Video gaming magzines
 

Once upon a time, when the Internet wasn't used by every common man and woman, video gamers had to rely on specific video game magazines to get in touch with the latest news, or try to learn what was worth buying and not. As a subscriber for the Swedish Nintendomagasinet and later Super Power (from March 1996 called Super Play), every time they arrived in the letter box felt almost like Christmas. Coming home from school to read, and talking about them with some friends at the schoolyard the upcoming day was amazing. During the breaks between the lessons at school, we would often walk next to the soccer field and share our reading experiences.

Thanks to these magazines, my interest for video games wasn't just about playing, but also learning more about how the branch worked, the companies, who Shigeru Miyamoto was, the console wars, and some history lessons (like the improving technology, and knowing how Atari and Commodore were popular in the 1970's and early 80's, before Nintendo and Sega became successful).

What video game magazines did you read? Do you have any great memories of them? I have saved most of them, and to me those memories are almost as great as the video games themselves.

EGM and GamePro, for sure. Fantastic days of magazines back then. Nintendo Power was fine for a while, but after the SNES days there wasn't really anything exciting there. I think there was a third that was decent, too, "Electronic Gaming" or something.

I was partial to GamePlayers and NextGeneration for actual reviews and overall presentation. Nintendo Power was always fun. Most magazines I ended up owning were because it had a ton of content on a specific game I liked, especially full-level maps. While killing time in the local grocery store, I would write down the codes in the back of mags for games I owned.

Sometime after my college days, I got ride of my late-run NextGeneration issues (actually had a 2-year subscription at that point) and that was a mistake. It's hard to find a full archive of that particular title.
EDIT: Oh, good, looks like RetroCDN has us covered for the late-run issues.

I subscribed to Nintendo Power from 1990 up until the end in December 2012. I occasionally bought GamePro and EGM from the stores.

My first issue was the 10th issue from January/February 1990, and I decided to order back issues in 1996 to complete my collection. Unfortunately, the 9th issue was out of print by then, but I scored a copy on eBay in 2003. So now I have all 285 issues. I was even able to get all seven of the Nintendo Fun Club newsletters that preceded NP. I've even gotten replacements after some of my magazines got worn. I also have all four Nintendo Power Advance issues, and the Pocket Power issue that was given to people who saw The Wizard in theaters in 1989. I saw it too late to get one, but I'd find one on eBay for a reasonable price.

It was from 1994 to 1998 or so where NP offered a quarterly catalog where you could order Nintendo-related things. They offered a lot of video game soundtracks on CD which I mostly bought, and I've even gotten player's guides. I liked how they also sent VHS tapes to subscribers that would showcase games that were coming out. A couple of magazines came with preview DVDs. Around the time of the 100th issue of September 1997, they offered a gold N64 controller in the catalog. I got one, but it took a bit of time since it was high in demand.

I remember taking advantage of some of the perks that were offered for renewing. Once I got Metroid Prime, a player's guide, a 59 memory card for the GameCube, and a coupon for $10 off for the Wavebird controller, for $69.95. They also once offered a Legend of Zelda: Collector's Edition for the GameCube which consisted of The Legend of Zelda, Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. Another thing they offered was a Metroid Prime 2: Echoes demo disc for the GameCube.

Jeeze, I had no idea they even went that long.

Definitely some very warm early Nintendo Power memories. The articles, the comics, everything. Just a great time for video game magazines.

I appeared in an issue of EGM back in the 90's. It was awesome. My first car - an '85 Camaro is in the magazine too.... :lol:

I also loved Nintendo power as a kid - and Playstation Magazine (PSM) was really great too. My Nintendo Powers were all lost around '98 but I still have quite a few of the PSM's.

I subscribed to Nintendo Fun Club News, which was the precursor to Nintendo Power. Man I'm old.

"PSX" also. That was another magazine, wasn't it?

Speaking of PSX, anyone else notice a kind of communal amnesia about that? For years everyone called the PS1 the "PSX." Magazines did, online and all. It was the official abbreviation. Then one day poof... like it never happened and it was always "PS1." It's a little like WW1 in that way, I guess.

I know that later on Sony made a kind of "super" PS2 that was called the PSX, which further muddied the waters.

I used to love Tips and Tricks because they always listed a whole bunch of cheat codes.

Oh yeah and Game Informer. It was FuncoLand's sort of poor-man's EGM. :lol:

For preference reasons? That or the systems had modified formats for different countries and it was to avoid confusion for the gamers that needed to buy the NTSC / PAL versions of their favorite games.

