Terms of Use

Reetroz lets people read digitized video game magazines in a browser. The project exists to keep old print available for history, research, nostalgia, and education. It is not a store. It is not a publisher. It is not an official archive of any magazine company.

By using the site you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the site. These Terms are our house rules and disclosures. They are not legal advice, and they do not guarantee that nobody will ever object to the archive. We would rather be clear than clever.

Every magazine title, issue, article, review, screenshot, advertisement, cover, logo, masthead, character likeness, and trade dress on this site remains the property of its respective owners — publishers, authors, photographers, illustrators, advertisers, and their successors. Reetroz claims no copyright in those works. We do not assign ourselves credit as the creator. We do not watermark covers as ours. We do not license the magazines to anyone.

Displaying a scan here is not a claim of ownership. Catalog metadata (titles, dates, page counts, file paths) is descriptive. The underlying editorial and artistic work is not ours.

The Reetroz name, site design, software, and original interface copy are separate from the magazines. Those site materials are the only things we speak for as our own. Everything that came off a printed page belongs to someone else.

Reetroz is independent. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or approved by Nintendo, Ziff Davis, Future, EGM Media, GameStop, Imagine, IDG, Prima, BradyGames, official platform magazines, or any other publisher whose work appears here. Names and logos appear because they are on the historical artifacts. That is identification, not a partnership.

Mentions of Video Game History Foundation, Internet Archive, CGW Museum, or other libraries describe where scans were found. Those organizations did not ask us to build this site and are not responsible for it.

We did not photograph these issues in a warehouse we own. Pages are assembled from publicly circulated scans and catalogs: community scanners, the Video Game History Foundation library, the Internet Archive, CGW Museum, and similar preservation projects. Quality varies. Some issues are incomplete. Some covers are the best file we could find, not a studio original.

If a credit is wrong or a source should be named differently, tell us. We will correct the record. Correcting a credit is not the same as claiming we created the magazine.

We honor good-faith requests from people who have a real connection to the work: the publisher, the copyright owner, an author or photographer acting for their own contribution, an estate, or a representative who can show they speak for one of those parties.

Email info@doctorcode.org and include, as much as you can:

• Your name and the organization you represent, if any.
• The magazine title, issue number, and year — or a link to the page on this site.
• Whether you want the whole title removed or only specific issues.
• A short statement of your relationship to the work (publisher, creator, estate, counsel).
• A way to reach you if we need one clarifying question.

We do not need a lawsuit, a formal demand letter, or a statutory form to start. A clear email is enough. We will take down the requested material and stop pointing the catalog at it. If only part of an issue is in dispute, say so; we will still err toward removal rather than argument.

If you are an author or artist and only your piece should come down, say which pages or article. We will do what the files allow. If we cannot isolate a single page cleanly, we will remove the issue.

We may refuse a request that is obviously fraudulent or that asks us to delete someone else’s magazine with no connection shown. We will not use that as a stalling tactic against a real rights holder.

You may browse, read, and share links to pages on Reetroz for personal, educational, and non-commercial research.

You may not:

• Sell, rent, or bundle the scans as a product.
• Present yourself as the publisher or as Reetroz’s owner of the magazines.
• Strip credits and rehost the archive as if it were yours.
• Attack, scrape to death, or disrupt the service.
• Use the site to harass living people named in old letters pages or staff boxes.
• Upload malware, scrape account data, or probe the host for access you were not given.

The in-browser reader is for viewing. If you download pages through developer tools or a scraper, you do that on your own responsibility. We do not grant you a copyright license in the magazines, because we do not have one to give.

Sign-in is optional. The archive stays readable without an account. If you sign in (currently via Google) you may post comments. You are responsible for what you write. Do not post illegal content, personal data about other people, impersonations, or spam.

You keep whatever rights you have in your own comment text. You give Reetroza non-exclusive permission to display that comment next to the issue. We may remove comments that break these rules or the law, or that a rights holder asks us to take down.

We can close an account that is used to abuse the site. Comments are not editorial content of the magazines and should not be read as a statement by any publisher.

If you only read, we log the usual technical noise any website sees (IP address, browser, pages requested) as part of hosting. We use Google Analytics 4 to see which pages are read and how people find the site. Google receives that traffic data. We do not sell a list of readers.

If you sign in with Google, we receive the name, email, and avatar Google sends us so we can attach your comments to a person. We store comments and that profile data on the database used by this site. We do not need your date of birth, address, or payment card, and we do not ask for them.

Accounts are for people who can form this agreement. Do not create an account for a child under 13. Old magazines on the shelf may have been sold to younger readers; that does not mean we collect information from children.

Removal requests and support mail to info@doctorcode.org are read by the operator to act on them. We will not publish your takedown email as a trophy.

The site is provided “as is” and “as available.” Issues go missing. Pages are crooked. OCR is wrong. A title may disappear because the rights holder asked. We do not warrant that the archive is complete, accurate, uninterrupted, or fit for any particular purpose — including citation in a book or use as a substitute for buying a legitimate back issue.

Historical magazines contain the opinions, ads, and prejudices of their time. Hosting a scan is not an endorsement of those opinions, products, or claims.

To the fullest extent the law allows, the operator of Reetroz is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, data, or goodwill, arising from your use of the site or from the magazines displayed on it.

If a court finds us liable anyway, our total liability to you for all claims connected to the site will not exceed the amount you paid us to use it in the twelve months before the claim — which, today, is zero, because the archive is free.

Some places do not allow these limits. In those places, the limit is the minimum the law requires. Nothing here is meant to exclude liability that cannot legally be excluded, including death or personal injury caused by negligence where that bar is not allowed.

If your misuse of the site, your comments, or your violation of these Terms gets us sued or fined, you will cover the reasonable costs of defending that claim — including lawyers’ fees — to the extent the law allows. This does not ask a rights holder to indemnify us for hosting their magazine. That risk is ours to manage by taking material down when asked.

We can update these Terms. The date at the top will change. Continued use after a change means you accept the new version. If we make a material change to how removal works, we will keep the info@doctorcode.org address working or put the new address on this page.

If a court strikes one clause, the rest still applies. These Terms are the agreement for use of the site. They do not create a joint venture, employment, or license of magazine copyrights.

Questions, corrections, and removal requests go to info@doctorcode.org. That inbox is how you reach the person who actually runs this archive.

If you are a rights holder: thank you for the magazines. They meant a lot to the people who bought them new, and they still do. If you want them off this site, say so. We will listen.