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Classic Gamer Magazine Goes Free PDF Route
Chris Cavanaugh writes "Classic Gamer Magazine, a retro-themed game mag, relaunches today with all-new content and a revamped writing staff. Each issue will now be published bi-monthly as a Portable Document File (PDF) for free download at www.classicgamer.com. The magazine's talented and knowledgeable staff includes writers with credits at Salon.com, Game Room Magazine, GameSpot, TechTV, All Game Guide, and Comic Buyer's Guide." Formerly a longrunning paper magazine, the issue looks excellent for a free PDF download.
Hope they don't include a demo cd.iso, it'll take forever to download.
PDF?? The should stick to the old-school values and release the magazine in ASCII. Complete with ASCII art for illustrations.
Do they really think everyone's going to download the PDF and print out their magazine on their inkjet? Geez. When will people learn that HTML is for on-screen documents, and PDF is for ones to print.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
I guess those people who care about how a document is composed won't learn. It is extremely difficult to control how an HTML document will appear on a user's system because of the number of browsers and their respective levels of standards support. A PDF document is (virtually) identical across systems and print. And no, making each page a large .gif .jpeg or .png doesn't work if you want to preserve the text.
It would be interesting to speculate the rationale behind turning a paper-based media to an electronic media. For me personally, I certainly haven't heard of the magazine (forgive me for being ignorant!). But honestly, I haven't seen an issue in any stores in my area. Certainly, by putting the magazine electronically, they are expanding their market share by exposing to more potential readers. Who knows, maybe I will be hooked onto their columns. However, I see a shortcoming. Although it would be easy to convert paper media to PDF, it would be much more appealing to turn to HTML. Instead of downloading the entire magazine, I only need to download what columns I want to read. It would also be easier to search for content before deciding to download. I hope they consider HTML in the future.
If you're still looking for a print magazine that covers classic/retro-gaming, check out the new magazine "Manci Games." They just published their first issue, and from what I've heard and seen on the site it looks pretty good. They hope to reach at least 100 pages per issue if more people subscribe.
Link:
Manci Games Magazine
Don't know if anyone will read this, but that mag had an article about a _really_ cool SMB3 rom hack that has gotten me addicted. Some crazy bastard edited the game down to the assembly code and created a whole new SMB game. Hard as all hell, but incredibally fun. Link for those who don't want to download and hunt the PDF for it.
Well, you didn't rebut my point, except by trying to insult me. Unfortunately, not all people grow out of that when they get out of their teen years.
Anyway, show me one person who prints out this PDF to read somewhere else, and I'll show you fifty that are annoyed at having to zoom in and out and look at actual page breaks on their computer screen. PDF has got to be the most overused file format on the Internet. If your readers aren't printing it, and it's not a scan of some official document, it shouldn't be a PDF.
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."