Do you prefer modern day mags that cover the retro scene or old mags from back in the day ?

[HardcoreOtaku]

I was a subscriber to Retro Gamer magazine from near it's beginning up until a year ago.

I've always loved reading video game magazines, strangely I enjoy it as much as actually playing them.
I'm from the UK and we had a great selection of magazines to choose from.
Some of my favourites in the early nineties were Computer & Video Games (CVG) & Mean Machines.
But my absolute favourite was Super Play which was a Super Nintendo magazine but it also covered anime and Japanese culture, it had awesome manga style artwork from Wil Overton.
The magazine reviewed lots of import Super Famicom games and also had a passion for RPGs with lots of reviews and features.
Here's the wikipedia link about Super Play magazine
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Play

[celerystalker]

Depends on what I'm looking for.

Seeing if a particular game is of interest to me? Old ones. Nintendo Power used to introduce a game by providing a short walkthrough for the first portion of the game. That tells me more about if a game is up my alley than two paragraphs musing over the graphics.

Looking for some interesting history on something new to me? New ones. Lots of modern gaming magazines pad issues with history of the industry type articles.

Very true about the industry history in modern magazines. That is my least favorite part of them, actually. I get the purpose, but sometimes I get sick of all the "industry" talk in modern game journalism. It feels like they focus less on the actual games and more on news, companies, and game design celebrities. I know it's naive, and that in a lot of ways old mags were giant ads, but I felt more raw enthusiasm for the playing experience with focus on fun over critiquing.

[Tanooki]

Depends on what I'm looking for.

Seeing if a particular game is of interest to me? Old ones. Nintendo Power used to introduce a game by providing a short walkthrough for the first portion of the game. That tells me more about if a game is up my alley than two paragraphs musing over the graphics.

Looking for some interesting history on something new to me? New ones. Lots of modern gaming magazines pad issues with history of the industry type articles.

Well said. I think this right there is the biggest failing of any of the video gaming magazines, even including some of the more recent years of NP mag before those chodes at Future ran it, then intentionally ran it into the ground. NP was my magazine of choice, but I did get EGMS ever so often if a sub was bought for me, or once i was in their system they'd send me it randomly a year or two here or there to try and get me to buy it again. EGM was almost like the 90s pretentious crap of what you get in the 00s and now. THey really didn't cover much of the games, just their slanted opinions for or against the game maker or console it was on to put the nudge on gamers to buy from the one they liked if it was multiplatform which sickened me. NP and the Nintendo Fun Club was the boss, they would show like 1/3, maybe almost half the game in screen captures like a modern-ish GBA guide. You'd get a real feeling for how the stages were designed, items, skills, challenges and know if you'd hate it's guts or not before you bought it. NP helped me avoid turds, get stuff I'd avoid (later on when I was buying classic stuff 1995-2002), and ask for b'day/christmas gift games so I never really bought a turd on the 2D Nintendo systems ever. It's a shame the modern 'retro' gaming magazines do not do this, it's a crime really. If I wanted a history lesson I'd ask for it, developer stories are cool and the staff who were makers of this or that is nice, but it seems they think that caters to people and so far that has put more magazines to death.

[Gentlegamer]

EGM was almost like the 90s pretentious crap of what you get in the 00s and now. THey really didn't cover much of the games, just their slanted opinions for or against the game maker or console it was on to put the nudge on gamers to buy from the one they liked if it was multiplatform which sickened me.

The real strength of old EGM were the Japanese scoops they got by attending all the Japanese trade shows. EGM was the magazine for "breaking news" on new games, long before the American publishers were even thinking of bringing a game over.

[Aussie2B]

I enjoy both (obviously, I was a writer for Video Game Collector, after all), but they offer very different experiences. I read older magazines a lot more often, though, because it's kinda slim pickings as far as modern retro mags go, especially if we're talking ones in print (most tend to either go under fast or necessitate importing; the American market just isn't a good place for gaming mags in general, let alone niche interest retro mags).

One of my best game-related purchases is still when I bought a huge box of old Nintendo Power issues about a decade ago. They're at my mom's house so I don't get a crack at them often, but when I do I try to get through 3-5 issues before I have to take off, reading them cover to cover. I started from around the 8th or 9th issue, and now I'm up to 1994. The issues themselves aren't nostalgic for me seeing as I never had a Nintendo Power subscription back in the day until late 1995, but it's still loads of fun to immerse myself in the era (or the Nintendo side of it, at least; but I never owned a non-Nintendo system until 1999 anyway).

