Mystery of the Japanese books:

[Anonymous No.6598217]

Since 2018 Japanese raw manga sites have been posting scanned Japanaese retro video game strategy books. These are hundreds of precious books so far, and we have no idea who is scanning them.

I went to their request form, asked if they had anything new, and the reply was "Not available on other sites". Which implies they just download from sites. We already know they grab material from e-hentai and other sites, but what could be the other sites? The leading theory is Chinese scanners on baidu.

[Anonymous No.6598224]

>>6598217

This guy uploads a bunch of them. They then get posted to retrocdn afterwards.

https://archive.org/details/@kitsunebi77

[Anonymous No.6598226]

>>6598217

These guides are important because they have artwork, details on the game and its development, developer interviews, and other material. Vital important material that is needed for game scholarship.

The guides include:

>18/28 issues of All About guidebook series (mostly fighting games)
>special issues of Gamest arcade magazine from the 90's dealing with fighting games
>Gamest mook strategy guides
>Konami Official Guides
>Famitsu guides
>Sega Saturn guides
>Wizardry books (30+!)
>Ultima books
>Dengeki Playstation guides (a few)
>mostly focusing on horror, adventure, and fighting games

[Anonymous No.6598303]

>>6598217
Where may i find the scan of this

[Anonymous No.6598305]

They drop these books in mostly big dumps every 6 months.

http://13dl.net/%ef%bc%9c%e3%82%b2%e3%83%bc%e3%83%a0%e6%94%bb%e7%95%a5%e6%9c%ac%ef%bc%9e-x32.html

http://13dl.net/%ef%bc%9c%e3%81%9d%e3%81%ae%e4%bb%96%ef%bc%9e-x15%e5%86%8a.html

http://13dl.net/%ef%bc%9c%e3%82%b3%e3%83%b3%e3%82%b7%e3%83%a5%e3%83%bc%e3%83%9e%e3%83%bc%e3%82%b2%e3%83%bc%e3%83%a0%e9%96%a2%e9%80%a3%ef%bc%9e-x27%e5%86%8a.html

http://13dl.net/%ef%bc%9c%e3%82%aa%e3%83%bc%e3%83%ab%e3%83%89pc%e3%82%b2%e3%83%bc%e3%83%a0%e9%96%a2%e9%80%a3%ef%bc%9e-x16%e5%86%8a.html

http://13dl.net/%ef%bc%9c%e3%82%b2%e3%83%bc%e3%83%a0%e6%94%bb%e7%95%a5%e6%9c%ac%e3%80%81%e5%85%ac%e5%bc%8f%e3%83%96%e3%83%83%e3%82%af%ef%bc%9e-30%e5%86%8a.html

[Anonymous No.6598552]

>>6598217
Funny. I have been downloading some Japanese magazines on archive. I/O, Oh X(MZ), Famimaga, and so on. Famimaga was an old Famicom magazine, so it has a lot of interview with gamedevs and whatnot. I'm having fun reading them.

[Anonymous No.6598556]

>>6598217
NOT VIDEO GAMES

[Anonymous No.6598778]

>>6598226
>game scholarship
What a colossal waste of lifetime

[Anonymous No.6598793]

It's incredible how much magazines the Japanese release. If you go to Japan you'll come to realise that only a very small fraction will ever be scanned

[Miguel No.6598852]

>>6598217
>and we have no idea who is scanning them
I do.

[Anonymous No.6598975]

>>6598793
Same with print publications in every country. Because it's all throw-away stuff.

[Anonymous No.6599112]

>>6598303

https://e-hentai.org/g/1678083/020e47e2fb/
https://wupfile.com/27jpdlpnjjb8

[Anonymous No.6599115]

https://retrocdn.net/Category:Shared_strategy_guide_scans

[Anonymous No.6599119]

Is anyone translating the interviews?

[Anonymous No.6599123]

>>6599119

http://shmuplations.com/

[Anonymous No.6599140]

Re-Uploaders of books:

https://archive.org/details/@kitsunebi77
https://e-hentai.org/tag/artbook

Original sources:
http://13dl.net/category/etc/shumi-jitsuyou
http://13dl.net/category/etc/kaisetsu-gashu/kaisetsu-kousatsu

[Anonymous No.6599145]

>>6599123
This guy actually went to Japan to and spent weeks scanning magazines, so I'm not sure if he will even gaze at these ones.

[Anonymous No.6599160]

>>6599145

Oh he went to a Japanese library, but he also gets his sources from wherever he can. GLSA is a massive archive of unsourced Japanese dev interviews and he has translated a bunch. My only one big problem with the guy is that he doesn't even upload the scan pages for comparison.

>Updated 4/1/19: I’ve added 70 new interviews to the list (mostly pulled from Gamest) which you can find by sorting via !NEW!.

Wanna know why? Because someone else is scanning a bunch of gamest magazines.

https://twitter.com/japanesemagscan

[Anonymous No.6599189]

So Mobile Suit League is a Chinese mecha forum and a user on there has been scanning books for years. If you've read any Japanese gundam book in the last 5 years likely it's one of their scans. The reason we know this is because they have a nice forward facing forum that is easy to search. A lot of other Chinese sites don't have that.

http://bbs.cnmsl.net/thread-141440-1-1.html

So if anyone knows any Chinese they could help out by searching baidu and other Chinese places. I did searches for the Japanese file names with Google and duckduckgo, but could only find the places uploaded to. They might use Chinese names. Or maybe google doesn't archive sites like that?

