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From Magweasel

Magweasel is in a very early state. Expect this page to expand and become more useful in the future.

What is Magweasel?

Magweasel is a website that aims to chronicle the history of video game and (certain) computer magazines, as well as become a source of information for magazine collectors and nostalgists. Its ultimate goal is to be the place to go for all game and computer magazines around the world, complete with issue lists, cover galleries, and full background info on each title.

What is covered in Magweasel?

• Video game magazines
  • All magazines primarily devoted to video games are fair game for this site, regardless of language or era of publication. This includes magazines currently in publication, although the focus of the site in this early stage will naturally be on older magazines.

• Hobbyist computer magazines
  • Magweasel will primarily cover computer magazines from the golden era of 8- and 16-bit personal computers, from 1975 to the early nineties. This includes Byte, Creative Computing, and COMPUTE!. Magazines targeted toward the hobbyist audience or a certain brand of machine (Amiga, Apple II, the Atari 8-bit series) will be emphasized, since that is the focus of most magazine collectors (and me, too).

What isn't covered in Magweasel?

• Magazines without a focus on games or old PCs
  • General-interest magazines with regular or semi-regular coverage of video games don't fall into our jurisdiction. This includes titles like Entertainment Weekly and Stuff, although Stuff Gamer is fair game (assuming I ever fish my copy out of the trash). Magazines that are offshoots of well-known game mags, such as Hero Illustrated and Now Playing, will also get due coverage whenever I get around to it.

• Full scans of magazine issues
  • Magweasel doesn't have the time, space, or bandwidth to serve complete scans of old magazines. It's also legally nebulous, and while I love mag scans, I don't want to handle them on this site. Magweasel is primarily about history and collecting, not reading the mags themselves. There are several other sites that offer full scans, however, so take a look around if you've just got to have them. Retromags is one. (Note: I'm still happy to take requests if you need a certain page, or ad, or computer program scanned.)

• Business-oriented computer magazines
  • Magweasel will not cover computer mags aimed at IT managers, DeVry graduates with MCSE certifications, or soccer moms looking for "unauthorized" Photoshop and eBay secrets. This includes titles like PC, Macworld, and (after a while) Personal Computing. In fact, for the sake of focus, Magweasel will not cover any computer magazine launched after 1992, since (in my opinion) they were all crap after that. This means that (for example) MacAddict will not be covered, but MACazine will, even though both are targeted toward Macintosh enthusiasts. (If you want to read more on this philosophy, John Dvorak wrote a great column in 2003 on the disappearance of the computer hobbyist.)

What is the current status of Magweasel?

Currently, Magweasel is in a state of heavy buildup. Over 1500 cover scans are up now, and the process of indexing them all is underway. Once that basic framework is done, the serious writing work can begin. If you'd like to help with this framework-building stuff, let me know!

How can I contribute?

Magweasel is looking for two things: scans of covers or interesting magazine-related stuff we don't have, and people to write about magazines they have expertise on. If you're interested in contributing, please mail Kevin to get the ball rolling.

This is a wiki, right? Can't I just edit whatever I want?

Readers must be granted special access by me to edit pages or upload files. This is mainly because I want to get all of my work so far uploaded to the site, and I'll probably allow editing from the general public after a certain point.

For now, if you want to add or change something on Magweasel, please mail Kevin about it.

Well, can I at least talk about magazines someplace?

Certainly. You can do that over at the forum.

Who runs this?

Hello; my name is Kevin Gifford, and I'm an associate editor for Newtype USA magazine in Houston. I've worked for or contributed to a wide variety of game publications, including GamePro, Electronic Gaming Monthly, GMR, Xbox Nation, Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, CONTINUE, and (last but ostensibly not least) GameStar. I've also worked for three online sites and do Japanese translation work on the side.

I have a collection of magazines that takes up a room comfortably and numbers over 5500 individual volumes (plus doubles). I also have three ferrets who live in the room, thriving on a steady diet of mice, chicken, and strategy guides, and they are the magweasels.

Currently I'm by myself, but I'm looking forward to other people joining the writing team shortly. If you'd like to mail me, please knock yourself out.