Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Video games/Magazines

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[edit] Magazine Project (copied from CVG Project page)

Reviving the discussion (sorry if this is a faux-pas). I guess the logical thing to do would be to create a sub-page on WP:CVG listing users and issues of certain magazines they have. Separate lists of content in those magazines can be supported elsewhere on the page (most magazines list content in backissue listings, but we will have to make a point to document every game reviewed). Then, as editors write, they can stop in to check if the topic in question is covered in a magazine and move from there by asking an editor for information. How's this? --Zeality 03:22, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

Seriously, just go for it, maybe have it somewhere like at WP:CVG/Library and we can all upload what resources we have. - Hahnch e n 03:41, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, be bold and just start whatever you think will work out the best and work out problems along the way. There's a good number of CVG editors who want and support this, we just need to get the ball rolling. As soon as you've started it, I'll add the resources I have to this project. --Mitaphane _talk 04:58, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
- Okay! The revolution begins when I get back from lunch. Thanks for the encouragement. Is there a proper place to announce this kind of thing? --Zeality 15:45, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
  - Well, the CVG project page has a guidelines section for CVG articles. Under, the Organization subsection there's a mention about citing sources. Placing it there, or creating a subsection in the Guidelines section if you have a lot to say about the project, would be good. --Mitaphane _talk 19:24, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

When you do find somewhere to put it, remember to put a link to it back here for all of us lurkers who are interested but haven't said anything. - X201 09:20, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Here it is. The next step for me is to go through all my issues and check out the back issue listings to document what info's covered in certain volumes at /Magazine. If anyone jumps on board, be sure to list every game recovered under a volume. Right now, I'm planning on follow a simple format like this example:

==Nintendo Power==

Volume 89: Tetris Attack, 3D Maze, Super Mario 64 Preview. Games Reviewed: Bubble Bobble, Fievel Goes West.
Volume 90: Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, Lost Vikings 2, Pilotwings Preview. Games Reviewed: Batman & Robin, Lost Vikings 2.

My only question is, should we wikify the game titles? At first I thought it might make the page look uglyish, but I realized it might be convenient for certain editors who can use "What links here" to see if something from /Magazine pops up. But the chance of someone actually doing that versus just going to the page from WP:CVG and searching with his or her browser is slim. --Zeality 17:13, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Edit: I found the old NP Archive link. To avoid TOC bloat, I think we can put headers by year. --Zeality 20:12, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Edit again: I'm going to stop for a while, but I've got the general template up with NP#1 as an example. --Zeality 20:22, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

I think we should still link to each game. The chances are slim, but I say the more information the better. Mitaphane _talk 01:45, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Layout

I'm a bit confused by the general layout of this, I would have instead arranged the entire page purely by user instead of trying to arrange by user and by magazine. You will get some redundancy if 2 people have the same magazines, but it means it'll be easier to find out who to contact for a specific magazine. Here's an Example:

[edit] User:Hahnchen

[edit] ABC Magazine

Issue 12 (January 2005) - Current

Issue 12 (January 2005) - Super Mario World, Mega Man, Dave Braben
Issue 13 (February 2005) - Quantic Dream, Bleem, Emulation
and so on

[edit] DEF Magazine

Issue 01 (March 1999) - Issue 14 (March 2000)

Issue 01 - Digitiser, Time Crisis, Virtua Fighter

Okay, sounds good. I will begin importing all that information from the NP archive website tomorrow, plus what I've got up to 141. --Zeality 01:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, we still need to work out the details. But hey, we got things started now! Now we just have to work out the details!

I went ahead and placed all info(features,interviews, news, reviews, and previews) from the 1st magazine I have as an example. It might be overkill though. As I was going through the mag, I realized Next-Gen covered more than just reviews/previews. There were a lot news items, interviews, and features that could really be useful. So I listed pratically everything some could use as a reference if need be.

