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Gaming magazines

Started by Kryton, June 29, 2020, 09:23:09 PM

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Kryton

Remember them eh?
The best part of the month as a kid was getting my copy of C64 magazine or Zzap64, often with a cassette tape included full of demos and the odd free game. This was long before t'internet so it would be my only source of information for coming games. Having a growing stack of physical demos of games I could never afford or convince my parents to buy was sometimes a magical experience for the young me.

I remember the Amiga CD32 magazine too, selling me so much false hope. As though the CD32 was going to wipe the floor with the Playstation or Saturn. With crap versions of Street fighter 2 clones and Tetris and whatever.

I think later I got the N64 magazines but I forget what they were called, and the magic had all but faded by then. Especially that they didn't come with any cartridges the stingy bastards.

Which gaming mags did you collect?

bgmnts

Getting that demo disc every month with OXM was the shit! Even had XBM for a little while.

Wanted to be a game reviewer for a while but my mother said that was silly and all that. Now I see some of the money being made in the game industry and I lament.

The Culture Bunker

Started with Your Sinclar sometime around 87/88, stuck with it till the end. Then moved onto Sega Power, Amiga Format, PC Format and PC Zone would have been the last I ever picked up, till around 1997 or so. YS was head and shoulders the best - I still use some of the jokes I learned from "Kindly Leave the Stage" now.

Was also an ambition of mine to work for Future Publishing, and they did print a few small articles of mine in the Playstation One Mag a very long time ago. In time, I probably dodged a bullet from winding up there full time, as I gather the pay was shit. Plus it turned out they weren't always honest with the reviews, as a lot games reviewers probably aren't.

Bazooka

Official Dreamcast and Dreamcast Magazine, loved reading about and looking at pictures of games that never got released or only released in Japan, which made up 75% of the content.

Kryton

Some of the more frustrating yet ultimately cool aspects of these demos and freeware games in the pre-internet days and such, is the absolute lack of information on how to solve them. No guides, no reviews (besides in-magazine references) - Maybe in a future magazine 9 issues from then, maybe just maybe somebody would send a letter saying that you'd need to do something specific to solve the puzzle, but even that would be dependent on someone getting stuck and deciding to write in to be helpful.

Remember they used to have phone numbers: Are you stuck on this game? Ring this premium number and we'll tell you how to kill that boss!

It feel archaic to even think about waiting months to get your letter printed. Or a clue solved.

peanutbutter

Caddicarus done some good videos on magazines and demo discs earlier this year. Mostly the official playstation ones iirc.
I moved onto Edge and GameTM in the "128-bit" era, thought I stopped reading them then but last time I was home I realised I've quite a few Edge and GamesTM issues up to about 2008.

Got letter of the month in one one time, they never sent me the prize...

badaids

Zzap64 was brilliant.  Proper reviews and the Pig in a Poke section essential for getting past some nails games like Shadow of the Beast.

The best Amiga magazine was Zero.  It had the best cover disks and for a period it kind of went all kind of Viz and was genuinely hilarious.  It was also had high production values; glossy paper, properly bound and had a clean modern house design style.


Neomod

I was the software buyer at the Brighton Virgin Megastore in the late 80's/early 90's and managed to convince Pete my manager that we needed to buy all of the monthly gaming mags for me to make informed buying decisions[nb]That and the attempted bribes from software companies[/nb]

I always enjoyed ACE magazine, it was the GQ of the gaming monthly's.[nb]Actually I hate GQ. Make that ARENA[/nb]

Marner and Me

The Official PS2 mag, free demo every month and I'd read it cover to cover. Even can remember a few funny quotes from it.

When describing the shooting in a new WW2 game "They have researched real gun fire instead of recording a cat pissing on a metal tray"

Something about a Christmas gaming board game "Land on this square and go back a space because you found an unopened and unloved copy of Sega Soccer Slam"

I then moved onto the PS3 and discovered Loaded and Front magazine. Which were far more interesting.

Mobius

I used to buy one called EGM (Electronic Gamers Monthly) which I think was imported or something? So it made me feel cooler than other people.

I loved mean machines and c&vg.
I remember someone writing in to ask who would win in a fight between sonic and Mario which the young me took at face value and found hilarious.

Kryton


madhair60

Cracked one out to two seperate CVG covers. Identify them and win nothing besides knowledge of my shame.

Pink Gregory

Quote from: madhair60 on June 30, 2020, 09:32:33 PM
Cracked one out to two seperate CVG covers. Identify them and win nothing besides knowledge of my shame.

The Lara Croft covering her polygonal waps with a pillow cover, and another one.

the

Quote from: Kryton on June 30, 2020, 03:26:18 PM

I had that issue. Their Sonic 2 review did manage to hit the newstands before anyone else's IIRC.

It must've only just made it into the issue before deadline though, as the cover image has stuck with Jerry Seinfeld dressed as Blanka.

"And what's the deal with denim shorts" etc

Mister Six

#16
Quote from: The Culture Bunker on June 29, 2020, 09:44:59 PM
Started with Your Sinclar sometime around 87/88, stuck with it till the end. Then moved onto Sega Power, Amiga Format, PC Format and PC Zone

Oof, you fucked that up. Amiga Power was the spiritual successor to Your Sinclair, and absorbed a bunch of its staff.

