Some time ago I started a 'database', to call it in a way, of all the articles I could find in magazines about the series. It's been always fun to read them and there are occasions when you find tidbits of information you've never read anywhere else. And for some of us it’s just a memorabilia moment go through the pages and recall reading them years ago or having that particular Issue on hand and be excited about this or that game prior to release. The problem with most of the scans around is they're not organized and mostly presented in bad quality; meaning that if you want to quote some article for whatever reason, you can’t do it in an appropriate way -not that it matters to most of the people anyway-. I tried to organize them all by NAME, #ISSUE, MONTH, YEAR and PAGE NUMBER, as well as including the magazine cover. But as I’ve been doing this all by myself there will always be something I miss or misplace.

I’ve been working on this for more than I like and I can’t keep up with the never ending task they represent as there will always be more and more issues of magazines out there. I’m handing all of them to whoever wants to help and expand the database and correct whatever I screwed up. I’d have liked to share them in a more concise manner, due to the difficulty it represent to update just one name or replace one image and quickly change it on everybody’s version of the database, but I lack the knowledge and tools to create an online version of it (if anyone is up to the challenge of making one I’ll be delighted). I did upload them to Project Umbrella’s FTP server but for different reasons it was counterproductive for the purpose of the whole thing. Right now they’re all hosted in my Rapidshare account until they get erased or someone else comes up with a good way to have them online.

As of right now, the database has around 1900+ images organized and other 280+ I haven’t been able to index correctly as I don’t know the necessary information about them to include them in the Index file. The images are of different sources including articles like Interviews, Previews, Reviews, News and so forth. As I catalogued everything on an Excel table with a sheet for every magazine, I came up with three general categorizations to keep everything tidy:

ISSUE:

• NUMBER
• MONTH
• YEAR

These are self-explanatory. But I’d like to point out that I only included on the indexed part of the images those for which I know at least two of these three subcategories. For example, I included the Feb 2012 Issue of XBOX World but I don’t know what Issue Number that is, or, the Issue #1 from 1997 of the Polish’s PlayStation Plus Magazine, whatever month that’s from.

CONTENT:

• TYPE: What kind of content is featured on the Magazine. I generalized the possible types as: Walkthrough, Preview, Review, Full Interview and Interview Quotes (as there are times the journalist does not include the complete Interview but only some quotes as he feel they’re relevant), Chart (some 1st place in sales for some week or month, for example), Editorial, News, Tricks, Poster, FAQ, Advert and everything else I didn’t know where to put I named it Article.

• GAMES: What games are featured in the Magazine.

• TITLE: The title of the Article.

• AUTHOR: The name of the journalist if available.

• DEVELOPER: Only included if there’s a Full Interview or Interview Quotes. Otherwise it’s just n/a.

• BETA CONTENT: As I went through the magazines, there were occasions that although the article itself was from a period of time after certain game was released, some images or information in it were from a stage of the game before its completion, and sometimes it was just plain and simple beta content we all know. I noted it here with a YES or NO. Keen eyes will be able to spot the differences, but I accept there are times I could’ve been wrong, so whatever notes in this regard will be appreciated.

Sometimes I found magazines that had content related to the series, but I had not the chance of getting my hands in any copy of it. So the whole CONTENT category is empty (and there are not scans of them either, obviously), for those magazines this category is filled with a Yellow color. If I was unsure of one or another thing I included in these fields I filled them with a Yellow color too. So a double check on that would also be appreciated.

PRESERVATION:

• STATE: There are three possibilities here. Scanned (in Green) is the optimal for every image, Photographed (in Yellow) which is a bummer as most of the times you can’t read easily the content or Not Scanned (in Red) as I know that particular Issue has information but I’ve been unable to secure it and scan it or find it online.

• FRON COVER: I prefer to have the Front of the magazine scanned too, as it gives you some idea of what magazine exactly we’re talking about. YES or NO goes here; obviously the YES is the ideal.

• PAGES: The range of pages the content is featured. If there’s more than one article in the magazine I listed them in two lines as they most likely will have a different TITLE too, and possibly a different AUTHOR.

• WATERMARK: Not having a watermark is the goal. There will always be people who don’t like to share whatever image without putting some mark on it first, for whatever reasons they have.

• QUALITY: There are two options here. One, if the scan is of the Full Page or just a Cut-out of the relevant information, the ideal is the whole page. And two, if that same scan is in an Optimal quality (in Green), as in “I can read it without trouble”, Medium (in Yellow) as in “I have to make an effort to read it, but I can do it anyway”; and Low (in Red) as in “Holy shit Horatio, enhance, enhance!”

• THANKS TO: Finally there’s the Thanks column. Here comes the name of the person that scanned the image or provided it. If the scan had a watermark I listed here whoever that watermarks belongs to. If someone provides a watermark free copy of a previous watermarked image they would get their name instead. Again, if I’m unsure of whatever info I put here I filled the cell in Yellow. I also might have failed to list every single source I’ve come across, given that this started a long time ago and it has evolved into a much bigger thing I had initially envisioned.

Part of the mayor challenge of this database is that I didn’t only take notice of the magazines I know had content of the games, but also the ones that didn’t. Those that have no content are listed with an Olive color filling the whole Line. So for whoever wants to help, you don’t have to double check the Issues presented that way, as they have no content about the series whatsoever.

I separated the whole chunk of images into two folders; you can do with them as you want once you download them. A MAGAZINES folder where there’s the whole indexed part of the images from the Excel file, and an UNSORTED SCANS, where I put all the other images not included in the database so far. In this last folder you can find they are all separated by name of the magazines and one UNKNOWN folder with 66 images I haven’t been able to know what magazine are they from. Here are the links for the download:

MAGAZINES
PART 1
PART 2
PART 3
PART 4
PART 5
PART 6

UNSORTED SCANS:
DOWNLOAD

UNKNOWN:
DOWNLOAD

INDEX
EXCEL FILE

There’s still a lot of magazines online I haven’t been through, and this was a project I’d have liked to share after I had exhausted all of them, but other matters have come into priority and I don’t think I’ll have again the same amount of free time I had before to keep with it. You are assured to find interesting information (that some know already and some others no) about 1.5, DASH, SENGOKU BH, BIO PROTO and much more other stuff in there. It’s all in your hands now.

I didn't have the type of feedback I was hoping to have in general, but that kind of things happen. Here's the first update of the Database:

UPDATE 01

You'll find all you need to know in the .txt file included.

I finally found a better way to have the scans available for all people that's also easily updatable. You can find all the images now on my SkyDrive account.

MAGAZINE DATABASE

I'll be updating it from time to time.