Also, I wiki linked to any topic or game that was covered. There were a lot of previews of games that were never released, in those cases I linked to the development studio. For the reviews, I just linked to the game(whether it exists or not). --Mitaphane _talk 02:06, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Are we going to keep the layout as it is? Or switch to a user centred one as I suggested? There could be an overlap/redundancy if there are people listing the same magazine, but I think it would save the double checking to see which user has which edition of the magazine. I also think it would be useful to inform others whether you are able to produce magazine scans or just transcribe appropriate sections and synopses. - Hahnch e n 02:12, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I think this info needs to be in a table to avoid spawl. Yes, it would lead to some large boxes, but it would keep infomation ring-fenced by magazine and issue. - X201 09:02, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

How about something like this?...

Magazine Name
Issue	Year	Month	Games	Features	Available as	User(s) to contact
27	1984	May	Frogger, Zaxxon, Sensible Soccer	Ocean software feature, The making of Bear Patrol	Can Scan & PDF	Fred, Bert
28	1984	June	Jet Set Willy, Hunchback	Adventure games feature,	Retype from magazine	Bert

Something like this for each magazine would make searching for the info easy. - X201 10:57, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking this might be the format to go with. It would keep the info independant of each magazine's layout. Though I think a news column would be helpful addition to table for those people wanting to document game history. For example, in Next-Gen 14 there was a news piece about the delay of the N64's release. That would be a helpful source for anyone working on the articles for the N64 or the 5th Gen section of game console history. Mitaphane _talk 19:51, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I've uploaded my archive in the style I suggested, just to see how it would work. But X201's suggestion is pretty good, I'd be fine with it. I don't think you need a "available as" column though, that could be better specified in a little User list section. - Hahnch e n 03:26, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I've copied some of the info from the project page into the table to show how it would look with real data in it. - X201 09:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Next Generation Magazine
Issue	Year	Month	Game Reviews	Features	News	Contact
14	1996		In the Hunt, NBA In the Zone, NFL Gameday, Space Griffon, Toukon Retsuden, Zero Divide, Loaded, X-COM: UFO Defense, F-1 Live Information, Hang On GP '95, Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally Championship, Virtua Cop, High Velocity, Captain Quazar, Bust a Move, PO'ed, Battlesport, PGA Tour Golf '96, The Last Bounty Hunter, Baldies CD, I-War, Battlemorph CD, Handball 5, Empire 2: The Art of War, Entomorph, Hexen: Beyond Heretic, TekWar, Destruction Derby, Abuse, Beavis and Butt-head, Caeser II, Revolution X, Mark Davis' The Fishing Master, NBA Live '96, Yoshi's Island: Super Mario World 2, Peter Jacobson's Golden Tee 3D Golf, Soul Edge	Featured: "Ultra 64: Nintendo's shot at the title", "Psst! Wanna buy a game system?" (Sega Saturn & Sony Playstation Marketing Campaigns) Interview: "Is Ultra 64 as good as Silicon Graphics claims?" (George Zachary, Silicon Graphics)	"Will Ultra 64 launch on April 21?", "32-bit gaming drops in price" (3DO price drop), "Pippin Japanese launch planned", "Playstation immersive headset planned", "Joyriding: Where are the women in cyberspace?", "Arcadia: Arcade Industry Hits Bottom"	Mitaphane
15	1996		In the Hunt, NBA In the Zone, NFL Gameday, Space Griffon, Toukon Retsuden, Zero Divide, Loaded, X-COM: UFO Defense, F-1 Live Information, Hang On GP '95, Virtua Fighter 2, Sega Rally Championship, Virtua Cop, High Velocity, Captain Quazar, Bust a Move, PO'ed, Battlesport, PGA Tour Golf '96, The Last Bounty Hunter, Baldies CD, I-War, Battlemorph CD, Handball 5, Empire 2: The Art of War, Entomorph, Hexen: Beyond Heretic, TekWar, Destruction Derby, Abuse, Beavis and Butt-head, Caeser II, Revolution X, Mark Davis' The Fishing Master, NBA Live '96, Yoshi's Island: Super Mario World 2, Peter Jacobson's Golden Tee 3D Golf, Soul Edge	Featured: "Ultra 64: Nintendo's shot at the title", "Psst! Wanna buy a game system?" (Sega Saturn & Sony Playstation Marketing Campaigns) Interview: "Is Ultra 64 as good as Silicon Graphics claims?" (George Zachary, Silicon Graphics)	"Will Ultra 64 launch on April 21?", "32-bit gaming drops in price" (3DO price drop), "Pippin Japanese launch planned", "Playstation immersive headset planned", "Joyriding: Where are the women in cyberspace?", "Arcadia: Arcade Industry Hits Bottom"	Mitaphane

