The greatest game magazine ever...

S

StoOgE

First tragedy, then farce.
RIP.

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Maybe its because I was in Junior High when the magazine died.. but I remember this being absolutely hilarious. Perhaps if I were to read over it nowadays it wouldnt actually be funny, but fond memories nonetheless. Plus, their reviews were actually decent and you could trust them on sports games.. something that is rare in most magazines. Since most game magazines had/have a 2 page sports section.


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The top line with Slippy on this still makes me laugh. Holy shit.
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Game Players was fun and had some cool import coverage.
*Sigh* I remember seeing Fire Pro wrestling 6ms for saturn and buying it immediatly after.
 
Bill rules.

But my nod for best magazine ever goes to GameFan simply for devoting multi-page layouts to both Klonoa and NiGHTS.
 
Heh... I was just leafing through those same issues just over a week ago. I didn't always get Game Players' humor, but it was still an OK read.

Bill was a psycho, wasn't he?
 
I thought this thread was going to be about Next Generation.

And when I saw this:

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I had a severe flashback of the fall/winter of '96, where I was so excited about the Nintendo 64. When I saw that cover, it just sent me back. Weird. I have that issue around here somewhere. Under my bed in a box.
 
Next Gen was a great mag for interviews and people who liked to pretend they were industry insiders. Pretty horrible for actual coverage of games though. Very well put together magazine.. I really enjoyed it once my Gameplayers subscription got transfered over to it.

GameFan however was pretty much trash. Sports coverage was a joke, anything that involved a jump button or was in any way old school would allways review well even if the gameplay was shoddy. It was sorta the elitist 'l33t' gaming mag. It did however have the best coverage of Import gaming, which I will allways give it credit for. On the whole, that mag was sorta the imbodiment of the whole "I wish I were Japanese, because they are so much cooler than us" segment of game fans that bother the living shit out of me.

Not to say Gameplayers didnt have its problems.. the layouts on the original gameplayers were absolute SHIT. Ultra Gameplayers was better for about 3 mags until it went just as off the deep end as the old one. However, the reviews, previews etc were allways very well written. The 20 pages of stupid humor that had nothing to do with gaming probably annoyed alot of people..
 
Gamefan was pretty fucking sloppy feeling. But I loved it. They seemed to have all sorts of scoops before the other mags, and they reviewed a shit load of Japanese games, so you could read about some game before it got released in the states. The other magazines weren't too big on that sort of thing.

Next Generation blows away all others, even if only based on one thing: the holiday hardware/software guides. "Next Gen" (which really sucked, comparatively) did away with these, and I could never figure out why. I loved Next Generation because they were far and away the most technically proficient magazine. I felt like such a techno-nerd from reading it. It was just damn intelligent writing.
 
well, Next Generation started out as a very well put together mag, with those awesome glossy covers.. then they got their budget slashed.. I remember one mag where they were interviweing Carmack right before Doom 3 hit and the entire thing was red type printed on black that was completely and totally unreadable.

I still say, the magazine was great for news, industry info, opinions and stuff about gaming personalities.. but TERRIBLE for game coverage. Their preview section was usually little more than a collage of pictures with a caption telling you what game it was. Its review section was usually a 1 paragraph blurb about each game.. sometimes only a few sentences, sometimes a half or third of a page spread. Though, if something got 5 stars from them it meant you could go to the store, buy it and be sure it would blow you away.

What allways pissed me off though is how they could spend 10 pages talking about how MGS is merging film with game, interview them about the lengths they went in order to get the precise feel they wanted... how they blended cinematics with gameplay etc. Then another 10 pages in another issue talking about technical stuff and then turn around and give it a 50 word review.
 
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Oh please. Look at the crappy design of this system. What the hell is Sony thinking? This is going to go the way of 3DO, I guarantee it.
 
Amir0x said:
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Oh please. Look at the crappy design of this system. What the hell is Sony thinking? This is going to go the way of 3DO, I guarantee it.
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That was the very first issue of Game Players I bought-- crazy memories. I had such a boner for Toshinden.
 
MomoPufflet said:
That was the very first issue of Game Players I bought-- crazy memories. I had such a boner for Toshinden.
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I remember playing the first Ace Combat on PSX. That was the first time a 3D system "blew" me away, even though... heh... it was really, really ugly :P
 
Official Sega Saturn Magazine UK.

IMO of course. They convinced me I should care about Panzer Dragoon Saga and gave me Christmas NiGHTS. 'Nough said.
 
Mama Smurf said:
Official Dreamcast Magazine
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I approve of this post. The best of the official magazines by a long way, and almost certainly the best gaming magazine of any kind. It seems especially great when I read the tripe that is the modern Official UK PS2 magazine (I actually avoid demo discs that I want these days because I'd feel obliged to read at least some of the magazine as well, and that's not something to be taken lightly...)
 
Gazunta said:
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Here endeth the lesson.
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Thank god. Sanity at last. Add CRASH! to that as well...I always remember the first issue, amazing how much better it was then what everyone else was putting out at the time.

Props to Gamefan - dodgy reviews, but their enthusam shined through.
 
Next Gen >>>>> GameFan >>> GamePlayers >>> EGM >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Gamepro :D
 
I agree with most of the post here, including the pro-gamefan ones. And I have every issue posted above...the mid 90s, good times :lol. At my peak, I had 5 subscriptions, GameFan(before their subcription debacle), GamePlayers, GamePro(even though I hated it, but it was still something to read during Home Room if I hadn't gotten a new issue from one of the other ones), Next Generation, and Nintendo Power. I still have those old NG and GP bonus CD-ROMs...i should check them out sometime for laughs.
 
I've still got boxes of old gaming mags that I just can't bring myself to toss out. Most of them from the mid to late 90's. I was just looking through some old issues of UGP and the memories came flooding back. I don't know if the magazines were actually good or I simply view them through nostalgic rose-tinted glasses but mags now just don't hold a candle to those days (with rare exceptions like GMR and Xbox Nation). I'll likely keep my back issues of Next Generation from now on. I also used to enjoy GameFan, Gamer's Republic, UGP, ODCM, and early PSM. But Next Generation will always be my favorite from that period, and is probably my favorite overall mag ever printed. I'm jealous that the Brits have mags like Edge and Games TM and what few quality mags we have in the U.S. can't seem to stay in business.

I still have those old NG and GP bonus CD-ROMs...i should check them out sometime for laughs.
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Oh man, I wish I'd kept mine. I still remember watching Fluke's Atom Bomb video on one of NG's discs and getting all hyped for Wipeout XL. :)
 
I have various game magazines from the likes of Gamepro, EGM, Next Generation, Gamefan, Game Players, PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, and several other publications, from circa 1989-1997 (around the time when I pretty much stopped buying game magazines, and read everything online). All in boxes under my bed. Instead of porn hidden under there, I have old game magazines. Oh well, I guess it's the same, because I can fap fap fap to old coverage of the PS/Saturn holiday '95 season, the N64 launch, the SNES launch, the 32x, etc.
 
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