pre internet days 80s and 90s games magazines
- Thread starter DevilRedeemed
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I agree with you mate. We got all the mags over here but I could never warm to the US ones like EGM, Gamerpro etc. I just found them full of advertisements and light on detail even though they seemed like they were 200 pages.
British mags were where it was at back in the day. Super Play, Mean Machines, Zzap, C&VG etc. Funny, informative, glorious glorious things they were. I used to look forward to the mags more than the games sometimes.
MEAN YOB was fucken great!
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I remember getting GameFan issues from 1993 thru 1996, and every time I got one of those issues, it was a dream come true. Each issue was a treasure chest of information. Plus the magazine actually used decent paper and had great RGB scans of all the games. The proof reading in Gamefan was nonexistent, and they were often too hyped up on everything. Halverson would treat the average misc. platformer like it was a gift from God, but still.... that magazine was all that a bag of chips back at that time. Nothing could touch it. I'm talking early days GameFan. First 4 years or so.
The other magazine that was super amazing back in 95, 96 and 97 was Next-Generation. (USA version of Edge kinda) Their reviews sucked, but man... they covered the business side of the industry so well. So many great interviews. Also, they could hype up a game and a new technology like none other. They were the absolute masters of hype. They would hype the hell out of something way before it came out, and then never talk about it again. If you go back and look at those old Next-Gen issues, there is so many games that they gave like 3 or 4 pages to that ended up getting cancelled or whatever...
Still a great magazine...
The other magazine that was super amazing back in 95, 96 and 97 was Next-Generation. (USA version of Edge kinda) Their reviews sucked, but man... they covered the business side of the industry so well. So many great interviews. Also, they could hype up a game and a new technology like none other. They were the absolute masters of hype. They would hype the hell out of something way before it came out, and then never talk about it again. If you go back and look at those old Next-Gen issues, there is so many games that they gave like 3 or 4 pages to that ended up getting cancelled or whatever...
Still a great magazine...
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I agree with you mate. We got all the mags over here but I could never warm to the US ones like EGM, Gamerpro etc. I just found them full of advertisements and light on detail even though they seemed like they were 200 pages.
British mags were where it was at back in the day. Super Play, Mean Machines, Zzap, C&VG etc. Funny, informative, glorious glorious things they were. I used to look forward to the mags more than the games sometimes.
MEAN YOB was fucken great!
thing is in England we grew up on Beano and Dandy and maybe Viz (not me), so the humor, the way it was all constructed I think came from that heritage.
even the early days of CEX had that thing happening in and around it.
Used to read mainly CVG, Mean Machines (didnt really like when they split it up later on into separate Nintendo and Sega publications), Super Play and EGM (when it was in stock). A good source for scans of these old mags is the Out of Print Archive website - still quite enjoy reading a few features or reviews from back in the days about a game before actually playing it.
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I'm young af and I was introduced to video games when I was 4 or 5, in '96/'97 when my dad took me out and we bought a PlayStation. the only thing I remember fondly is when Final Fantasy VII was all over the PSM magazines and others. We would get PSM in the mail and you bet I'd sit there and look at them all day and fantasize about Cloud Strife and Tifa Lockhart what with all the fan art they'd put in those things. i cant believe it took me almost 20 years to be completely open about having had a lifelong crush on Cloud Strife
BerryTogart
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I bought the EGM magazine at ridiculous prices at a train station near where I lived - it was the only place where they had those foreign mags 
(and covered the NeoGeo, which I didn't own but adored 
)
(and covered the NeoGeo, which I didn't own but adored )
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i think we've had a similar upbringing there, D. i remember beano and dandy mags really well. desperate dan and his cow pies, lol. the mags usually came with a lollipop to. and CEX was my holy grail for games back in the day.
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Currently working my way through Super Play magazine. Just finished 17 the other day. Plan to buy the rest I don't have and read through them all cover to cover. Best gaming mag I've ever read, even better than EGM. Any Euro member wanna help me locate the rest I need?
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LOL...this was me early on, I had no scratch for the magazines. I would go grocery shopping with my mom and then head straight for the magazine section...notepad in hand. I got caught a few times and they would bust my balls about it.
Later on in the early 90's, I had one buddy with a Nintendo Power sub, and another with an EGM sub. I had the Die Hard Game Fan. Between the three of us we had the bases covered. By the mid 90's, it seemed only DHGF had the nuts to give a game a bad review. By the late 90's, they were gone (I think). EGM became a pile of ads and fluff articles...the dream was gone.
I picked up a Nintendo Power sub in the mid 2000's to get a free copy of the GC Zelda collection...that was the last time I had a magazine sub.
What is noteworthy is that it was one of the only mags which had good technical articles for its time regarding technical aspects related to importing games / consoles from abroad, PAL/NTSC differences, explaining the differences in various video output standards and even how to fix the blown SNES fuse. This was at a time when with reference to the latter other mags were advising stuff along the lines of 'the electronics in your console had been damaged, u need to buy a new console'
-SD-
Camel Slug
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Mean Machines was a fantastic magazine, shame it lost a lot of its personality when the split happened, although MM Sega was a more enjoyable read than Nintendo Magazine System.
Super Play is probably the greatest video game related publication ever. It's also the magazine that introduced me to anime and manga through its varied articles. And huge adverts for Manga Mania.
C&VG was never one of my favourites, I'd only get it if there was nothing else worth reading. But I did have The Beano and Sonic the Comic delivered until I was about 15.
Super Play is probably the greatest video game related publication ever. It's also the magazine that introduced me to anime and manga through its varied articles. And huge adverts for Manga Mania.
C&VG was never one of my favourites, I'd only get it if there was nothing else worth reading. But I did have The Beano and Sonic the Comic delivered until I was about 15.
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I'm a hoarder, so I've still got every single video game magazine I ever purchased, save for one Game Informer I chopped up for a high school collage project. I have big stacks of EGM, Gamepro, Diehard Gamefan, PSM, Game Players, Nintendo Power, Game Informer, etc. As I mostly only buy games from the 8-32bit eras, their news is still "current" in a silly way to me. I often leaf through them, both for nostalgia, and because I can frequently find games that I had completely forgotten about and want to try again or for the first time.
I agree that, pre-internet, they were the best, and often only, way to get information about what was coming down the pipeline, codes, etc. I don't think I'll ever get rid of them unless I absolutely had to, although it would be nice to have them all on some kind of digital media with an index that I could search.
I agree that, pre-internet, they were the best, and often only, way to get information about what was coming down the pipeline, codes, etc. I don't think I'll ever get rid of them unless I absolutely had to, although it would be nice to have them all on some kind of digital media with an index that I could search.
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one time in the early 2000s me and my friend went to the grocery store, right into the magazine aisle, and started ripping open magazines and pocketing the demo discs for PS2 and XBOX. there was an undercover cop with a jeff gordan windbreaker on watching us the entire time. got busted. i didn't understand what i did wrong
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Same here. I have nearly all NP made from the beginning up until the late 90s, a ton of random EGM's, and the first 2-3 years of Die Hard Game Fan...minus that no. 1 issue...never could get my hands on that.
I have my original, complete 1st issue of Nintendo Power framed and hanging in my office.
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Why?
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It's just one of those things that has sentimental value to me. I have a few items like that in my office...
Back wall of my office:
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another really good mag. I miss them all.