/vr/ - Retro Games

I have a couple EGM and game informers left, they are a nice time capsule
Unfortunately I threw most of my game informers out in a spat of preteen fanboy rage when they game TTYD a 6.25

Wish somebody had scans of EGM, I used to read those just for Seanbaby's monthly Game Over 2 page spreads about terrible games or weird chinese bootlegs. Seanbaby is probably the person solely responsible for getting me into kusoge.

>>7247651
I remember when I got ttyd, I was 25.
I worked in a factory doing powder coat painting with big painting robots and cool nintendo-zapper looking paint guns.
I remember getting stuck in puni tree for fucking ever because I couldn't find a guide for it at the store.
It didn't even occur to me to check Amazon. Amazon was just "used books" to me back then

>>7247665
I really wish there were more scans for EGM and Nintendo Power. I've thought about buying NP and scanning them myself, but Jewtendo is apparently very strict about a magazine that went defunct almost a decade ago.

Only 3 still stand up today. Nintendo Power from issue 1 to issue 70 or so(comics and good info and maps), the entire run of Next Generation(best high-brow videogame related mag ever), and Game Players magazine from the start up to about issue 70 or 80 or whenever they went serious(best low-brow videogame related mag ever).

>>7247665
>Wish somebody had scans of EGM
https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/electronic-gaming-monthly/

>>7247687
>Nintendo Power
https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/nintendo-power/

Let the nostalgia flow anons.

>>7247639
I buy a few fanzines currently that are fun to read and have good 'retro' focus, like Nintendo Force (retro section sucks a bit of shit sometimes but it's decent) and HyperPlay RPG for old school JRPGs).

>>7247718
Thanks, m8. Not complete, but most of the issues are there.

I have two issues of GameFan I bought off ebay. I love that magazine more than any of the others I read, plan to get some more eventually.

>>7247639
They are a nostalgic trip back to a different time. I regret throwing away all the first two years of Nintendo Power and pre-subscription Sega Visions issues I had, but I did keep most of the EGMs and Gamefan issues. Recently decided to try these out, and it is like looking into another dimension where Sega was successful, mysteriously interesting.

>>7247717
Game players became ultra game players and was still low brow I believe. I didn't know they went serious. Crazy shit. I had a full run of PSM and a 2000s run of EGM from late ps1 to the last issue. Threw it all away. Big regret. Lots of fap material in PSM too lol

>>7247717
Oh shit I forgot too Game Players always had funny ass shit in the fine print of the competition pages and other shit. God damn zoomers don't know shit about gaming culture/life. I'm glad I tapped out after PS3. Faggots.

>>7247639
CGQ often goes through old magazines which I think is really comfy:

https://www.youtube.com/c/CGQuarterly/videos

I only own one magazine and it is in mint condition: Nintendo Power issue 56: Mega Man X Silver cover.

It has a special memory for me ...

>>7249815
>I have two issues of GameFan I bought off ebay

Image related is a sample of my GameFan Magazine collection. These are from a subscription that I had from when I was a teen. They even sent me a Killer Instinct 2 (for N64!, which was never released on the N64. ) strategy guide as a free bonus for subscribing.

>>7253070

here's the majority of my Gamers Republic subscription. This magazine was created by Dave Halverson after he sold GameFan magazine and left. Gamers Republic has many ex GameFan staffers and was kind of like GameFan II.

>>7253070

here's the remaining magazines I have (I have these stored in a rubber maid container. I also had a subscription to Official Dreamcast Magazine mainly for the demos... actually almost exclusively for the demo discs. Also, a random issues of EGM (I dunno where I got that from) and a random issue of "incite" Magazine.

>>7247639
Booba

>>7247639
Subscribed to Nintendo Power, regular read EGM and GamePro. Remember flipping my shit when MK3 was featured on the cover of EGM.
Threw a fit when my parents accidentally burned a pile of old magazines that contained a few of my vidya mags.

Still have a couple copies, most notable EGM's feature on REmake (maybe not quite retro enough but still). Really liked EGM when they started doing the Hsu and Chan comics.

