paranoid marvin wrote:I suppose there would be some mileage in one-off tribute,or 'best of'' magazines - you only have to look on the Speccy and C64 (and now Amiga) books that have been massively overfunded on Kickstarter (and of course RG itself) to see that there are people willing to pay good money for retro done properly.
Well, two things there. First, there have already been two Zzap! tributes, #107 and the SE that was available with Retro Gamer #18. Both, note, were done with the full blessing of Roger and Oli. But in terms of best-ofs, best of what? Those mags were fun to read at the time, but would there really be people who'd pay for what would ultimately be a collection of scans of old reviews? As for those books you mention, they're something else entirely: retrospective and beautifully designed bespoke collections, rather than just money for old (reprint) rope.
As for old ads - they appeared quite often in 'old' RG; and say for example they reprinted a 'Silica Shop' or 'Cassette 50' ad - are they really infringing anyone's rights by re-printing these ads?
Yes, they are. And although you're of course perfectly correct in noting they appeared in old RG, that was of course a different publisher and a different time. You'll note full-page reproductions of old content (or reworkings of it into something like a new cover) don't appear anywhere in the mag now, without express permission from rights holders.
And if they were would anyone know (or even care) I'm guessing there would be more time spent arguing over who owned the rights to what than would be worth the time spent.
As someone who creates things, I'd hate to think we'd end up in a situation where that would be an acceptable position to take from what, remember, is a major UK magazine publisher. I can't for a second imagine Damian Butt or anyone would just forge ahead regardless, without securing rights, purely on the basis that would be so staggeringly wrong from a moral standpoint. In other words, just because you
can get away with something, that doesn't mean you
should—and it'd only take one stubborn rights holder to torpedo everything.
the_hawk wrote:I remember the RG issue that had the Your Sinclair mag attached I absolutely loved that. I'm guessing there's a potential for a semi-regular pull out mag in the style of Crash/Zzap maybe with a few classic reviews & some homebrew.
Branded sections had occurred to me, perhaps with design reminiscent of the old mags. But Zzap!64 and Crash are but two of a huge range of well-remembered mags, and most of the others would be beyond Imagine's reach, unless Butt has very deep pockets. But, yeah, perhaps they'd work as a rebrand of old bookazines, but even then you'd end up with a name, possibly a logo if a deal can be reached with Oli, and then a load of content that, unless hugely redesigned, doesn't remotely resemble either magazine in the slightest.