[Tanooki]

Gentle thanks for the reminder about that, it was the highlight of tolerating that magazine for me over the years until I got online in 1995. I remember that whole area pages of it with little Japanese flags and the images and stories about what the Famicom, Super Famicom, Gameboy, PCE and PCE-CD got and it was amazing. That aside though EGM loved to take sides in each era and then nitpick and even lie about the other hardware maker just to suck up to the one they were kissing ass to and it was sickening.

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, people like to harp on mags that were devoted to a single platform or hardware manufacturer as being "propaganda", but they usually fail to acknowledge just how much poor journalism, immaturity, and bias was often present in the mags that covered the whole market. I honestly kinda prefer the mags back in the day that were so focused that they wouldn't even acknowledge the existence of the competition. I'd rather a mag stick to its area of expertise as opposed to writers showing their bias by pumping up their favorites and dumping on everything else, or ignoring other platforms that they're SUPPOSED to be covering, as defined by the scope of the mag. Don't get me wrong, it makes sense for the industry leader to get more coverage than the system in last place, just going by the quantity of games coming out for each, but things were often skewed far beyond that. Magazines that cover everything and do so fairly are a rare breed.

[JSoup]

When people talk about propaganda gaming magazines, the first thing that jumps to mind is SegaVision. SegaVisions did a great job covering Sega games, but would frequently devolve into a series of potshots at anything that wasn't Sega.

[Aussie2B]

Yeah, come the late 90s, Nintendo Power started to take a few shots at Sega/Sony now and then too in a feeble attempt to be "edgy" and funny, and even as a diehard Nintendo fan, I found it off-putting. I much preferred the "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all" approach to their competition in earlier years. I don't know if that improved or worsened later on, though, because I didn't have a Nintendo Power subscription past 2000 or 2001, something like that.

[eskobar]

My all-time favorite mag is Next Generation, it had great articles and was less focused on reviews and covered PC. Unfortunately I live in Mexico and the mag wasn't widely distributed, only got the chance to buy a few issues that I still read and enjoy as much as those days.

I also loved the fat EGMs from early 90's, those 250 pages mags looked like textbooks.

The retro mags usually make good jobs but most of the time they sell you illusions and personal memories that doesn't give you a real perspective of what really happened back in the day.

Being 34 years old I feel really lucky to experience almost every console after the 2600.

[GhostDog]

I was a subscriber to Retro Gamer magazine from near it's beginning up until a year ago.

I've always loved reading video game magazines, strangely I enjoy it as much as actually playing them.
I'm from the UK and we had a great selection of magazines to choose from.
Some of my favourites in the early nineties were Computer & Video Games (CVG) & Mean Machines.
But my absolute favourite was Super Play which was a Super Nintendo magazine but it also covered anime and Japanese culture, it had awesome manga style artwork from Wil Overton.
The magazine reviewed lots of import Super Famicom games and also had a passion for RPGs with lots of reviews and features.
Here's the wikipedia link about Super Play magazine
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Play

I thought I was the only one that enjoys reading about games as much as playing them. I could look through gaming magazines for hours. I also love looking at game footage on Youtube and get an overdose of all the games I loved as a kid growing up in the 90s.

[Gentlegamer]

Speaking of EGM bias, I had forgotten how anti-Nintendo the editors were.

[kupomogli]

I may have posted in this thread before, but I prefer the retro magazines. Modern day magazines suck in comparison. My favorite magazines were PSM the unofficial Playstation magazine and Nintendo Power. Back then the games not only had articles on games, but they went into detail with games by giving a bit of information on the games, maybe a mini walkthrough detailing gameplay, etc.

Todays magazines right now really have a lack of value to them. Iit really seems like a lot of text and little substance. The new magazines have more lengthy and articulate writing that feels a lot more like filler. I'd read my way through beginning to end on older magazines but the way the writing is now, it's just not very entertaining, especially if it's a game I don't like.

[Aussie2B]

What the heck were those EGM editors playing on SNES anyway? Nothing but Gradius III? Significant slowdown and flicker wasn't THAT prevalent on the system, not even in the first year or two.