>>7256243
>Subscribed to Nintendo Power,

Me too. And while I do not have any of my old Nintendo Power Magazines, I still have a few free bonuses that Nintendo sent me. Like this Chrono Trigger players guide. They sent me this in the mail. And this Super Gameboy guide, which was an excuse to show off the features of the SGB adapter, and show people some optimal colour pallets for older GB games. Sadly this Chrono Trigger players guide has a bit of water damage on the cover. Oh well. i never owned the game, but I use to rent it all the time and used this players guide as a walkthrough to get all the different endings. They also sent me that Donkey Kong Country Unleashed VHS.

The difference in culture between then and now is astounding. Every review hypes up how violent and fucked up the game is and 90% of the ads involve either tits or a reference to jerking off.

>>7257125
game were for edgy kids/teens back then. Now they're for everyone

>>7247718
Why aren't all magazine copies of Nintendo Power available? I'm a bit confused, what happened to the archival attempts?

>>7247665
mega nz/folder/WBIjxYIS#E7XJ1TX-JvsUuGCOifQdUA

>>7257134
>what happened to the archival attempts?

Do you really have to ask? Nintendo's C&D order happened.

Here's a few other miscellaneous random magazine covers from me. I never actually purchased any of those issues of GamePro or Next Gen. I shared a place with another person who did buy those magazines, a long time ago and they just got mixed up with my stuff. I did buy the Incite magazines. Incite actually had two magazines, but they looked the same. They had one for PC games and the other for console games. The PC one was great because their magazine came with nice demo discs. But the Magazine itself was trying to be some sort of Maxim for gamers (or this "gaming magazine for the 30+ something YO") . hence the covers. Also, that next Gen cover is from 1999, and talking about Microsoft's first console and the PS3.

>>7257157
This is just dolphin porn.

>>7251941
game players kept trying to go serious but it would never stick for more than a couple issues

>>7251946
they had a section in their reader mail where you could submit your own game ideas and those were usually pretty funny, i remember one idea was a game about a guy trying to find a girl to sleep with who didn't have any STDs

>>7257175
>dolphin porn
what do you mean it's just some normal stuff

>tfw no dolphin porn

I love flipping through old magazine scanned and finding screenshots and information that still simply does not exist on the internet yet. I think to myself, "oh my god, hardly anyone has seen/heard of this in over 20 years, I'm so lucky!" And then I think, "Oh my god, how did the nerds who scanned this not care to do anything with this, how is video game media archival so utterly screwed?"

What about those PC Gaming magazines with the demo disks or discs? Would be cool if someone archived those too. Maybe it's on archive.org

I started going through them recently to find old games i have never heard of before. The few I played have all been shit lol but the old magazines are neat.

Waiting for the retromag 2020 torrent to go up to grab them all in one place.

>>7257280
>What about those PC Gaming magazines

I found one old issue of PC Gamer I have. It amuses me when PC Gamer advertises cheat codes. Especially when PC cheating includes save-scumming or typing commands into a in-game terminal. This is about the last of everything I have. With the exception of a few rogue issues of GameFan. Ab lot of these can be found in collections on Internet Archive. Demo discs might be harder to come by.

>>7257280
>What about those PC Gaming magazines

I found one old issue of PC Gamer I have. It amuses me when PC Gamer advertises cheat codes. Especially when PC cheating includes save-scumming or typing commands into a in-game terminal. This is about the last of everything I have. With the exception of a few rogue issues of GameFan. Ab lot of these can be found in collections on Internet Archive. Demo discs might be harder to come by.

>>7257234
>I love flipping through old magazine scanned and finding screenshots and information that still simply does not exist on the internet yet. I think to myself, "oh my god, hardly anyone has seen/heard of this in over 20 years, I'm so lucky!" And then I think, "Oh my god, how did the nerds who scanned this not care to do anything with this, how is video game media archival so utterly screwed?"

I think people make scans without ever really reading through the material. But yeah, cancelled games, early beta screenshots, news articles, etc. Every old issue of GamersRepublic I have contains NPD data for the previous month. I think this was one of the few (maybe only?) magazines to even have NPD back then. Here's a sample from July 98 issue.

>>7257669

Here's NPD for January 1999 (February issue)

Here's the infamous "Jap bastards" place holder text that got into the September issue of GameFan Magazine.

>>7257708

cover for said magazine.

>>7257712

Sample of reviews from this issue. Die Hard Game Fan was notorious for dishing out 70-90% scores, as you can see here.

>>7257768

review page.

use a scanner dude or turn off the flash and turn on more lights in your room

>>7257782
>use a scanner dude or turn off the flash and turn on more lights in your room

I don't have a scanner available. But there are already a PDF of this issue here:

https://archive.org/details/GamefanVolume3Issue09September1995

>>7247639
Being attracted to women is "sexist"? Does the word mean nothing now?

>>7257768
>review page.

Same issue. I forgot about this. GameFan's Nick Rox article on Final fantasy VII coming to the N64. The Locke model is from a 1995 Siggraph tech video, running on SGI workstation.

>>7257868

Die Hard Gamers Club mail order page for import games.

>>7257875

Tomo was always a common advertiser in the back of these magazines too.

Game Informer was a shocking transformation. The literal second the 2010s happened they became SJW before SJW. Feel the same way about Movie Bob talking about toxic gamers back in 2009

Sushi X, was he EGM?

Are they worth anything? About 10-12 years ago I chucked two boxes of mags into a donation bin. I should've scanned them for internet strangers but that would've been a lot of work. Seeing them year after year just makes you tired of it.

>>7257708

yeah. another bad photo. But here is the apology from Dave Halverson himself in the editorial section for the strange "Jap Bastards" text.

Whole magazine here:
https://archive.org/details/GamefanVolume3Issue10October1995ALT/page/n3/mode/2up

>>7257708 (You)

yeah. another bad photo. But here is the apology from Dave Halverson himself in the editorial section for the strange "Jap Bastards" text.

Whole magazine here:
https://archive.org/details/GamefanVolume3Issue10October1995ALT/page/n3/mode/2up

>>7257986
Cowards. Should’ve rolled with it and made the whole thing western game focused. In 95 they could’ve easily not bend the knee.

>>7257997
>Cowards. Should’ve rolled with it and made the whole thing western game focused. In 95 they could’ve easily not bend the knee.

If I am not mistaken, Die Hard GameFan the magazine was originally created to advertise Dave Halversons Die Hard Gamers Club Japanese import storefront, which was featured prominently in the back pages of each issue of GameFan. They would put focus on the games advertised in their storefront. Though Die Hard gamers Club did change its name to Game Cave. Covering Japanese imports was a big part of that magazines appeal. So Halverson was trying to save face. That image with the Jap Bastard article came from my own subscription, I never would have even noticed it if I didn't read about it in an apology in the next issue. I don't care about College Football. More into Hockey (yeah, from Canada).

I regret tossing my PC Gamer copies from 2002-2008. There was a lot of good shit in there.

>>7257808
I used "sexist" the way modern game journos do, to describe anything they don't like.

>>7257903
Yeah, 2000s Bro Game Informer felt like a completely different magazine. I think they only had a single female reviewer until the late 2000s.

>>7258072
I remember the one review that got everyone to turn on them was the Sonic stuff. They were the one place that gave Sonic Generations and Sonic Colors bad reviews. Colors ended up being justified years latter but Generations is still a classic

>>7247639
You need to get into 80s video game magazines. That was the most interesting era by far. Top examples off the top of my head include JoyStik, Video Games Player (eventually became Computer Games), Vidiot (published by Creem Magazine), BLiP (published by Marvel Comics), Computer Gaming World, Video Games, Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, Videogaming Illustrated, and of course the most famous of the era Electronic Games.

>>7247717
Everything about this post is objectively wrong.

>>7258091
I doubt most of /vr/ has even heard of any of those (aside from the obvious exception of Computer Gaming World). I'm always surprised at how little /vr/ knows about gaming history for a board that's dedicated to gaming history.