The Genesis was called The Megadrive overseas. The NES and SNES were called The Famicom / Super Famicom in Japan. The PS1 was probably called The PSX for the same reason(s).

I didn't know about that.

Oh, and EGM2! That was a thing.

Also PC Games and PC Gamer.

The final NP issue even had a comic featuring an adult Nester with a son.

I went out just to buy that issue special at the newsstands. I opened the plastic bag encasing, but still keep the issue in it.

Just last week, I found a random old game mag at a thrift store called "Stuff Gamer," published by the people who gave us "Stuff Magazine" in 2003. I had never heard of either, but I expect both are fairly trashy in their marketing appeal to teenage boys. Believe it or not, the thing that interested me most about the issue were the adverts... entirely focused on the infamous Nokia NGage. Apparently, the whole magazine existed to plug that device while paying lip-service to covering the rest of the game industry.

I have no idea if it made it beyond the first issue.

I did the same, and I was a subscriber. I bought two of them, where I'd open just one. I got my subscriber version of it pretty late, and I even tried to order a subscriber version from the company, but my order couldn't be fulfilled as they were already sold out. So I got one on eBay instead that was loose, which actually didn't set me back that much. I wanted two to also have one open and to keep one in the plastic. It's the one I got in the mail that I still have in the plastic, and it has a note enclosed for subscribers.

It was the November 2008 issue (#234) where they started doing subscriber covers, and I was curious about how the subscriber cover of the final issue would look. It was the same as the regular version, except it had no bar code on it. I like how the poster included with the final issue had the images of all of the issues and even alternate covers of the same issues. I had mine laminated.

The PS1 was called "PlayStation" all over the world: Europe, US, Japan. "PSX" was the official codename of the console before it was released, the name of the project. Magazines started to call it that when it was first unveiled and kept calling it that way even after the final name was revealed.
No one could call it PS1 back then as there was no PS2 yet, so PSX sounded good enough as a short name.

Nintendo Power memories
 

James Rolfe, also known as the Angry Video Game Nerd, also has his Nintendo Power memories to share.

That's neat. Since I went PS2 first, I never knew about the original Playstation name, and I'm not certain if the gamers that I knew were aware of the PSX being the former codename. We just called it the PlayStation.

Thanks!

I'm also going to watch that video that Andrew linked.

I had cousins who read the ones they'd subscribed to out loud to me way back in the early 90s. Braille was and still is very expensive to come by, so I'd glean what I could from them and school chums. I'd record a lot of the narration so I could have it to refer back to later. Wish I still had those old cassettes. Nintendo Power sure takes me back. Several pals of mine got a free video game after their parents subscribed, I think. I remember one of their dads joking that said game probably wasn't selling well.

A lot of people don't know that the original Playstation was actually intended to be a CD-Drive for the Super Nintendo, licensed through Sony.

An interesting read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_NES_CD-ROM

Basically Nintendo had a contract with Sony to make the Nintendo Playstation, Sony got so far as to even make a prototype, Nintendo got mad at Sony for some licensing issues (they realized late into things that they'd have to pay Sony forever to utilize their audio chip) so they started talks and a partnership with Philips, Sony got mad at Nintendo for this and just plain stopped working on the Nintendo Playstation. This freed up Nintendo to have Philips assume the role Sony had and straight up create a CD-ROM attachment of their own for the SNES. But the Sega CD was regarded as a failure so Nintendo released Philips from their contract. Nintendo no longer wanted a CD peripheral and never would. Meanwhile, Philips still had the rights to use Nintendo characters for a few games. So they made the Philips CD-i and that's why there was a few Zelda games on it.

That's one of those things about the video gaming industry I learnt from reading those magazine. I recall the world waiting for the Super NES CD, while sega released the Sega CD. The rest turned out as Andrew NDB described.

I never understood why some Nintendo fan-boys get all sentimental about the what-ifs of Nintendo successfully partnering with Sony and (presumably) dominating the video game market ever since. I always thought that Sony's goal was to squeeze all the money they could out of the partnership or at least get their feet wet with a low-risk alliance until they were confident enough to go it alone. Maybe Sony-Nintendo would have continued their union into the 32/64 bit generation, but I think it was always likely that Sony was going to become their own console player sooner or later.

