Hi,
I've been a reader of the mag for a long time and I have been working on a project to index Retro Gamer features into a spreadsheet.
There have already been endeavors to thoroughly list contents for each issue, which is a great way of knowing what a particular issue contains, but cannot help when you want to know in which issue a certain article appeared. A spreadsheet would allow people to find answers to questions like: "Did RG ever do a feature on the Neo Geo Pocket?" (yes, issue 20) or "Which issue had the making of Chuckie Egg?" (issue 40).
Limitations:
Now first, the disappointing bit. I have limited this to features only. All the other sections of the magazine are fantastic, but it would be messy to log everything. Sadly this also includes Retro Rated, Homebrew, and some other bits and bobs I found hard to categorise!
I have also been quite sparse with the information I included. I did not bother to list the author of each article, or its page number. What I give you are: Article Type, Issue, number of pages (to show whether the article is big or small), and whether the feature appeared in any of the collection bookazines.
I must also admit that I didn't buy every issue myself, so some data may not be perfect. After issue 66 I could gather the information by watching Darran's youtube videos (don't flick so fast, Darran!)
The information is organised into five tabs:
"Unique" articles are any one-off or infrequent pieces that do not belong to any of the usual categories. Issues 1-18 contained mostly unique articles, then the Imagine mag had a very rigid article structure, and recently there have been more unique articles again.
"Hardware" is the Retroinspections, Obscura Machina, etc.
"Games" is the biggest category, sorted into types of feature (The Definitive, The Classic Game, etc). The first 18 issues stick out a bit because they don't conform to the later definitions.
"People" are the Desert Island Disks and In The Chair With interviews.
"Companies" is the Developer Lookbacks, Company Profiles, etc.
How to use this spreadsheet:
By default the information is laid out the way it was entered: page by page, issue by issue. But this isn't helpful for most needs. You can click "Find & Select" to search directly for a word. Perhaps the most common use of the spreadsheet would be to sort the "Games & Game Series" column alphabetically and browse through the list. But you can play around with sorting any of the columns how you like.
It goes without saying you'll need a spreadsheet program. If you don't have Excel, a free alternative is Calc in the LibreOffice.org suite. The Google Drive version should also be laid out as a proper spreadsheet too.
Here it is.
I can assure you to the best of my ability that the file does not contain any viruses. I'm trying to figure out the best way to host this, so lets try Google Drive, and please let me know if you'd like alternatives:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0BxWi1d ... EY4bkZIZkE
(Go to File>Download to download the XLS file to your computer)
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... khyZ01uX0E
(An alternative that can be viewed in Google like a proper spreadsheet)
I haven't made them editable by other people for now - what do you think?
Apologies for the length of the this post, and whether it was inappropriate to do this. If any of you think a spreadsheet like this will be useful, please feel free to give feedback and corrections. Alright, bye now!