I think it looks pretty good. Question: Is there a way to have table automatically collapsed, like the templates for game series (example)? I'm thinking once we put in all this info in table form it will get pretty lengthy. Mitaphane _talk 18:44, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Just as a note, we should vary the headers for the table based on magazine / magazine's life cycle / convenience of years. Nintendo Power really didn't have a "news" section aside from special, special previews, and most news was contained within features. I've changed that to "Other Information" under NP in the main article. --Zeality 19:13, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

New edit: something else. It seems like it'd be excruciatingly difficult to add italics for all the game titles. This isn't a professional page or encouraged for public use, so can we skip those? --Zeality 19:34, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

Myself I think plain text without the links & italics would suffice (they were only there because I copied and pasted), each table altered to suit the magazine and the features info trimmed down to the bare essentials eg "Ultra64-Silicon graphics interview". But as you say, this page is for researchers and not the general public so the need to stick to specific formats and styles dosen't need to be as harsh. In a nutshell the project should make it easy to find the info and the person who has it. X201 20:19, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

We don't need them. The link should suffice. I guess I put everything in italics since I started with article names and didn't even think about by the time I got to the games. Anyway, I'll get to filling out the Next-Gen articles over the next few weeks. It's going to be a bit of a time consuming process. Mitaphane _talk 22:06, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I finished organizing what we've got by table. I'll be filling out Nintendo Power 1-147, though I don't own 1-77. --Zeality 22:14, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

"It's going to be a bit of a time consuming process."
I know, I'm staring with dread at a complete collection of all 166 issues of Edge. - X201 08:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't bother trying to index it all at once, I'm just listing a few magazines every day. Also, with Edge, indexing the reviews is not that important as the game, score and issue are listed on the Edge review database. We should have a special instruction telling users who want Edge sources to find out which issue it is in using the DB then to consult the relevent user. - Hahnch e n 23:47, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Time to unleash the passion of youth. My only worry for the future of this project is that certain members may leave Wikipedia. But nonetheless, we'll have listings up. This at least takes editors halfway there. --Zeality 13:11, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Other languages

How about magazines in other languages? I have a lot of old german magazines (ASM, PowerPlay, PlayTime), would those be relevant for the english Wikipedia too? I'm not aware of a german version of this WP, but even if there is one, it might be preferable to have a list of available magazines/articles in a central location. Darkstar 20:55, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea(especially for games that are developed by German teams). We would just have to make sure the magazine listing says it's in a non english language (thus, subject to different translations). --Mitaphane _talk 22:09, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Online magazines

Would it be worthwhile to have a section with links to sites that actually contain reviews from or even scans of magazine pages? For example, amigapower.com has nine full issues already scanned in for anyone to look at, so there would be no need to ask anyone for information in them. I'll see if I can find more sites like that and create this section, if nobody objects. --ADeveria 12:47, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I was going to put something like that right at the top, ie special cases. For example, instead of searching for reviews in Edge on the main page, you would instead search the Edge reviews database then see if anyone has the appropriate copy. I have a reasonable archive of PC Zone magazines, but most reviews of those are archived at http://www.pczone.co.uk - Hahnch e n 13:37, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

There's Crash Online for people researching games for the ZX Spectrum. Theres also ones for Your Sinclair and Sinclair User somewhere on the net. - X201 13:42, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Alright, I've gone ahead and added the section. Feel free to add to or re-format at will. --ADeveria 15:03, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Template

I've created the template over in the template section so now adding {{User WPCVGm}} on any page will do the job and show this

This user is a member of the
Video Games Magazines Project.