>>7257914
Ya, gamepro or egm. Pretty sure egm

Slightly ot, but did anyone ever visit sharkyextreme back in the day?

>>7257708
Wait, lower-left. Do I spot LOST LEVELS or just me?

>>7247639
Just received a garbage bag full of PSM magazines(and offhang others like EGM and more) from my old room. It wouldn't be bizarre to me because I remember it. They also had those notorious videogame girl in bikini art spreads, and had a section for booth babes for e3 and TGS.

>>7258490
>Wait, lower-left. Do I spot LOST LEVELS or just me?

This issue is September 1995 (it has the PS1 launch cover) but the magazine really came out in August. The game was released in Oct. 31, 1995, so I would imagine that it is "lost level" content.

https://archive.org/details/GamefanVolume3Issue09September1995

>>7258749
Nevermind, false alarm, those all seem to be the final levels and not the still-lost ones cut out and later distributed on Sega Channel, though the second screenshot is using the wrong Garfield so it's still proto content.

Thanks for providing the magazine!

>>7247671
>25 years old
>having a tough time with Paper Mario

Wew lad

>>7257326
I'm starting to scan some old pokemon magazines (as well as yugioh and nintendo powers). Its kind of annoying but it seems like a cool longer term project.

>>7257669
If you scan an old magazine but its a game you know nothing about you arent going to be able to spot something different in them.

>>7259269
didnt mean to reply woops

Someone PLEASE tell me what they meant by this cover. I still do not know. It looks like maybe they tried to have them hiding in the leafs but they only had like 2 minutes to do it so cut the eyes out sloppily and slapped them on?

god i fucking miss when game magazines were not filled with fucking editorial self-masturbation pieces about shit no one gives a fuck about in the industry and "gamer culture" and just showed off cool games didnt act like they were writing for the god damn New Yorker

also posters

>>7258091
>dude, you're wrong!
>CGW was awesome!
It was shit compared to Electronic Entertainment, have you any taste at all?

I miss reading shit like Club Nintendo, Super Juegos, and Hobby Consolas.

Anyone ever read PC Zone?

Sometimes I search for old mag coverage of obscure games because no one else bothered writing anything about them. ie. Sports games for Game Boy, shit is impossible to find any info on as people barely even care to download them and usually that's only as part of an archive release.

Lost my old magazines to a flood a few years ago. I loved reading them.

I don't have any older game magazines, but I do have books like Masters of Doom and collections of old Penny Arcade comics. They are nice time capsules that show how gaming was back in those days.

>>7260306
>be the final levels and not the still-lost ones cut out and later distributed on Sega Channel, though the second screenshot is using

That's what happened to my old Nintendo Power collection. I actually really liked Nintendo Power Magazine. I feel like, despite it being an advertisement piece for Nintendo, the reviewers for that magazine were generally very fair and balanced when it came to Nintendo's own products and their own third party publishers. The comics were pretty great.

As for GameFan and GamersRepublic. I loved reading them, and the editors were very enthusiastic about the game industry, though more skewered towards the Japanese import scene. But also over the top fan-boyish. Dave Halverson was always questionable. His magazines definitely did enforce the 7-10 review scale. Look at the magazine review scores. Don't get me wrong, there were many times when the reviewers would really believe game X and game Y deserves 90-95% scores. But Halverson would create multiple personas (Skid, E. Storm) to boost certain review scores. GameFan is a fun magazine to read, but everything has to be taken with a grain of salt. GameFan was always teetering into "fanzine" zone. This was less evident in GamersRepublic. I also was a fan of Terry Wolfingers art in GameFan.

>>7260532
>Dave Halverson was always questionable. His magazines definitely did enforce the 7-10 review scale

More bad photos. But here's two review pages from the Deccember 1995 issue of GameFan. It was rare to see GameFan give a review lower than a 70% review score. But then again, they were going through the "wow 3D" phase, as the PS1 was released in September of 1995 and this magazine hit newsstands in November 1995.

Full issue: https://archive.org/details/GamefanVolume3Issue12December1995/page/n15/mode/2up

GameFan has been preserved pretty well on Internet archive.

