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[LoveCake]

I have had lots of mags over the years, i have always had a sub to GamesMaster though, i used to sub to EDGE until a few years ago when i picked up a copy of GamesTM, best games mag there is imo.

 

[Big_Al]

When I was a kid/teenager I LOVED a lot of the gaming mags around. I honestly think even the UK games mags were better back then than they are now (not a huge fan of Games TM or Edge, Retro Gamer is awesome though)

I used to buy absolute loads. Hell I didn't even own an Amiga and bought Amiga Power as it was so damn good (plus I played the Amiga at my friends house so not a total waste)

With articles like this (I realise it's a scan but it is an old mag!):

I also loved Mean Machines:

Let's not forget the awesome teletext Digitiser, read that religiously

Also, DON'T TOUCH MR T's BINS!

 

[Mr.Marston]

My fave mag back in the day.

Its nowhere near as good these days. Same goes for GamesMaster and EDGE.

 

[Currygan]

because they're British, duh

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

You know, I'd actually argue that early 00's PC Gamer was the best magazine I've ever read.

Agreed. Kieron Gillen's article on/deconstruction of The Cradle from Thief: Deadly Shadows is possibly my favourite piece of gaming writing ever.

 

[Phades]

With articles like this (I realise it's a scan but it is an old mag!):

It is as if nostrodomus wrote that article predicted how the future would play out at the end of it. Sometimes I think it would be hard to tell the difference between some reviews and some canned automated response.

 

[Seanspeed]

I've found the same goes for a lot of genres of magazines. British car magazines are flippin 10x better than American car magazines as well. They're a good bit more expensive, but the quality is unmatched.

 

[Google]

I think that PC gamer gained a lot from the experience of people working Your Sinclair and Amiga Power. Gillen started out writing reviews for Amiga Power where I guess that he handed out lots of sub 5/10 scores to games that are seen as classics.

Agreed.

There was a right time, right place feeling from PCG at that time. A lot of it was just the fact that there was fantastic experience and heritage and mixed with the NGJ side of things.

 

[MC Safety]

A more interesting question might be what the hell is wrong with the US that we can't get one decent magazine out the door anymore.

It's not a particularly interesting answer: printing and distribution is very costly. And the Internet has killed magazines in the United States.

By the way, Edge is and always was a vanity publication. The same was true for its American offshoot, Next-Generation.

 

[Lashley]

Blame the web and instant news.

I used to buy GamesMaster when I was a kid.

 

[Google]

My fave mag back in the day.

Its nowhere near as good these days. Same goes for GamesMaster and EDGE.

STOP THIS. YOU'RE MAKING ME CRY AND MISS THOSE TIMES...

I remember this mag vividly also. 5 or 6 quid with the demo each month.

This specific cover I also remember...jesus, hurting me in the heartstrings, guys.

 

[Dachande]

Paul Davis-era CVG and Sega Saturn Magazine for life. I grew up on that shit. I read Gamefan occasionally, we got issues in this country now and again, and it was clearly inferior. So many ads, such boring text and design.

Teenage me bought official Sega Saturn Magazine. A lot.

Sega Saturn Magazine told teenage me that everything was going to be fine,

Sega Saturn Magazine told teenage me N64 and PS would burn out and Saturn would remain.

Pff.

However they did give me the first disc of Panzer Dragoon Saga and Christmas Nights, so I'll let them off.

However, SSM did get me and hundreds, if not thousands of others, into imports. The only official, licensed magazine I've ever seen that emphatically recommended modding your console to play imports that they knew were never going to see the light of day over here, going as far as to recommend shops around the country that they knew did a great job of it.

 

[Google]

What set Edge/Next Gen apart was that they weren't written for gamers are the primary audience. They were written with people who were in the game development industry as the primary audience and consumer gamers as the secondary audience.

This absolutely false.

EDGE was written for people interested in videogames. It just so happens there's a nice cross-over between those who work in videogames and those who enjoy playing videogames.

 

[nkarafo]

What the hell is this?

 

[decaf]

So many feels ITT.

Loved SSM, CVG, N64 et al. '90s were bliss for British games mags.

 

[w00twood]

What the hell is this?

Future Publishing have a tradition of putting together a joke cover for someone when they leave. That's Jes Bickham, who wrote for and edited N64.

 

[Mindwipe]

It's a real shame Future Publishing is in the shit financially. So much quality over the years. Super Play and TOTAL.

 

[nkarafo]

Future Publishing have a tradition of putting together a joke cover for someone when they leave. That's Jes Bickham, who wrote for and edited N64.

