SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive – Update 3

Hey guys, It’s been a long break since the previous project update 2 as I hadn’t had much luck over the last few years sadly, however I’m happy to announce that things have changed and I’ve finally received a bunch of new donations to the SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive Project ! 🙂

Original Project Post (with tracking list of missing & found issues):
https://blakessanctum.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/sega-megazone-preservation-archive-needs-your-help/

Firstly the awesome Colin May who previously donated the rare issue 2 has successfully scanned issues 5 and 6 which were the very first issues after the final name change from MegaComp to the one we all knew and loved, MegaZone! To successfully obtain these rare early issues is such a great achievement. Thank you Colin!

Obtaining these issues has also confirmed that my original assumptions of the October & November 1990 issues being issues 9 & 10 respectively were incorrect as Issue 6 is dated August so there can only be one possible issue 7 between it and the Oct issue I’d said was 9 meaning it must actually be 8, which then means the Nov issue 10 is actually 9 too! The reason I had to originally guess those numbers was because many issues in that period did not say their number and until now I had no issues near Oct/Nov 90 to compare them to and on top of all that the magazine switched between monthly & bi-monthly multiple times during the early 90s making very difficult to predict. Some of my predictions / issue number allocations may still be wrong and only obtaining more lost issues will help reveal the truth! Anyway the good news is Colin has also kindly provided me with the missing 4 pages from issue 8 (formerly 9) so anyone who’s previously obtained this issue (pictured below) will definitely want to re-download it!

The next piece of utterly awesome news is something I never thought would happen! Project fan Sean Paul kindly let me know about a passionate TV archiver named FlemishDog (check out their channel to see other awesome content they’ve rescued) who was in possession of not 1 but 2 more MegaZone TV commercials for Issues 26 & 27 and were in the same style with the same cool music as the Issue 25 commercial I’d previously found on my own tapes and added to the collection a while back. I know there’s another one of these out there too as I remember another similar advert in my childhood but with Captain Kirk in it, so I’m guessing it was for Issue 24 as that contained a review of Star Trek 6. With awesome folks like FlemishDog archiving tv adverts maybe one day I’ll see it again! 🙂

Well that’s pretty much everything for this update. Colin has actually given me more but I’m holding off on that as well as holding on to some more MegaZone subscription cards I’ve found as I want to save them for a future update where if all goes well another excellent fellow who shares our passion for preserving retro video game mags named Forgotten Worlds (check out his channel to see other awesome content he’s rescued) has kindly offered to scan several more MegaZone magazines not currently in the collection! So fingers crossed the next project update containing all this good stuff won’t be too far away! 🙂

SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive – Update 2

Hi guys! 🙂 Time for another update as it’s been a while since the previous project update 1 and we’ve had some great new developments on the SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive Project ! Unfortunately Colin is having some problems with his scanner so I still don’t have all the issues he offered however others have come forward and I’ve been able to score some big additions to the The MegaZone Archive !

Original Project Post (with tracking list of missing & found issues):
https://blakessanctum.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/sega-megazone-preservation-archive-needs-your-help/

First I’ve gotta start with the best one. Big thanks to Minuous over at the English Amiga Boards for letting me know plus David & his friends over at DLH’s Commodore Archive for uploading the file and giving me permission to copy, because I HAVE OBTAINED ISSUE 1! Yes really, the first issue from the late 1980s that started it all! And sure enough as suspected issue 1 was called MegaCom without the P on the end (before it was changed to MegaComp and then MegaZone).

I’ve also been contacted by Mick Elliot who had the super rare Issue 4 of MegaComp (the final issue before the name change to MegaZone) and kindly offered to scan it for me. This means we now have every issue before the name change to MegaZone except Issue 3. Fingers crossed we score that one one day too!

Then I got lucky on ebay when I saw someone was selling a massive collection of MegaZones and I noticed 2 of them I didn’t have in my physical collection, Issue 8 (EDIT: original wrote this as Issue 9 but it’s actually 8) and Issue 22. So I contacted the seller and negotiated them taking those 2 out and selling separately to me! Issue 22 is already in the online archive however Issue 8 is not! So I’ve scanned it in high quality and added it to the collection! Love that Arnie Total Recall cover!

SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive – Update 1

Figured it was time to post an update on my SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive project as finally my efforts have netted a new addition.

Original Project Post (with tracking list of missing & found issues):
https://blakessanctum.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/sega-megazone-preservation-archive-needs-your-help/

An awesome fellow named Colin saw my posts, contacted me over email and informed me that he has two MegaComp issues (pre-MegaZone Issue 2 and 4) and the first MegaZone along with several more early issues from 1990 (Issue 5 and what we believe is Issue 7 and 9). He’s sent me pictures of all the covers however so far he’s only scanned one mag for me and I haven’t heard from him for a while since sadly 😦 so fingers crossed he does the others eventually. That one mag was MegaComp Issue 2 and sure enough it mentions the name change from MegaCom (Issue 1) which confirms the NLA records. I’ve added it to The MegaZone Archive !

Another fellow recently posted a comment in one of my help threads about this search claiming that Issue 56 was not really the last one and that a few months later another issue appeared and that a letter he wrote to them was in it. I find that hard to believe as Issue 56 clearly states that it’s the last plus I was a subscriber and the only thing I got sent to me from them after Issue 56 was a cheque in the mail refunding me the rest of my subscription lol!

On and yet another kind fellow sent me pictures of some sort of Sega bucket (called Mega Booster Pak) promotion that was associated with MegaZone. I can’t see the word MegaZone written on them anywhere so I’m not sure about adding them to the archive at this stage. Maybe they were more of a Sega Club thing?

And finally I also saw some more little supplementary ‘Mini Megazone’ fold out booklets (similar to my one pictured below) on ebay recently. However the seller wanted 80 bucks EACH for them though so no one bought them. In the end I just took his pictures from the sale, maybe I’ll fashion them into something for the archives.

Big thank you to everyone that has come forward over the months since my first post. Hopefully one day we’ll get those final issues backed up and preserved! Make sure you visit the The MegaZone Archive to see these latest additions.

SEGA MegaZone Preservation Archive NEEDS YOUR HELP!

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: