Hi guys,
I need your help to preserve the great old SEGA MegaZone video game magazine…
Video Version Of This:
(Note: First 10mins covers everything, the remaining 20mins is a bonus ‘just for fun’ tour of my physical MegaZone collection)
Updates:
25/09/2020 Update 1 – New Magazines Found!
07/03/2021 Update 2 – New Magazines Found!
30/04/2023 Update 3 – New Magazines & Videos Found!
Background:
MegaZone started out in the late 1980s as an Australian general gaming and electronics magazine called MegaComp (although issue 1 was actually MegaCom with no P!) and from issue 5 onwards became known as MegaZone magazine covering PC & Amiga (with a particular focus on point & click adventures), Atari, Nintendo and a lots of SEGA stuff. In these arguably best years of the magazine it was run by SEGA Ozisoft as they were the primary distributor of a lot of non-SEGA software as well. In late 1993 SEGA sold the magazine to Mason Stewart Publishing who changed the magazine to SEGA MegaZone and had continued success despite only covering SEGA related content. Sadly in the summer of 1995/1996 MegaZone came to a final end likely due to the declining popularity of SEGA (low sales of the 32X and Saturn) against Nintendo & Sony and the increasing backlash over the magazines rather controversial and excessive uses of violence and sexual content (in the Mason era). Presumably things did not end amicably as the final magazine was filled with raunchy content and even famously said “we’re off to buy a Playstation” haha!
The Problem:
Being an Australian magazine (presumably with no international distribution) this great old magazine and piece of video game history from the early to mid 1990s. Which is arguably the greatest era in retro gaming due to the 16bit console wars, the last great years of the Amiga, and the rise of mainstream PC gaming (Point & click adventures, 3D 1st person shooters, and RTS+TBS strategy games). The magazine has sadly disappeared into near obscurity with only a small internet presence and a few mangy old mags occasionally appearing on ebay. There is currently NO COMPLETE DIGITAL RECORD OF THIS MAGAZINE IN EXISTENCE. I want to try and change that…
Over the last few years I’ve been collecting physical copies of old MegaZones. Because of this I have become very interested in preserving scanned digital copies of the magazines online so I’ve also been trying to help out some of the wiki websites working to do the same and have recently started a new preservation collection of my own for all to enjoy at archive.org . Internet Archive have become the ultimate preservation website for internet sites, books, magazines, videos and many other things, even video games! They have a really good online magazine reader built in as well so they make preserving this content so easy and almost fun!
MAIN MegaZone Archive Site:
https://archive.org/search.php?query=MegaZone+Magazine (The new archive I’ve setup)
Other Backup Sites:
https://segaretro.org/Megazone
https://retrocdn.net/Category:Megazone_scans
http://www.retrogamingaus.com/wiki/index.php?title=Megazone (Covers only)
http://www.oldgamemags.com/index.php/downloads/category/306-megazone (Members only)
http://amr.abime.net/issues_44 (Amiga related content only)
Project Status:
At this stage 48 of the 56 known issues have been found and scanned by various collectors and myself leaving 7 issues still missing (however these numbers are not 100% certain), all from the magazines earliest years (although someone has claimed there was an issue 57!!! – see update 2 below). Many of the magazines found are missing their posters and some occasionally had supplement mini books that may be missing too. We’re also trying to digitize any MegaZone TV commercials out there on old VHS video cassettes as we have rescued 2 but know there are more (I remember seeing more as a kid).
25/09/2020 Update 1 – New Magazines Found!
07/03/2021 Update 2 – New Magazines Found!
30/04/2023 Update 3 – New Magazines & Videos Found!
How YOU Can Help: Continue reading
Blake's Sanctum - News 