Oh, ok, thank you.

Anyway, Paul Davies-era CVG and N64 magazine were my favorites. CVG's high five score scale is still the best ever. I also heard goods thing about the UK Saturn magazine, that it was so good it even helped the console to become successful over there!

 

[Spring-Loaded]

Blame the web and instant news.

I used to buy GamesMaster when I was a kid.

Yeah, but how does that affect UK magazines/publishing companies differently from the rest of the world?

It's pretty hard to refute that overall they're better than U.S. video game magazines. even though GameInformer has the biggest circulation of all U.S. magazines (because its tied to GameStop), it's not exactly the best source of coverage beyond exclusive preview stories.

 

[nkarafo]

would you see that on a review nowadays? no, because no publication has the balls to do that anymore. N64 Magazine had fucking balls.

You are right and i loved the magazine. However, after the travesty that was the Turok 2 review, i lost my trust for it. In that review they flat out LIED about the frame rate, saying is silky smooth even in High res and that there are no slowdowns. I still can't understand why they did this. They completely lost me there.

 

[Google]

Remember this silver/foil cover for FFVII in CVG?

EDIT: what a fucking issue that was. F1 97, the Capcom games, FFVII...memories...

 

[xandaca]

Wheel Of Fortune (N64): 17% - Another US quiz show port, this was found to be "worse than accidentally falling off a cliff. And surviving".

Still my all-time favourite review conclusion. Inspired.

They also did a Perfect Dark feature in issue 30 which was stupidly massive and featured a gorgeous piece of original artwork on the cover by Wil Overton, who went on to work for Rare's art department as a result. I remember quite literally waiting by the door every morning for a solid week until that issue arrived.

EDIT: Bahahah, just seen the fantastic Digitiser/Teletext screens posted above. God, that takes me back.

 

[Miles Quaritch]

What the fuck am I reading. Edge is pure garbage since the redesign. The quality
of the magaize in terms of content layout and feel is pisspoor now compared to pre redesign. Just awful.

 

[Nexus Zero]

I went through a loft full of CVGs, N64 Magazines and EDGE a few months ago. Even found a few copies of Arcade, the kind-of "lads mag" attempt at a gaming magazine that flopped, sadly. Anyway they're gone now. But it was a great day.

 

[Messofanego]

Yup, love picking up an EDGE or GamesTM every month. The only magazines I really check out at a WHSmith.

 

[infiniteheteroskdasticity]

I think many people have mentioned the logistical reasons this happens and these are undoubtedly a large reason for this. Let me add a cultural reason for why this holds across all forms of media.

As a Brit that's lived in the United States for over a decade I still use British sources for most of my news. Us Brits tend to be cynical and use our media as a legitimate source of information to help shape our views. Americans tend to be true believers. They have a view and expect their media to confirm their opinions. An abomination like Fox News would never work in Britain because people tend to look for facts, not opinions. It is true you have biases like those shown by the Guardian or the Telegraph but they don't have the sway something like Fox News does here.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

Agreed.

There was a right time, right place feeling from PCG at that time. A lot of it was just the fact that there was fantastic experience and heritage and mixed with the NGJ side of things.

Not sure that the NGJ thing actually did much good overall. Probably the idea of games and games writing "growing up" and fitting in more with other stuff that you could go to university to do humanities degrees on seemed more exciting ten years ago. But the basic idea of those games mags was to make something funny and exciting for boys to read while telling them which games were good.

 

[Messofanego]

What the fuck am I reading. Edge is pure garbage since the redesign. The quality
of the magaize in terms of content layout and feel is pisspoor now compared to pre redesign. Just awful.

I don't know, the April 2014 issue is pretty snazzy, paper feels great, colour palette and graphic design is pleasant, seems well laid out to me. Fantastic features and articles this month that has me still reading. "Just Awful" is a bit much. I'd post scans but that's a no-no here so can only go off from the direct shots on the website.

 

[CosmicQueso]

You just like them because they're written in that cool accent.

I like Edge, but the ipad version made me want to throw it through a window.

 

[Succinct Verbosity]

I'd buy Edge if it was stocked in more places. Sadly most places just stick to the Official mags now.

 

[ScOULaris]

I think many people have mentioned the logistical reasons this happens and these are undoubtedly a large reason for this. Let me add a cultural reason for why this holds across all forms of media.