Are you referring to the videocassettes I mentioned earlier? In their Super Power Supplies catalog, they once offered a VHS tape of endings to SNES games. They also had a videotape of how to acquire the ten toughest stars in Super Mario 64. I had that tape, but then I sold it. They had a promo tape for Banjo Kazooie where Jon Lovitz lent his voice.

As for the video game, I believe that was Dragon Warrior. It also reminds me of how for a time, they had six trading cards in each issue, of games for the NES, Game Boy, and SNES. They had challenges on the back, and they'd announce a combination of three cards in every issue, where if you had those three cards, you'd submit them for a free game. I remember once being just one card short, and I was a little miffed about that.

Dragon Warrior! Yeah, that's it exactly. I knew I'd watched someone play a kind of turn based RPG game before FF7 on PS1, but wasn't sure why I always associated it with NES. Man, a buddy from school showed me the Banjo-Kazooie VHS tape when he heard I loved the Simpsons back in the day. Didn't have a screen reader that would work with Netscape or any browser back then, couldn't look up voiceover guys or what they worked on unless someone narrated credits, so I remember simply exclaiming, "Ha! It's Artie Ziff!"

If you are blind how did you watch a video game? I don't mean to be rude, I am just curious. Are you only partially blind?

I had a friend who had Dragon Warrior, and I believe he got it through NP.

I learned them all by heart, and always knew what video game was reviewed in the August 1992 issue, or what letters appeared in the October 1993 issue. Still do.

Still have all of mine, most of them are arranged in binders on bookshelves like a little library. I have great memories of collecting and reading them growing up.

First one I ever owned, I believe, was an issue of Game Players. It had Super Mario World on the cover and I believe a mini-strategy guide inside of it. There were also sections on the NES version of Hook (alongside a little preview section for the movie) and Batman: Return of the Joker for NES.

I have a few other issues of Game Players; for some reason, at that time I didn't get as many GamePro's even though that was the more "high-end" magazine. I did get some more GamePro's in the late-90s but it wasn't my favorite one. I never got Nintendo Power, either; I think I asked my parents to subscribe but they couldn't (or wouldn't) afford it, or something.

Electronic Gaming Monthly was always my favorite. They always seemed a lot more "legit" and less like advertisements than most other gaming magazines did, and I liked their review system. The individual reviews were short but I loved getting a cross-section of reviewer opinions; in most magazines, the scores were given out by One Guy and thus everything was highly subjective. In EGM, you'd get four (and then three, and then sadly just two) opinions per game so the opinions would be a LOT more diverse. If they were all positive, you pretty much knew you had a real winner. But even within those who though it was good, you'd get different reasons as to Why. If you had a dissenting opinion, it was always worth seeing what their issue was compared to the other guys', even if you didn't agree.

Plus, they spent a lot more time on putting the personalities and preferences of their staff right out there for the reader to see, so you could generally tell whose opinions aligned with yours and go from there. You knew who the sports guys were, the RPG nerds, the fighting game experts, the Star Wars fanatics, all of that, so you knew what the biases were but also who knew their sh*t on This or That and who was just a neophyte. Like if the sports-obsessed reviewer gave a sports game a great review, that was one thing; if the RPG nerd who hated sports ALSO liked it, that was a huge endorsement because it meant you didn't necessarily have to be a fan of the "source material" to like the game. That was huge. I trusted the EGM review system more than any other magazine's and they never steered me wrong once. Plus, they had some awesome posters, and their writing staff was just plain entertaining.

I was so upset when they went under, but even around 2008 or whenever it was print magazines were dying. I was happy when it came back but it just wasn't the same, and none of the places I used to buy it from carried the relaunched version, so I only ended up getting a few issues before (I assume) it went under again. I was sad to see it go but more than most other media the internet really eliminated the entire point of a video game magazine. If you can get video of an upcoming game the same day as E3 then waiting a month or two for a screenshot and a description is redundant. I get it, it just makes me sad because so much of my teens and young adulthood was about reading those magazines, specifically.

I have more Game Informer than anything, simply from being a FuncoLand/EB Games/GameStop member since 1998 or so, but they were honestly never my favorite. Their scores seemed to be all over the place and sometimes it felt like their reviewers barely spent enough time on the games they were reviewing. A lot of times they were really harsh on a game I liked a lot, and their reasoning would be very flimsy to me, and since it was usually only one person's opinion (although sometimes there were two) it just always seemed to be a lot more subjective and a lot less informative than EGM. Plus, being as how it was inherently linked with a video game store, a lot of times it seemed a bit too fluffy and commercial, like they were trying to sell you product whereas EGM was objectively just telling you what games were worth your money. I was always just a bit suspicious of Game Informer for that reason; what are the odds they're going to give a bad review to a game that's supposed to be a huge seller and send millions of people running to GameStop? Regardless, I have a ton of issues anyway, and I did have a lot of fun reading them. They were just never my favorite.

