We’ve been constantly featuring new BitTorrent trackers in the last couple of weeks and as a result our DDL forums section was almost completely forgotten. To make up for the lack of updates in this segment, here’s a cool forum with some really unique content. Retromags is a DDL forum specializing in old video game magazines – yeah you heard correct, their goal is to digitally preserve popular video gaming related magazines (issued prior to 1999), for a new generation to enjoy them. Some of you might argue, what’s the point of reading magazines that are ages old – well if you are a true fan of video gaming (PC or Console), you’d want to revisit the golden age of gaming back in the 1980s and 1990s. Content on Retromags is pretty unique – I know only one other site (Out of Print Archive - await detailed review later) that indexes similar type of material. If you want to read some classic scanned magazine issues, check this site out.
For those of you are hearing about this site for the first time, following description quoted from the ‘About’ page should give a quick understanding on what Retromags is all about:
Our mission is to preserve video game magazines from our past for the future generations to enjoy. While this site is small, our ideas and motivation are huge. We aim to not only digitally preserve these magazines, but also to provide you with as much information as we can on these publications. We pour our hard work into creating these digital magazines so that you can get that feeling of nostalgia when you read an article you haven't seen in 20 years. We fully support the magazine industry and as such, we do not provide anything besides a cover for post 1999 material.
This is not the first time Retromags is featured here on FILEnetworks Blog. We posted an article about the site back in 2009 – lots of changes have happened since then and we felt that it deserved another mention. First thing you will notice is that Retromags now comes with a more polished look and easy to use interface. For example, the downloads section is now easily accessible from the top toolbar itself. It’s not only the looks that have changed since 2009 – lots of new content has also been added. RM now indexes over 700 full magazines, probably making it the largest repository of Classic gaming mags on the planet.
As you can see from the screenshot above, magazines are grouped into three main categories – US published, UK published and International releases. Each of these have sub categories, under which multiple issues of a particular magazine are indexed. A wide selection of mags ranging from now discontinued Atari Age, Blip, Mega to early issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly, Computer Gamer, etc can be found here. Most of the releases appear to be scanned issues in .CBR format (How to open CBR files) – note that these are full magazines with all pages intact. Verified download links are listed in the download page of each magazine – these usually point to one click hosting sites such as Megaupload. I did not come across any broken links on this site yet.
Retromags is a private community – you need to login in order to enjoy full benefits of the site. Public registrations however are currently open. If you are interested, a free account can be created any time.
Site Name: RetroMags (http://www.retromags.com)
Signup URL: http://www.retromags.com/forums/index.php?app=core&module=global§ion=register
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