As a Brit that's lived in the United States for over a decade I still use British sources for most of my news. Us Brits tend to be cynical and use our media as a legitimate source of information to help shape our views. Americans tend to be true believers. They have a view and expect their media to confirm their opinions. An abomination like Fox News would never work in Britain because people tend to look for facts, not opinions. It is true you have biases like those shown by the Guardian or the Telegraph but they don't have the sway something like Fox News does here.

That sounds like paradise. Take me there, will you?

 

[Housh]

I remember picking up a video game magazine in the 90s when I was at Heathrow and trying to figure out what the word "git" meant.

 

[system11]

To be honest, I'm surprised any are still in business. It's so easy now to find well written independant content online, often by people who have broader gaming experience.

One less thing for the recycling bin too.

 

[Messofanego]

I think many people have mentioned the logistical reasons this happens and these are undoubtedly a large reason for this. Let me add a cultural reason for why this holds across all forms of media.

As a Brit that's lived in the United States for over a decade I still use British sources for most of my news. Us Brits tend to be cynical and use our media as a legitimate source of information to help shape our views. Americans tend to be true believers. They have a view and expect their media to confirm their opinions. An abomination like Fox News would never work in Britain because people tend to look for facts, not opinions. It is true you have biases like those shown by the Guardian or the Telegraph but they don't have the sway something like Fox News does here.

That sounds like paradise. Take me there, will you?

This was covered in an episode of Unreported World, USA: Talk Radio Nation (UK, so use hotspot shield to watch). Fascinating and scary for a Brit to see how the shock jocks work, and how impartiality is seen as a no-no where you're just hearing the extremes. More about confirmation bias, news you want to hear.

It's a world where - almost - anything goes; broadcasters are free to say 'all Muslims should be bombed' on the air, though swearing isn't allowed.

Radio hosts don't care who they offend, and they cheerfully admit to political bias: they see it as their job to get Obama voted out.

Talk-radio may be preaching to the converted, but in re-affirming the listeners' prejudices, Krishnan finds only highly partisan versions of the 'truth' survive.

 

[bomma_man]

TBH I don't know what financial chicanery goes on with Edge - I know it's the best place to advertise gaming jobs, so at a guess I'd say that's its golden egg and at a guess I'd say it recoups more of its costs from the cover price than most print - but from the start it's always presented itself as a serious/grown-up magazine about video games (when it launched it was about £1.50 more than the next most expensive mag), and the design & quality of the printing materials (and as someone who has worked in publishing that cover stock is gorgeous for look and feel - really tactile paper) always put if outside of its contemporaries.

It's also managed to have a pretty stable circulation - it's an 'industry' read, and from what I remember when I bothered with things like circulation figures, it was always consistent.

e2a - worth pointing out that they have economised on print stock over the years, especially on the inner pages where both paper weight and silk treatment went down a few years ago (early issues had some crazy weight like 90gsm on silkscreen)...

They said in the Making Of of the magazine that was in the ten anniversary issue that it was always intended as a flagship loss leader for Future.

This is the big one. Less shipping costs, easier to get to all sales locations and subs.

That said, we did have Next Generation here in the US, which was the sister magazine to Edge. Edge content would appear in Next Gen and Next Gen content would appear in Edge.

What set Edge/Next Gen apart was that they weren't written for gamers are the primary audience. They were written with people who were in the game development industry as the primary audience and consumer gamers as the secondary audience.

While most game mags (and game blogs like Kotaku, Polygon, etc.) today focus on the *games* Edge/Next Gen always focused on *how the games were made*.

When I wrote for Next Gen, the reviews were typically very short and were sandwiched in the back of the magazine. Yes, judgments were given and scores applied, but they were not prominent in the way the feature stories were. It was one of the few outlets which didn't rely on reviews to carry the publication. The fact that it had a print lead time also meant that any news had to be meaty. You wouldn't find stuff that was repeated from another outlet (like you do so often on the web today).

Yeah, Edge has never carried news that you could just read on the internet, which mean it wasn't undercut by the rise of the internet so much. Its front end has always consisted of interviews and industry analysis - actual content.

 

[Senor Kami]

Don't they cost almost double the price of US ones? You can have way higher paper stock at that price point and I'd naturally expect better articles as well seeing how much more expensive they are.

 

[infiniteheteroskdasticity]

This was covered in an episode of Unreported World, USA: Talk Radio Nation (UK, so use hotspot shield to watch). Fascinating and scary for a Brit to see how the shock jocks work, and how impartiality is seen as a no-no where you're just hearing the extremes. More about confirmation bias, news you want to hear.

That's really cool. I hadn't seen that. Thank you!

 

[Deleted member 13876]

on my god that carmageddon 64 review always makes me laugh. N64 Magazine's verdict:



would you see that on a review nowadays? no, because no publication has the balls to do that anymore. N64 Magazine had fucking balls. Some more examples:

I absolutely loved that magazine and the amazing bullshit they often wrote.

 

[caesar]

Here in the UK, we were home to the greatest gaming magazine there ever was and ever will be:







glorious. brutally truthful - even to big third party and Nintendo games, first with the new news, and always always fucking hilarious

Amazing mag, it was great when it became NGC too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_Magazine

 

[XANDER CAGE]

Still my all-time favourite review conclusion. Inspired.

They also did a Perfect Dark feature in issue 30 which was stupidly massive and featured a gorgeous piece of original artwork on the cover by Wil Overton, who went on to work for Rare's art department as a result. I remember quite literally waiting by the door every morning for a solid week until that issue arrived.

EDIT: Bahahah, just seen the fantastic Digitiser/Teletext screens posted above. God, that takes me back.

I've always loved that hella Shirow Masamune lookin' Joanna Dark art. I'd love a game that actually looks like that.

 

[Messofanego]

That's really cool. I hadn't seen that. Thank you!

No problem, it's a great watch.

 

[Deacan]

I buy a copy of Retrogamer every time I have to fly, cracking little magazine that.

 

[peace]

Let's not forget the awesome teletext Digitiser, read that religiously

Also, DON'T TOUCH MR T's BINS!

Man, I used to love, LOVE Digitiser and read it religiously, like yourself. I also found the humour used often some of the funniest shit I have ever read!

 

[LoveCake]

When I was a kid/teenager I LOVED a lot of the gaming mags around. I honestly think even the UK games mags were better back then than they are now (not a huge fan of Games TM or Edge, Retro Gamer is awesome though)

I used to buy absolute loads. Hell I didn't even own an Amiga and bought Amiga Power as it was so damn good (plus I played the Amiga at my friends house so not a total waste)

With articles like this (I realise it's a scan but it is an old mag!):


I also loved Mean Machines:



Let's not forget the awesome teletext Digitiser, read that religiously

Also, DON'T TOUCH MR T's BINS!

Your a fellow Big AL

Yeah Digitiser was great, shame it had to finish really.

 

[Zing]

Last year, I read through every single issue of Super Play. Great magazine. As mentioned with the N64 magazine, their reviews were fairly honest, with poor games receiving very low ratings. I actually used the magazine to discover a few SNES games I had overlooked for my collection.

 

[mclem]

Last year, I read through every single issue of Super Play. Great magazine. As mentioned with the N64 magazine, their reviews were fairly honest, with poor games receiving very low ratings. I actually used the magazine to discover a few SNES games I had overlooked for my collection.

Super Play taught me so much about gaming, despite only appearing something like ten years into my gaming life. Import games, 50/60Hz stuff, the whole Japanese anime culture, JRPGs...

 

[Sir_Crocodile]

Let's not forget the awesome teletext Digitiser, read that religiously

Also, DON'T TOUCH MR T's BINS!

Hell yes.

I read EDGE for years JUST for mr biffo's column

 

[EddCoates]

Here in the UK, we were home to the greatest gaming magazine there ever was and ever will be:

glorious. brutally truthful - even to big third party and Nintendo games, first with the new news, and always always fucking hilarious

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U82Q-OTXws remember this?

 

[Celine]

Here in Italy pretty much every mag died, we had some good productions and some good translations but they all got killed one way or another.

I found a RetroGamer UK with a 20th anniversary of Sonic special at a con, I bought it and it was good (We had a Retrogamer translation but only 4 issues came out, we had an Edge-like mag that turned into Edge and that lasted ~1 year)

That one was good, too bad it lasted just a few issues.

I think Game Republic and a few "official" mags still survives in Italy.

 

[Starwolf_UK]

I'm sad in this digital era we still don't have a good official way of getting back issues. I mean EDGE tried that special where they published old articles. They could not use the source code as they lacked the software to read it so instead scanned old issues and printed those.

that's not Paul Davies-era CVG

That was when they had the retro and guides section on the yellow pages section (along with things like for sale and high scores, remember those?), right?

I kind of ditched CVG shortly after those vanished.

What the hell is this?

If it was not for the answer given I would have guessed subscriber only cover.

Yeah Digitiser was great, shame it had to finish really.

GameCentral is on the Metro website complete with the same inbox format and hot topics (twice a day except at weekends where the hot topic is) and reader features.