write about dolphins instead". That's not a specific example I should add, and any resemblance to the living or dead is purely coincidental.

If an article was never intended to inform readers of the merits of a particular game then I don't care about any connection to the Amiga. As long as it's interesting, that's all that counts for me.

[Octopus66]

This collection not complete. Take AP31 as an example - only 54 pages. Looks like Amiga Magazine Rack scan copies...

The hunt continues...

[Octopus66]

And Yet! Mr Campbell's efforts seem to have borne fruit!

The latest update on 'Wings Over Sealand' blog from this summer no less "[EDIT 18/7/2020: Thanks to new Honorary Mighty Being “GamesMags1957”, issues 22, 23, 27, 36-39, 43, 46 and 47 are now complete, leaving only the missing pages of issue 20 standing in the way of a perfect archive.]"

Truly a thing of beauty and a sight to behold.