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Next Generation returns

FortNinety said:
You never said anything directly, but we can read between the lines. But Spectral Glider already put it best with:

Originally Posted by Spectral Glider:
If by technical you mean that it didn't have any lame ass jokes, shitty comics and ramblings about how every newly announced game was going to rock the world, then yeah, I guess maybe it was technical. Serious is the better way I would describe it.
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Meier said:
What're you doing at GAF if the business and spec side of games doesnt interest you at all?
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I don't read comics or jokes of that sort anyway. At GAF I don't read those topics at all (spec/weekly, etc. sales). If I post in them, I don't even read what's being said 99% of the time and just make a goofy post. The "serious" side has no interest to me, just a gamer. Probably never will. I was unaware that those were "required" readings. I mostly care about when x game comes out, who plays it, and not how many polys it is pushing or how good it looks compared to y game on z console. Nor how much it sells in what region.

Holy shit, what a concept. :)

I know some people here are in the industry, or have jobs associated with them (FortNinety's class, etc), but at the end of the day, that honestly means jack shit to me for reading material. No offense, I'm not taking a jab at you, but really some people do not care about technical/business stuff in this industry at all. That shouldn't be held against the person.
 
I liked next gen for the articles but their reviews were pretty weak. The one that jumps to mind was the Guardian Heroes review in which they criticized the game for not being modern or using 3d. It's been a long time so I can't remember exactly what was said other than it pissed me off. They didn't judge the game on its own merit. They were critiquing its failure to live up to their 32bit standard.

It also seemed to me they did a horrible job at matching the reviewer to the game. So quite often the reviews would come off pretty dry.

Next gen with the same quality of articles with a better review system would be nice and having a download formatted for the PSP wouldn't hurt either.
 
I was a memeber of the original NGO forums. I posted as ALIEN. Made alot of good friends over there that I mostly keep in touch with thanks to one of them keeping the old spirital desendant of the forums up and running. Not really allowed to post the URL, but it's a really slow fourm compared to this one anyway. You guys wouldn't like it.

I loved the magazine, use to email Aaron John Lobb (I think I'm spelling it wrong, it's been a long time), we sorta half assed chatted through email. Never too much he was a busy man. Lost touch when it started Daily Radar.

I sure would love to see that magazine and website (NGO) come back to what it once was.

I really loved GameFan too, I miss that one as well.
 
MmmBeef said:
Anybody else get their videogame forum start on the Next Gen forums? (Raises hand). I
personally blame those boards for countless hours of lost work. I have to give my props to
the folks who actually moderated those things. Didn't they have to approve each and every
post? Who here remembers?
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Yep, they had to approve the post before it appeared, you post and come back somtimes hours later to see if it made it. Some of the mods were really nice. Rachel from the Sony forum kept up with alot of us members long after it died. She moved on once she got out of college. Haven't seen her online in a couple years but I bet she is around. She was cute too. ;)
 
Dezcom said:
In case anyone hasn't tried it yet, archive.org has several snapshots of the old website, and here's a link to the first 26 mag covers if anyone wants to archive them for nostalgia. :)

http://web.archive.org/web/19970605144835/www.next-generation.com/covers/backissue.html
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Ha that's funny, I was going through that site a couple months ago looking for my old letters that got pubsihed on the site. Couldn't find any, and none of the forum links work either. :(

EDIT: Nice :)

http://web.archive.org/web/19970420024210/www.next-generation.com/covers/cover4.jpg
 
cover6.jpg


weird.
 
Christ I miss this magazine. I started reading at #18 and subscribed shortly after. Only thing I ever subscribed to.
 
I remember developing an instant and unmoving hate for NextGen after their scathing review of X-Men Vs SF (arcade), a game I was obessed with at the time.
 
I was there during the last days of Next Generation Online. As I recall, Aaron Loeb and Frank O'Connor were running the site and a guy named Daniel "Scooter" Erickson and I were writing about five stories a day.

The funny thing is, people loved us as Next Generation Online. When we added more people and changed the name to Daily Radar, everyone hated us.

Ah, well. I wish the new Next Generation with its old editor lots of luck.
 
Disco Stu said:
I was there during the last days of Next Generation Online. As I recall, Aaron Loeb and Frank O'Connor were running the site and a guy named Daniel "Scooter" Erickson and I were writing about five stories a day.

The funny thing is, people loved us as Next Generation Online. When we added more people and changed the name to Daily Radar, everyone hated us.

Ah, well. I wish the new Next Generation with its old editor lots of luck.
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I read DR up until I left the web for a couple years. When I came back online it was gone. I remember how excited Aaron seemed about his big new project. It's a damn shame it failed.
 
Some of the things I remember about Next-Gen:

- Sony gets MK3 - "They are the winnar!!"
- Pilotwings 64 - "FIVE STARS !! (2 issues later) On second thought, it's only worth a 3... (2 issues later) wait we screwed up, only a 2"
- 10 reasons why Nintendo is doomed!!1 - "Nintendo has a strength in its brand name, it is going to be key this generation.... (3 pages later)... Brand name means nothing... Nintendo is doomed!"

Those are just some of the dumb things I remember. The magazine was like reading through the most refined yellow journalism.

Before anyone says "Name something better," I'll give some examples:

- GameFan (sometimes a little too Pro-Nintendo, but at least they were't too anti-anyone else... they did have that screwed up anti-Japan page once)
- Xbox Nation (most of the time, very high quality and always giving credit where it is due)
- Edge (highly elitist and sometimes suspect, but always serving everyone's dues)
 
MetalAlien said:
I was a memeber of the original NGO forums. I posted as ALIEN. Made alot of good friends over there that I mostly keep in touch with thanks to one of them keeping the old spirital desendant of the forums up and running. Not really allowed to post the URL, but it's a really slow fourm compared to this one anyway. You guys wouldn't like it.

I loved the magazine, use to email Aaron John Lobb (I think I'm spelling it wrong, it's been a long time), we sorta half assed chatted through email. Never too much he was a busy man. Lost touch when it started Daily Radar.

I sure would love to see that magazine and website (NGO) come back to what it once was.

I really loved GameFan too, I miss that one as well.
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ALIEN, well you should still say Hi to those old friends ;).
 
I've never read Edge, but I've gotta disagree with GameFan being on the same level as Next Generation. Couldn't disagree more actually. GameFan wasn't just pro Nintendo, they were pro everything. It was a hype monster, and a damn good one. I loved reading it because they pretty much orgasmed over every *big* game they reviewed. It was so overwhelmingly optimistic that they made it seem like gaming was the most fantastic hobby on the planet, and just reading the magazine made me want to go play. Sure I was about 12 at the time so I was very impressionable, but it's a damn good thing that was a videogame magazine and not US military proppoganda, otherwise I'd be wearing desert camo right now.
 
I don't think NG's reviews were worth a dime (much too hypocritical) but they had, bar none, the best articles in the business. I absolutely loved some of them, like "the biggest failures ever", the history of Ultima they had in their Ultima 9 issue, previews of up-and-coming games, etc. Favorite article, though, was one during the Wipeout 1 days that talked all about electronic music and video games. They even had quotes from Darren Emerson (back when he was still with Underworld!) in there. Absolutely awesome stuff, especially since when I first read that, I was starting to get into that whole style. They also had a few pages per issue devoted to artwork and CG from games that was real cool, and those great glossy covers. It was also nice to read a magazine without constant middle school sexual innuendo thrown in. Towards the end of their run, they kind of lost their way, but its first few years were nothing short of awesome.

But, one of the best things about NG was the interviews. Long, in depth interviews, where the interviewers had the balls to ask some real tough questions. I remember the Sam Tramiel and Trip Hawkins interview, especially.
 
Slo said:
I've never read Edge, but I've gotta disagree with GameFan being on the same level as Next Generation. Couldn't disagree more actually. GameFan wasn't just pro Nintendo, they were pro everything. It was a hype monster, and a damn good one. I loved reading it because they pretty much orgasmed over every *big* game they reviewed. It was so overwhelmingly optimistic that they made it seem like gaming was the most fantastic hobby on the planet, and just reading the magazine made me want to go play. Sure I was about 12 at the time so I was very impressionable, but it's a damn good thing that was a videogame magazine and not US military proppoganda, otherwise I'd be wearing desert camo right now.
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One of the nicest things about Gamefan would be they were the only mag to hype and give spreads to all these rather obscure games. I remember them ranting and raving about Landstalker and Gunstar Heroes, 2 games that got hardly any coverage back then. Curious to see what the big deal was, I played both those games, and of course they totally rocked my world. Gamefan's import coverage was also second to none (and still, nothing really compares), and I loved how they'd have a whole ton of awesome screenshots every game.
 
Panajev2001a said:
ALIEN, well you should still say Hi to those old friends ;).
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Oh yea, it's been so long I can't hope to remember all the names, but did you post there? I remember reading alot of your posts here, back when the PS2 launched, but my memory doesn't go back far enough for NGO...LOL

There was a guy whos posts sorta read like yours named TheHand that I use to read even before the NGO forums on usenet(I remeber because we argued a few times), then when I went over to NGO I started seeing him there too.
 
djtiesto said:
But, one of the best things about NG was the interviews. Long, in depth interviews, where the interviewers had the balls to ask some real tough questions. I remember the Sam Tramiel and Trip Hawkins interview, especially.
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I still vividly remember the one with Sega's Tom Kalinske. In that interview he pulled out some of Sega's best (or worst, depending on how you view it) bullshitting ever. He talked about how more impressed he was with some future 32X versions of games than Saturn ones. It was such a steaming pile......I think that was the interview that pretty much caused me to write Sega off entirely.
 
vitaflo said:
Is this the staff from the first two kick-ass years of Next Gen or the staff from the last two EGM-wannabe years of Next Gen? If it's the former, I'm excited. If it's the latter, who the fuck cares.
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Yeah, that`s basically the million dollar question here. The early next gen had its great interviews and professional tone to its writing. The later Next Gen was just a watered down piece of junk.
 
tehrik-e-insaaf said:
Some of the things I remember about Next-Gen:

- Sony gets MK3 - "They are the winnar!!"
- Pilotwings 64 - "FIVE STARS !! (2 issues later) On second thought, it's only worth a 3... (2 issues later) wait we screwed up, only a 2"
- 10 reasons why Nintendo is doomed!!1 - "Nintendo has a strength in its brand name, it is going to be key this generation.... (3 pages later)... Brand name means nothing... Nintendo is doomed!"

Those are just some of the dumb things I remember. The magazine was like reading through the most refined yellow journalism.

Before anyone says "Name something better," I'll give some examples:

- GameFan (sometimes a little too Pro-Nintendo, but at least they were't too anti-anyone else... they did have that screwed up anti-Japan page once)
- Xbox Nation (most of the time, very high quality and always giving credit where it is due)
- Edge (highly elitist and sometimes suspect, but always serving everyone's dues)
Click to expand...

Thank you for the kind words about Xbox Nation. I worked on the magazine and we tried our darndest to live up to the standard set by Next Generation. I'm not always sure we succeeded, but hey! omelettes and all.

Oh, yeah. And now that I think of it, a lot of Xbox Nation's assembled members worked on Next Generation at one time or another. Simon Cox was an editor there, Evan Shamoon and I were both tireless freelancers, and "Jumpy" Jeff Lundrigan, Carrie Shepherd, and Jennifer Tsao (all of them Next Generation staffers) wrote a lot of our freelance reviews.
 
Flo_Evans said:
sweet! next gen was the only gaming mag worth reading.
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agreed. by far the best video game mag ever. bar none.

they gave the most fair and accurate reviews ever. they had no problem disagreeing with the rest of the mainstream also. i liked how they were the only magazine to accurately and failry judge and rate 3do games, where most other magazines just wrote a sentence and said they sucked, next gen gave full pages on them and gave honest reviews on the content.

they also didn't give shmooze reviews. games that sucked getting good ratings just because of the big developer. which i respected.

if next generation gave you a good rating, you deserved it. if it gave you a bad one, you deserved that.

p.s. Xbox Nation was a good mag also, now I know why, they were all Next Generation folks. :)
 
- Pilotwings 64 - "FIVE STARS !! (2 issues later) On second thought, it's only worth a 3... (2 issues later) wait we screwed up, only a 2"
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I'm curious. Plz explain.


I loved Pilotwings 64 - what happened above?
 
Spectral Glider said:
If by technical you mean that it didn't have any lame ass jokes, shitty comics and ramblings about how every newly announced game was going to rock the world, then yeah, I guess maybe it was technical. Serious is the better way I would describe it.
Click to expand...

I'm a huge fan of Next-Generation, but they slipped on the "serious" banana a fair while before the "NextGen" rebranding. It struck me that a few things that amused some readers became sort of standbys: i.e "let's make fun of this illiterate reader" or "we're chopping our editor into bits" and "let's tear into all bad games the way we did Fantastic Four."

These are all really minor complaints, but I'm very happy with the claimed targeting of the reborn Next-Generation, because I think some of those things may have happened more in an effort to be "cool," which is something I think the magazine did a better job of when it wasn't trying.

I have Issue 38 that I unearthed at my in-laws' place (I'll have to see what else there is sometime). "Are You Hardcore." I don't know if it was an off issue or if the mag was starting its decline, but a hardcore gamers' quiz was not the sort of main feature I had come to expect from the magazine. Still, much of that issue's content is closer to what I hope to see in a gaming mag than a lot of them serve to me today.

Laurent said:
Old logo... Why the old logo?
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Like Fortninety said, still sexy. But it's also actually a slight tweak of the old logo.
 
SickBoy said:
I'm a huge fan of Next-Generation, but they slipped on the "serious" banana a fair while before the "NextGen" rebranding.
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I always said they went downhill when they stopped with the matte finish covers. I loved that old cover stock.
 
MetalAlien said:
Oh yea, it's been so long I can't hope to remember all the names, but did you post there? I remember reading alot of your posts here, back when the PS2 launched, but my memory doesn't go back far enough for NGO...LOL

There was a guy whos posts sorta read like yours named TheHand that I use to read even before the NGO forums on usenet(I remeber because we argued a few times), then when I went over to NGO I started seeing him there too.
Click to expand...

I started posting online on NGO forums :D.
 
shpankey said:
agreed. by far the best video game mag ever. bar none.

they gave the most fair and accurate reviews ever. they had no problem disagreeing with the rest of the mainstream also. i liked how they were the only magazine to accurately and failry judge and rate 3do games, where most other magazines just wrote a sentence and said they sucked, next gen gave full pages on them and gave honest reviews on the content.

they also didn't give shmooze reviews. games that sucked getting good ratings just because of the big developer. which i respected.

if next generation gave you a good rating, you deserved it. if it gave you a bad one, you deserved that.

p.s. Xbox Nation was a good mag also, now I know why, they were all Next Generation folks. :)
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Next-Generation ROCKED!
 
Panajev2001a said:
I started posting online on NGO forums :D.
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I have a vauge image of you posting there, but I mostly remember you and Faflallaldalala and iapetus from the great PS2 vs Dreamcast wars of 1999/2000!! Talk about memories! Judging by your posts about XB360, PS3, and NR, you guys have not lost your touch...basicly the resason I still read the forums.

I have a hard time placing names in the NGO forums even though it was some of the fondest memories i have online. Some names I recall - ToadWarrior, Toad, Sickboy, Slopoke, Rachel, Sean, Dream, Drensch, Andy, Fitfortdanga, Medusa, Chris (the mod to the offtopic forum right?)... I'm sure if I thought hard enough I could recall more.....

Mostlty I just remember the good times.
 
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