There was a bit of a typo in the previous box, clicking on it took the user straight into page editing for some reason. - X201 14:21, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I've altered the template a little bit. It now links links to a Magazines Project members category. - X201 17:55, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Books

It might also be useful to include books in this project, since they can also provide a useful reference to use in gaming articles. It would be nice to know which users have access to which books. 217.117.171.114 17:05, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

If someone starts a section I'll throw in what I have but I'll be busy enough over the next month or so, as I imagine everyone else will be, adding the magazines and their content. --Mitaphane _talk 05:39, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Advertising

I had my first "customer" yesterday. It was our very own Thunderbrand making use of the system, but it set me thinking. To publicise the project, what if our "fee" was a banner to be placed on the discussion page of any article we've helped? I'm thinking of something along the lines of This project has been helped by the Computer and video games/Magazines project. - X201 08:12, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

No, let's not do that, talk pages are full of too many banners at the top already. But that's just my assessment. I've not had any takers yet apart from a couple at Talk:Neopets which really preceded this, although I will consult this page during article creation. - Hahnch e n 00:39, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] FF4

This may be futile, but if anyone knows off the bat that he or she has an issue of a 1991 magazine covering Final Fantasy 4, we need it at the FAC. The nomination is under fire for not having enough print sources. --Zeality 12:59, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

It's probably going to pass. I'm pretty much the only one there who is holding out for more sources. I think it's a shame that a game so ingrained in Japanese culture fails to have a review from the Japanese gaming magazine. I mean, there are no reviews at all in reference to its original Japanese release. I just don't think Nintendo Power and the Gamepro score from gamerankings is good enough. I really don't think anyone here has those kind of resources to get you a review, you either need to get your hands on a Western magazine collector, or poke the otaku-freaks at 2chan, but that requires Japanese. - Hahnch e n 01:06, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know how helpful this lead will be, but there's this page(http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Chatsubo_for_Non-Japanese_Speakers) on Wikipedia Japan for asking questions in other languages. Perhaps the Japanese FF IV article has some sources that the editors can translate for you. —Mitaphane _talk 01:30, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I can read katakana and about ten hiragana. I don't know how much help that will be. Sir Crazyswordsman 02:48, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nintendo Power

I have a smattering of earlier issues of Nintendo Power and then all of them from around 1994 onward. I also have a Nintendo Power index which came with one issue and it has a bunch of information for ones that I don't own physically. I'll add them all eventually, but until then if anyone has specific requests feel free to let me know. Andre (talk) 17:50, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Nintendo Power 2

Glancing over my entries, I've realized that listing items for Classified Information and Counselor's Corner is basically useless. The only citable information would be secret codes or help in defeating certain areas. At the most, the counselor's corne could be used to justify that a particular part of the game was hard. I'm thinking about dropping these sections from the listing. --Zeality 22:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I'm starting to list some of mine now, and I'm going to go ahead and leave those sections out. --InShaneee 19:19, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Computer Gaming World archives available for download

I'm cross-posting this at the main CVG talk page, but thought the wider WPCVG community might benefit from it.

Now that Computer Gaming World is changing their name, the ~~entire back catalogue of~~ first 100 issues' worth of CGW articles has been posted for free download at FileFront, here. It's a pretty huge collection of free content, and provides both interesting historical information and an accessible source of facts for articles that touch on its subject matter. Personal computer game will be received some new citations from this source, and I hope it helps improve some other articles as well.

Unfortunately, these are extremely large PDF files - Issue 1 alone is fourteen megabytes. I'm downloading them all now, though, and would be happy to start a torrent if necessary. Daveydw ee b (^chat/_patch) 06:26, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Good idea to download them, you never know when pages like this are going to just disapear from the web. Would be a good idea if a couple of us had a full copy of the archive for back up purposes. - X201 08:34, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

