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Thread: anachronism

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    Default anachronism

    I am researching release dates for older video games and I find this to be a very befuddling task. For clarification's sake I am defining "release date" as the date that a video game was commercially available/on store shelves for consumers to purchase.

    The best estimates that I can come across are occasional release dates in reviews sections of Game Informer, but even these contradict other publications. Other things need demystifying. The Nintendo 64 was originally scheduled to be released on September 30th, 1996 (a Monday), but was pushed up to September 29th, 1996 to decrease the amount of children missing/skipping school. But if you just go off of advertisements seen in magazines, a lot of them said the 30th originally.

    It seems a lot of the hyped-up releases got firm release dates. In Nintendo Power Nov. 1998, a reader says the release date for Ocarina of Time is Nov. 23rd, 1998. How accurate that is, I don't know. I've seen release dates saying November as well as December.

    The most telling pieces of evidence will obviously be in the form of physical receipts for people who bought the game on Day 1, but how many people hang on to a receipt for 20 years? (interestingly, I've purchased a handful of CIB games that had receipts in them from the early 90s, but well beyond the date of original release.)

    Even if I can just get a firm month of release I'd be happy. Nintendo Power, for a short while, listed release dates for N64 titles but that stopped sometime in 1997 I believe. Usually Nintendo Power would be an accurate source of information I'd assume but I have noticed spelling errors occasionally as well as review scores being attributed to the wrong person.

    I don't trust Wikipedia or a lot of the aggregate sources. Gamerankings.com says Extreme-G was released in September 1997. That is way off. I read multiple sources that said November.

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    Default

    Ocarina of Time definitely came out in November 1998 in the US. Tons of kids were playing that over the Thanksgiving break.

    To make matters even more complicated with the N64 launch, I actually got the call on September 28, 1996 from Toys R Us that my preordered N64 was there and I could pick it up at any time. I picked it up that evening and was practically bursting at the seams that I could play it a day earlier than expected, after they had already bumped it up a day to begin with.

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