By coincidence, I figured out what my first-ever issue of Your Sinclair was yesterday; it was the issue 58 (October 1990), with the Ivan "Ironman's" Off-Road Racer cover. Feud on the covertape.



I'd actually wanted my mum to buy me it the previous month, but the combo of boobs and innuendo (choppers! Ho-ho-ho!) on this cover made her decide to get me Crash or something instead. I vaguely recall an apology (probably sarcastic) in a later issue for printing that cover, noting that it had scared some mums away.



Dunno why I was so adamant about getting YS again, unless it was just that they had more stuff on their cover tapes than Crash, but I'm glad I did - I fell in love with its idiosyncratic style and bouncy attitude, and followed most of the writers over to Amiga Power after I got my Amiga. That mag - which also prioritised creativity and humour over boring techy shite - basically inspired me to become a journalist. Bastards!

I think this was the first-ever issue I got, although I ended up nicking a bunch of back-issues from a pal - issue 32, December 1993 (makes sense, as I probably got the Amiga for Christmas):



The cover was supposed to be a poppy, until the Royal Legion or whoever sued Sensible Software and Future got cold feet.

I used to love poring over the massive list of mini-reviews at the back of the mag (one-liners for every game they'd reviewed in the past 12 months, I think), and reading 1/4 page reviews of obscure point-and-click adventures that nobody would ever buy. The relative paucity of information about games (no web, just word of mouth) and the sheer volume of titles being pumped out every month made gaming seem like an unbounded, magical world.

If I ever become wealthy - ha! - or even just manage to own a home with a bit of storage space - double ha! - then I'll probably buy a big load of all the YS and AP back issues, then spend hours poring over them and trying not to stain the paper with my old man tears.

Anyway, after Amiga Power, it was mostly just boring old PC Gamer, with occasional bouts of PC Format if it looked like the coverdisc had some cool rendering tool or something that I could fiddle about with for 15 minutes before getting bored and sacking off forever. Can't remember when I stopped buying either of those magazines, but that was it, I think - my PC became too shit to handle new games, and by the time I had a decent console, the internet was filling the information gap. In retrospect I wish I'd ditched Future and gone over to PC Zone so I could read some early years Charlie Brooker, but oh well.

Would have loved to have written for a monthly games mag back in the 80s/90s, though. Had I been born about 15-20 years earlier than I was, obviously.

Mister Six

Two additional things.

A photo of Linda Barker, whom I had a childhood crush on:



And a Kickstarter that has raised 20,000 quid for "Amiga Power: The Album With Attitude", a double-CD compilation featuring "remixes based on tunes personally selected by former Amiga Power contributors". For some reason.

Quote from: madhair60 on June 30, 2020, 09:32:33 PMCracked one out to two seperate CVG covers. Identify them and win nothing besides knowledge of my shame.



Pop fox, big haired angry nappy man.
Casting the net pretty wide hoping to get one hit. I'm guessing there's not much crossover there unless you really don't have a type.

QDRPHNC

I collected Your Sinclairs then later Super Play, which was the YS of the SNES era.

NoSleep

ST Format was more of a computing magazine, but there was always some games and stuff on the cover disk. This was how I came to discover Jeff Minter AKA Yak who the magazine to give away Llamatron (512kb-ready), his adaptation of  Eugene Jarvis' Robotron 2084, with the promise of a 1024kb-ready version plus another game if you sent him a fiver, so it was the first time I encountered shareware as well. Later on he released  Revenge Of The Mutant Camels & Trip A Tron (an early light synthesizer that I spent too much time playing with) the same way.

Gurke and Hare

I was a big fan of Zero, with its letters page hosted by Bloggo of POW fame.

Amiga Power was fine but its faintly anti-intellectual attitude to non-action games - IIRC, they were fairly unimpressed by Civilization - always annoyed me a bit.

SavageHedgehog

A lot of the Official Nintendo Magazine through the N64 and GameCube era can be found here.

Swoz_MK

Quote from: QDRPHNC on July 01, 2020, 05:02:01 AM
I collected Your Sinclairs then later Super Play, which was the YS of the SNES era.

Wil Overton's art for Super Play was fantastic

The Culture Bunker

Quote from: Mister Six on June 30, 2020, 11:09:55 PM
Oof, you fucked that up. Amiga Power was the spiritual successor to Your Sinclair, and absorbed a bunch of its staff.
I don't think they had Amiga Power at our local newsagent.

I'm sure that World of Spectrum had loads of YS scanned in, though it all seems gone now. Shame. I do remember reading it for the first time - my best friend had a copy and give it to me when he was done - and I was laughing so much my mam thought I'd gone a bit strange, as I wasn't the kind of child prone to such outbursts of glee.

magval

If anyone ever finds a decent Gamesmaster archive for the early noughties let me know as I need to see the drawing a reader sent in of famous skateboarder Tony "Hank" again before I die.

Quote from: madhair60 on June 30, 2020, 09:32:33 PM
Cracked one out to two seperate CVG covers. Identify them and win nothing besides knowledge of my shame.


madhair60



Gurke and Hare

Was one of them the back cover of an issue, with the uncensored Game Over advert?