Now and again I still love to go through some old issues for fun. It gives you a good sense of perspective; a ton of games you never thought would have been huge turned out to be, a lot that were supposed to be underwhelmed, and seeing what people thought in the Before, During and After is always really fascinating. It also still helps me figure out which games I ignored for whatever reason Back Then I should maybe give a chance to Now. Believe it or not, an EGM review of a game from 1993 absolutely still affects my decision-making on what I might play Today or Tomorrow.

Some awesome memories. Sadly, it was an era that can never be again and there's just no real way for anyone under a certain age to understand what it was like.

I would've enjoyed a "Kids or teens react to Nintendo Power" video film.

If it's anything like some of the ones I've seen, it would predominantly be stuff like "How could you tell if a game was good with just a picture?" and "You had to pay money to read what people think?". And at least one of them would ask why we didn't just use the internet, because Of Course.

Honestly not a fan of those videos. They either come off super-staged or I want to set every child in them on fire. Sometimes both.

Did anyone else have any favorite video gaming journalists? I always liked Tobias Bjarneby from Sweden, who was born in 1974 and wrote about Nintendo.

Were there any other video gaming journalists considered legendary, from the USA, Canada, Japan, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Russia, Germany, Italy, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Austria, Poland...? (or whatever country you live)

I read a lot of uk videogame magazines in my teens. NGC, GamesMaster, Dreamcast Magazine and CUBE among others. My favs were NGC and GamesMaster.

I absolutely loved video game magazines when I was a kid. My brother bought them frequently. My favourite was this British magazine called Computer & Video Games. Still have a lot of its issues. I think about reading through them sometimes but never find the time to do so. It really was the magazine I loved to read the most back in the late 90s.

Well "read" as in mostly looking at it. I didn't speak English when I was that young except for a few basic words. My brother was the one actually reading them. He was already a teenager by then and could speak English fluently.

Ofc we also read local magazines, but no Portuguese magazine came close to Computer & Video Games. There was a Nintendo magazine here that lasted a few months only in the GameCube era since Nintendo was pretty irrelevant here during that era. By 2003 or so, you'd be better off finding information about GameCube games on the Internet or foreign magazines.

I loved the posters that came in the magazines. Still have several them on the walls. Also loved looking at the fanart sections and the fan mail questions.

Gaming magazines always included a lot of humour. The journalists didn't come across as robots telling you the news or their opinions. They generally felt human and like fellow friends of yours giving you advice about upcoming games.

I don't want to go back to a time where you needed to buy magazines regularly to know if a game was worth buying or not, but clearly it made things more interesting and magical. Googling online reviews or asking other players online if a game is any good in under 5 minutes just doesn't have the same charm. But obviously it's a lot more convenient since it saves you a lot of money and time.

EDGE and Retrogamer are cool magazines though. Edge tends to have very nice covers, at least. I haven't read an issue of it in years though.

It's not just gaming, magazines in general seem to be dying. After all we live in the Internet era. If even traditional television as we know it is dying off then imagine paper magazines and newspapers.

The world changes, but there's always going to be nostalgia feelings for good things from the past.

Another, general, video game magazine episode from the Angry Video Game Nerd.

I feel like...holding a book or magazine in my hands makes it more special, and I get engrossed into it more easily. When I read stuff online, it's just not as great, it's more mechanical if that makes sense. I really prefer physical media to staring at a screen like a laptop or phone.

Same. There's just more of a 'feeling' behind me seeing that I bought like 20 or so comics on Free Comic Book Day than just 'oh.... I downloaded 20 new comics on that app'.

Not me. If I want a particular issue or something, I'd seek it out online (like to purchase that is) or at the shops longboxes. Sure I can just download the entire series or whatever, but that's just not an option to me. If I'm not holding it in my hand and flipping through the pages, it might not as well exist to me.

That's fair, but in 2022 it doesn't even cross my mind to go out and buy video game magazines anymore when I can just open the Internet for free and search for reviews and opinions on the latest games.

I can do well without magazines.

I don't like the idea of physical ocoies of games going away forever eventually though. Hell, a lot of Switch games come with a box art... without a cart inside. There's a digital code in it instead. That's just ridiculous.