[Anonymous No.6599205]

>>6598793
>It's incredible how much magazines the Japanese release. If you go to Japan you'll come to realise that only a very small fraction will ever be scanned

We're going to be saved by a few things:

>Japanese collections

They often digitize their own collections to save on space but don't release them to the public because of harsh copyright laws. A few of them have leaked over P2P programs like Perfect Dark and Share over the years though. I believe a lot of these older lower quality scans can be sourced to this. Now if we could just convince even a few of them to part with their collections? It would have to be done very quietly and do it in such a way that it couldn't be traced to them. I think you'd have to talk to people in person in Japan to achieve this.

>Chinese pirates

China is a wonderful land where copyright law does not exist. In fact the government is okay with piracy of foreign materials since it brings money to China and takes it away from their rivals. For years China has operated a system where they scan Japanese and other material and then reprint them. So the Chinese have these massive digital collections. I suspect that is the source of many of these collections.

>libraries

Once copyright expires (we'll either be seniors or dead by then) official organizations will do their own scanning projects and it will all be digitized and made public. But official Japanese libraries won't do this until copyright expires.

[Anonymous No.6599223]

I think there's a few scan groups at work.

>Old Scans

File name examples:

PN_SH_OGB_0003.jpg
SHZ_OG_0000b.jpg
AA_GDS_0000a.jpg

They have abbreviations of the source, ie Silent Hill Play Novel Official Guide Book = PN_SH_OGB. Scans are utilitarian, with much lower file sizes. Often have lower saturation. I think these are the older Japanese scans.

https://e-hentai.org/g/1479898/489656f025/

>New Scans

File name examples:
scan0000.jpg

File names are simple numbers. Scans are larger and show signs of editing for higher contrast. More care was put into these. I think these are more recent

Example:
https://e-hentai.org/g/1586852/da295fb874/

[Anonymous No.6599417]

>>6598226
>game scholarship
nigga play the games and have fun. This shit isn't high art, it's just a fun timepass.

[Anonymous No.6599478]

>>6598217
This is really great, I love to look through this old stuff even if I can't read it. I really hope the archive doesn't get taken down and all this stuff lost.

[Anonymous No.6599491]

>>6599417
>>6598778

You guys are almost certainly scoffing at the term "scholarship" but then you guys just love hearing dev interviews, and seeing the background on how your favorite games were made. Hell you wouldn't be here if you didn't! Those secrets just don't fall from the sky. They're sourced to developer interviews or production information that comes from guides or magazines.

[Anonymous No.6599924]

>>6598778
Don't you have to have a life to have a lifetime?

>>6599491
Yeah, taking other peoples work and making a youtube about it isn't "scholarship" faggot.

[Anonymous No.6600030]

>>6598217
>Since 2018 Japanese raw manga sites have been posting scanned Japanaese retro video game strategy books.
What are the sites?

[Anonymous No.6600069]

>>6600030

There's a whole network of clone sites. No clue who runs them or what.

https://jpfiles.eu/
http://www.a-zmanga.net
https://dl-zip.net
https://asiamediablog.com
13dl.net/
http://dl-zip.com

but there's way more.

[Anonymous No.6600097]

>>6600069
Thanks. I can't read Japanese, I can try ocr, but I'll poke around these and see if anything is interesting

[Anonymous No.6600103]

>>6600069
Ukrainian mafia, Chinese scammers and Israeli mobsters mostly

[Anonymous No.6600108]

>>6600103

Ukraine and Israel? No way. They wouldn't give enough of a shit about this. This looks like Chinese. If it was Japanese the long arm of the law would have shut them down.

They type fluent Japanese and when in English it's broken English you see Japs use. So I'm thinking Chinese based.

[Anonymous No.6600215]

From /ic/ >>>/ic/4678725

[Anonymous No.6600219]

>>6598778
Do you know where you are faggot?

[Anonymous No.6600287]

>>6600215

What a bunch of drama around piracy. Anyways, this is likely the source of these right? If so then it means that this is likely just a drop in the bucket compared to what there is then? So I don't rally care like at all about pedo porn mags, but it's the Japanese magazines and guidebooks that I do care about.

I have noticed that the newer scans tend to have more crooked pages and they often just press the book to scan rather than properly debinding. They then crop to hide this. I guess they didn't want to destroy the book?

[Anonymous No.6600740]

>>6600287
>>6600215

So my bet is that these are older Chinese scans then they're getting passed around baidu in modern day.

[Anonymous No.6600851]

>>6600219
Faggotvile?!

[Anonymous No.6601167]

Finding people who know Chinese and know how to go through baidu forums would be the next step.

[Anonymous No.6601264]

>>6601167

>>>/int/126790750

[Anonymous No.6601394]

>>6601264

also made a wsr thread:
>>>/wsr/853852

[Anonymous No.6602458]

>>6598217

this thread has a playthrough
>>6601320

[Anonymous No.6602647]

https://exhentai.org/uploader/menato98

[Anonymous No.6603197]

>>6602647

wtf sad panda?

[Anonymous No.6603218]

>>6602647
Doesn't work

[Anonymous No.6603256]

>>6603218
>>6603197

https://e-hentai.org/uploader/menato98

[Anonymous No.6603808]

>>6603256

ah thanks.

[Anonymous No.6605492]

>>6601394

ah thread's dead baby. thread's dead.