>>7260804

Page 3.

>>7260804
page 3

I still have a copy of this somewhere, I don't think it ever got a second issue. It had interstitial comics by a guy named Ryan Kinnaird, who only ever got work when Adam Warren was too busy or too expensive.

>>7247639
Bros my father bought me a box filled with old Nintendo Power mags for $5 from a yardsale last month

>>7261794
Goes from issue #2 to #78

>>7261803
Goddamn, good deal. Was it in the middle of nowhere? I think rural Boomers haven't caught on to how valuable some of this stuff is. Last year, I bought N64 Smash for a $1, and a box of a Sega Saturn with games for $5 from a few sales I found in the middle of nowhere.

>>7261803
I remember tracing that mario when I was like 10, thanks anon

I had the Nintendo Power 95 issue.

>>7261794
>>7261803
I am legitimately jealous.

>>7251946
They know plenty, it's just theirs as opposed to ours. The real shit will be that theirs isn't printed or collected anywhere, sucks to be them when they want to reminisce and all the websites are dead or gone to shit.

>>7260804
Kek. I remember rumors circulating in the early 00s about Halverson allegedly running GameFan into the ground. How they would poll everyone whether to take a cut cut or fire someone, and everyone voting for a cut then, paraphrasing "In the immortal words of the only EIC with a mullet: Toss another log into the fire because I'm not taking a paycut." Or how his wife bought a new Lexus when the magazine was struggling. Years later I heard something similar happened to Gamers' Republic.

>>7262494
>>7262728
>>7262640
Yes am in the middle of rural hillbilly town, no from what my father said they knew what they were but they were old enough not to care I’m still livid about it. I think they all still have their posters, card, I know the Virtual Boy issue had some along with those glasses.

>>7264292
I am very jelly. My collection is not that big yet.

>>7264292

I had the 3D glasses and the issue that came with it. Nice collection.

>>7247639
As a little kid I remember seeing Nintendo Power a lot at other people's houses. My brother and I occasionally had copies of it, I remember looking at their preview of Final Fantasy II for example. There was some sweepstakes that had to do with the Hudson Hawk game. The comics with that mascot guy with the round head whose hair stuck up, can't remember his name. Those were a lot of fun to me as a kid.
Then later in the Playstation/N64 era, starting when I was either in middleschool or high school, we got a subscription for EGM. I remember it being really wacky honestly, I had a soft spot for SushiX and that English editor who always gave high scores to Bust A Move games no matter what the other reviewers said. He explained each time that he couldn't help loving them and played them with his wife constantly because they both got really competitive. It was a silly little detail that always stuck with me.
Thanks for reading my blogpost /vr/.

Any podcasts or interviews with former editors and writers? I'd love to know what happened behind the scenes

>>7258093
Why would not Americans know about American publications

Just got in a bunch of beckett yugioh unofficial magazine in the mail. These are fun to look through. Trying to find pokemon unofficial magazine as well. I got a few but dont want to scan them since they have actually never been opened and are still in the old box the person that ordered the back issues came in.

>>7247639
I have hundreds of old video game magazines, nerd magazines in general (comics), and the entire collection of heavy metal magazines.

It's peak comfy, nothing makes you feel so perfectly like a kid.
To reach the complete aesthetic
>have a room with a carpet or rug so you can lay on the floor
>have one lamp that's kind of nearby, but not quite close enough to be useful
>one tv with something that is reasonably boring on for background noise, but not that you'd be interested in
>a dog sleeping nearby
I guarantee in 2 hours you'll be ready for the best sleep you've had since you were 5 years old.
Also it's a great way to strengthen your imagination. Not as good as actually reading a book, but it's still pretty good.

>>7265412
M8, open and scan them. You could be sitting on something nobody's looked at in a decade or two.

>>7265423
Sounds like peak comfy. I used to read Nintendo Power at the library whenever there wasn't a new Goosebumps to check out. I finally bought an issue at Blockbuster and subscribed from there.

>>7247687
I've got 20 nintendo magazines, mostly super play and a couple nintendo magazine pal version from 1994, I thought they were all on archive.org so I didn't bother scanning them yet.