I'm volunteering to archive them all, but it's going to be a large project. The first fifty issues alone weigh in at more than a gigabyte - not only will they take a day or two to download, but a torrent would probably be unfeasibly large. We'll see, no? Daveydw ee b (^chat/_patch) 10:17, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Whoops, I was wrong. Only the first 100 issues are available. Daveydw ee b (^chat/_patch) 10:47, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Just downloaded issue 100 - it's 80Mb. Fucking massive. - Hahnch e n 17:12, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

It's really not that large, everything clocks in at at about 2.86 gigs, which is slightly more than half a DVD. Plus you can always re-compress within Acrobat as desired - personally I prefer having the higher quality files available. The archive is also available at cgw.vintagegaming.org which I think is the site of the person who scanned all this. - e 17:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Japanese Sources

This isn't truly magazine related, so I'm not sure where to post this. These are some sources I found while working on Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon's FAC (which is still up if you'd like to review).

[edit] Japanese

Japanese reviews are difficult to come by. We encourage anyone with copies of Famitsu to please volunteer them here. There are also a few online resources for reviews:

--Zeality 22:29, 3 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hardcore Gamer Magazine

I'm not too familiar with the American game magazine market and recently came across a print mag called Hardcore Gamer Magazine. They have all their content online as well in pdf format at http://www.hardcoregamer.com/ . I've just downloaded a few issues, sizes range from around 25Mb up to 50Mb. Personally, I think the magazine's a bit shit, without any editorial control over the layout and art compared to say Games TM and Edge which makes for a cluttered look and messy read. But they have some interesting features, and is a free reliable source. - Hahnch e n 22:10, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Game title order

I've been wondering for awhile, is there any specific order game titles should be listed in? I'm not saying it's really that important, I'm just wondering... --Dinoguy1000 ^Talk 05:09, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

I've been doing it alphabetically, but no, it doesn't really matter since people will use the Search function to find what they want regardless of the order. --Zeality 14:47, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Spamming talk pages

Perhaps it is a good idea to add something to the cvgproj template to indicate that a game is listed on this page. Something like "A magazine source that can be used to improve the verifiability for this article has been listed on the CVG magazines page". Also, this page is becoming extremely long, perhaps it would be a good idea to split the page into subpages per magazine. Although it would then no longer be possible to search for games on this page since they would be split, a google search limited to this page could still be used to search this page and any subpages. For example, a search for "Knights of Carnage". It would be easy to create a search bar plugin for firefox (qnd ie7)to handle this.. JACO PLANE • 2007-01-14 17:41

I think the splitting of pages per magazine is inevitable. At some point it's going to have to happen. Last month the page was 200KB in size, it's 275KB now. After I finish indexing my magazines, it probably be up to 320KB. The only question is when someone is going to step up to do it.

I agree with the idea of promoting the project on the cvg tag. I don't know much about bots (though I would like to learn), but wouldn't it be possible to create a bot that could do this work? It could go through each article in the cvgproj scope and scan through the "What links here" links. If it found a "Wikipedia:WikiProject Computer and video games/Magazines" (or any subarticle) link it could automatically flag the cvgproj template on the talk page to display the message (and links to the appropriate reference page). —Mitaphane _talk 03:59, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Retro Gamer

Does anyone have access to Retro Gamer magazine? This is the issue I'm looking for, specifically the 'Creating Chaos' article which I'd like to use as a reference for Chaos (video game). Marasmusine 12:06, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Game Informer back issues

I need a bit of a favor. Does anyone have access to back issues of Game Informer? Specifically, the January 2006 issue? I'm trying to whip Radiata Stories into shape (I know, a long way to go yet) but I threw away my old issues and want a proper citation in the Reception/Criticism section. Any help would be much appreciated. I x-posted this request at the Game Informer talk page. As an advanced thank you, I added info and helped do some cleaning of the Game Informer page. :) Chevinki 01:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Nm. I figured out that I should be asking Thunderbrand. Chevinki 01:20, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Do anyone have?

Do anyone have this volume of Smart Computing? Needed for action game article expanding. Hołek ҉ 14:25, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

It's cheating, but if that's the specific article you need, and you don't need the pictures or supplementary material, this should do fine. Dancter 14:34, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that's what I was looking for. :) Hołek ҉ 11:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

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