Game Informer shut down

[deuxhero]

You’d think GameStop would be doing better in recent years given places like Walmart and Best Buy stopped carrying as wide of a selection of games as in the past. Although stupid they don’t carry as wide of a selection as in the past either, and that was kind of the whole reason to go into a GameStop.

GS killed itself when it stopped carrying PS2 games, to the objection of franchisees who pointed out PS2 game sales were still very solid in lower income areas (even not being lower income, the last time I shopped at GS was when they were clearing out the PS2/GCN/GBA/DS games and I wanted to fill in some gaps in my collections). They tried to get back in to older stuff as a mail order thing, but it was too late. Now consoles barely have any games to sell as used (beyond just lack of exclusives and modern games being crap: check Sony's shareholder reports where they lump PS4 and PS5 software into a single bullet point then note its on the decline and has been since before PS5 launched. Console exist to sell the CoD and EA sports megatitles rather than well rounded libraries now.) and digital distribution means you don't have games with a single print run 3+ years ago where GS is your only option.

Nevermind that GS hasn't been physical media for years. It's a geek bodega filled with Funkopop and similar merch now.

 

[Assisted Living Godzilla]

Newer console have a lot to sell to. The problem is, and it’s been like this for a few years now, they’ve shifted their priorities away from more niche titles to the exact same stuff you can get at any big box store. It used to be they’d have copies of stuff like Wild Guns Reloaded, Dragon’s Crown Pro, and Nobunaga’s Ambition just on hand at whatever store you went to. But that seems to not really be the case anymore the few times I’ve went in there, especially in the last couple years.

On the plus side for me, them not having 13 Sentinels in the store ended up with them sending me two copies of it in the mail when I ordered it from them.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

What's wrong with .pdf files?

It's so easy to sneak malicious code into them that can hurt your system if executed, and they're almost always in a lower resolution when compared to properly done page scans.

I'll admit that .pdf files tend to have two major advantages though: OCR (that allows for semi-decent text search) and hyperlinks. I'm a bit of a purist when it comes to (video game) magazine scans, but I understand people who prefer the text search.

What alternative(s) do you prefer then? For old gaming magazines, I don't care about OCR or hyperlinks. It's simply that the pdf-format is the standard and it's what you will find basically everywhere.

The only other standards I know of are Comic Book Zip Archives (.cbz) and Comic Book Rar Archives (.cbr)

Don't let the name fool you, these are artificial file formats for Zip- and Rar-archives of image files, respectively. Take an archive of either choice, rename the extension appropriately, and most capable PDF-readers will recognize the file and load it up as if it was a collection of images pretending to be pages.

Most image file formats are recognized through this manner.

The biggest upside to these is that there isn't any malicious code to speak of unless you allow it, these are just image files in a compressed archive file, made accessible to a reader program. The second-biggest upside is that you have absolute control of its contents and can alter it as you wish. Do you know how much of a pain it is to extract or alter data from/in a PDF-file?

I'll take PDF-files when no other options are available, but fortunately many PDF-files of (video game) magazines are just cbz/cbr-files given a PDF-framework, and I love to rip those apart to get at the pure images inside.

 

[Lucumo]

The only other standards I know of are Comic Book Zip Archives (.cbz) and Comic Book Rar Archives (.cbr)

Don't let the name fool you, these are artificial file formats for Zip- and Rar-archives of image files, respectively. Take an archive of either choice, rename the extension appropriately, and most capable PDF-readers will recognize the file and load it up as if it was a collection of images pretending to be pages.

Most image file formats are recognized through this manner.

The biggest upside to these is that there isn't any malicious code to speak of unless you allow it, these are just image files in a compressed archive file, made accessible to a reader program. The second-biggest upside is that you have absolute control of its contents and can alter it as you wish. Do you know how much of a pain it is to extract or alter data from/in a PDF-file?

I'll take PDF-files when no other options are available, but fortunately many PDF-files of (video game) magazines are just cbz/cbr-files given a PDF-framework, and I love to rip those apart to get at the pure images inside.

I actually used to have a proper reader for that format but, IIRC, the pages got messed up (the issue being page 1 being "1" and not "01" or "001"), so I never really bothered with it again (and deleted it 1-2 months ago). One can find them on the internet archive from time to time but the uploads there are often meh. And then we come back to the problem where good uploads are always in .pdf format and one has to live with it.

Playing around with my Adobe Acrobat, I think I know what you mean. One can basically copy the entire page/image and then do whatever with it.