>>7258093
>I'm always surprised at how little /vr/ knows about gaming history for a board that's dedicated to gaming history.
This is a weeb board - if it isn't a Jap console it doesn't exist to the nintentoddlers. 2600/Intellivision/Magnavox Odyssey/classic arcades? wtf is that shit.

I like to flip through my old PSMs and EGMs, look for games that caught my eye as a kid but never bought, and just pop them on pcsx2

EGM is always a great read because it's America's most don't give a fuck game magazine. Every magazine that wasn't Nintendo Power or Game Informer had their moment in the sun, but no other Editor in Chief ever had the balls to tell Capcom to eat shit in an issue where Street Fighter was the cover story, made all the more impressive by two things: the fact EGM featured Street Fighter so often that readers complained about it, and that it was Dan Hsu's first issue as EIC. There's so much to like about that magazine in its heyday, but that culture of being fun while having a responsibility to its readers made it stand head and shoulders above its competition.

>>7265793
that's a great idea, gonna do this

>>7265569
I'm not going to open the perfect ones because I want to keep them imaculate but I am working on getting gently loved copies to scan. I still have my childhood ones I'm working on scanning to get through first anyway.

>>7247718
>GamePlayers '93
fucking neato
thanks

Old Magazine covers always need scans at the very least if you have them and dont want to scan the whole thing. Most online are very low quality if they are even online.

>>7266604

That $5.00 Canadian tax. I knew there was a reason why I stopped buying magazines individually.

>>7263321
>Kek. I remember rumors circulating in the early 00s about Halverson allegedly running GameFan into the ground. How they would poll everyone whether to take a cut cut or fire someone, and everyone voting for a cut then, paraphrasing "In the immortal words of the only EIC with a mullet: Toss another log into the fire because I'm not taking a paycut." Or how his wife bought a new Lexus when the magazine was struggling. Years later I heard something similar happened to Gamers' Republic.

Why am I not surprised by either? There were a lot of things that I really liked about GameFan and GamersRepublic. They both had slick presentations, the writers had interesting personalities, the magazine covered areas that most others did not. They had their own style. E. Storm himself seemed skeezy on the business side. But he would still play and review a lot of games. I remember at some point, he would put the character Hermie Hopperhead in random pages of GameFan, in hope that it could get Sony's attention for a US release. he really loved Hermie Hopperhead, and mascot platformers in general. Though, apparently he was on acid when he wrote his review for Battlemorph on the Atari Jaguar. Which lead to an insane review. I do not have that issue.

>>7267251
These ones arent even very thick either. $10/$15 is even worse. I guess I know why my parents only got me like 2 of these ones when I was a kid.

>>7267594
>These ones arent even very thick either. $10/$15 is even worse. I guess I know why my parents only got me like 2 of these ones when I was a kid.

I mean, this was why it made more sense to go with subscriptions than continually buy stand alone issues. Subscriptions were always much cheaper, and the money went directly to the magazine.

>>7267704
Thats true. I should have done that but I was already subscribed to beckett anime (because I didnt know about the yugioh one exsisted until it was almost dead already)

GET THE POWER
NINTENDO POWER

>>7266604
Oh shit, I have one issue of that magazine and I must've read it a million times. Can't believe how comfy it was to play yu-gi-oh with your cousin, talk about it with friends at school, ask mom for a new pack from the store, watch the tv show, even read a whole magazine based entirely on YGO. Do kids today have anything that comes close to what it was like to be a kid during the pokemon and YGO peaks?

>>7269351
The internet

>>7247639

I'm trying to find the magazine where they compared WCW/nWo Revenge [or was it World Tour?] and WWF Warzone, and the EGM gang made a character called Elephant Sac lol.

Dunno the issue it was from though, anyone got it?

>>7247718
Old news dipshit.

>>7257986
I wonder how many pages the japs would have devoted to apologizing for including "white piggu " in a Japanese language publication? Oh. Right. Zero.

>>7271781
not according to the responses before yours, twat.