It's always funny to look back and see what predictions were made and what was considered of value. The SNES dying an early death? The Sega CD dominating the SNES? Sherlock being an important game? Shmups being the end all be all? Even people so steeped in the industry really had no clue what consumers wanted.

[Tanooki]

Gentle I remember that and it is why I called out EGM being the original scam mag and why I didnt renew the thing. They had it in for the SNES the entire life of the system finding angles to work and snotty comments to make. I remember that scanned page there and it was infuriating in that issue because they decided to focus on a game like Gradius III to rate the entire system as a buggy, sluggish, graphically impared system and that it would vanish and genesis would be and remain king. The same magazine that unanimously tore on the SNES version of MK and not just beause of sweat, but because how the Genesis game has better audio, visuals and control which was fantasy, we know it, the good version of MK the Sega ever had was MK2 and it was 32 or SCD I forget, but damn it was arcade close. They were just lying manipulators, basically what most the online game reviewers could be said to look up to these days.

[HardcoreOtaku]

I was a subscriber to Retro Gamer magazine from near it's beginning up until a year ago.

I've always loved reading video game magazines, strangely I enjoy it as much as actually playing them.
I'm from the UK and we had a great selection of magazines to choose from.
Some of my favourites in the early nineties were Computer & Video Games (CVG) & Mean Machines.
But my absolute favourite was Super Play which was a Super Nintendo magazine but it also covered anime and Japanese culture, it had awesome manga style artwork from Wil Overton.
The magazine reviewed lots of import Super Famicom games and also had a passion for RPGs with lots of reviews and features.
Here's the wikipedia link about Super Play magazine
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Play

I thought I was the only one that enjoys reading about games as much as playing them. I could look through gaming magazines for hours. I also love looking at game footage on Youtube and get an overdose of all the games I loved as a kid growing up in the 90s.

Yeh back in the early nineties I loved everything about video game magazines.
I loved the whole ritual of checking in the store to see if a new issue was out yet.
And when a new issue of my favourite magazine was out to see the new front cover popping out sitting on the store shelf. Getting home and sitting down with a new issue and reading about the latest games with I nice cold can of drink. I much preferred this era to todays over saturation of information at your fingertips with the internet.

[HardcoreOtaku]

Speaking of EGM bias, I had forgotten how anti-Nintendo the editors were.

Here in the UK we didn't really have any issues of EGM, I saw the odd issue every now and then where a store had imported some.
Anyways if I'd seen this EGM issue with the page you scanned I would of never bought an EGM magazine again, it's a travesty.

[xelement5x]

I think this EGM screenshot was printed in late 91 when the SNES had like no games since it had just released, and the Genesis was hitting its stride with almost 2 years of releases. The SNES had like what, 5 games at release and I think one of them was actually Gradius III.

Any new console with a paltry software selection was going to have a hard time measuring up to the Genesis at that point.

[HardcoreOtaku]

I think this EGM screenshot was printed in late 91 when the SNES had like no games since it had just released, and the Genesis was hitting its stride with almost 2 years of releases. The SNES had like what, 5 games at release and I think one of them was actually Gradius III.

Any new console with a paltry software selection was going to have a hard time measuring up to the Genesis at that point.

Yeh but as well as Gradius III it launched in the US with four other truly amazing games
F-Zero
Pilotwings
SimCity
Super Mario World
right there are four 16-bit masterpieces of gaming history.
If EGM had properly played those games they should have instantly realised how superior the SNES/Super Famicom was to the Genesis/Mega Drive.

[Gentlegamer]

Yeh but as well as Gradius III it launched in the US with four other truly amazing games
F-Zero
Pilotwings
SimCity
Super Mario World
right there are four 16-bit masterpieces of gaming history.
If EGM had properly played those games they should have instantly realised how superior the SNES/Super Famicom was to the Genesis/Mega Drive.

And before Christmas: ActRaiser, Super Castlevania IV, Final Fantasy II, and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts. All considered all time classics. "Where are the great new games?"

I won't argue on superiority to Genesis, and really the numerical scores are "fair" in that they are basically one point different, accounting for taste/preference. It's the accompanying text trashing SNES apparently based on Gradius III and unreserved praise of Genesis.

I wonder if the EGM bias is what created the meme of 'SNES is too slow, can't handle more than two sprites on screen' that persists til this day.