98 files
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Famitsu Issue 0051 (June 17, 1988)
By kitsunebi
このスキャンは皆のために作ったので、ぜひダウンロードして、友達に伝いて、楽しんでください！もしほかのところでこのスキャンを分け合ったら、そこで「このファイルはRetromagsからで、そこでタダでダウンロードすることできる」と伝いて下さい。雑誌電子化は皆のために。よろしくお願いします！ *
*This scan was made for everyone, so please download it, share it with your friends and enjoy! If you share this scan elsewhere, please say that the file is from Retromags, where you can download it for free. Magazine preservation is for everyone. Thank you!
768 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0001 (June 20, 1986)
By kitsunebi
このスキャンは皆のために作ったので、ぜひダウンロードして、友達に伝いて、楽しんでください！もしほかのところでこのスキャンを分け合ったら、「このファイルはRetromagsからで、そこで誰でもでタダでダウンロードすることできる」と伝いて下さい。雑誌電子化は皆のために。よろしくお願いします！ *
*This scan was made for everyone, so please download it, share it with your friends and enjoy! If you share this scan elsewhere, please say that the file is from Retromags, where anyone can download it for free. Magazine preservation is for everyone. Thank you!
OK, here it is, the first issue of Famitsu – a landmark issue if ever there was one. Please be aware however, that this IS NOT a scan of the original magazine (which is super-rare and costs hundreds of dollars) but rather is a scan of a reproduction. The gray borders around each page are new to the reproduction, allowing them to occasionally print some commentary on the contents of the page. Otherwise, the content of the magazine, including the ads, is identical to the original.
However, the reproduction is printed at about half the physical dimensions of the original. As such, the quality of small detail suffers somewhat – a fault of the magazine’s printing, not of the scan. The copy I had also suffered from some water damage, which is visible in a few places. Even so, unless someone is willing to scan a copy of the original #1 (I won’t hold my breath), this is probably the best we’ll get, and I feel it’s an important look at the origins of the most influential video game magazine ever published.
Finally…the cover. This is where most of the damage was evident. Warped by water damage and extremely faded, the cover was in such bad shape that I opted to repaint it (something I would normally never do with a scan). It wasn’t possible to repaint all of the tiny spaces between the Japanese characters, so the text is a little muddy, but on a whole I feel the cover is much more presentable than the unadulterated scan. For anyone who finds such digital manipulation an abomination (moreso than spot clone-stamping here and there, that is), I have included the original scan of the cover as the final page before the Retromags splash page.
Anyway, this issue is a special exception. I hope you can look past its faults to appreciate the history! Expect all future Famitsu issues from me to be similar in quality to the previous two I released.
2,245 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1317 (March 13, 2014)
By kitsunebi
There's a report on the PS4 release complete with lots of pictures of people waiting overnight in the cold and proudly holding their newly purchased goods like they're some sort of hero showing off the head of the beast they vanquished. I've never bought anything at a midnight release event and never will, but if I DID, I think I'd rather not have my picture taken and printed in a magazine. Who could you ever show it to?
"Oh, you waited in a line for 24 hours to buy a video game system the moment it was released? Wow, uh...cool story. --NNERRRRRD!!!!!"
75 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0111 (October 12, 1990)
By kitsunebi
I'd like to look at the review scores in this issue. In particular Mega Man 3, which got a pretty terrible total score of 23 (out of 40.)
That's the same score as this issue's North & South.
That's the same score as Magic John (released in the USA as Totally Rad)
That's one point WORSE than freaking Die Hard.
In fact, it's the lowest ranked game in the issue, except for a couple of Game Boy games (I mean, come on, they're Game Boy games, what do you expect?)
So how did Mega Man 3 come to be so hated by the editors of Famitsu? The common complaint seems to be "Wah!! It's hard!"
Pretty sure you'll find this game on most top 100 NES games of all time lists. IGN has it at #16. Are Westerners just gluttons for punishment, or are the editors at Famitsu just weak as when it comes to challenging games?
146 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1321 (April 10, 2014) (supplements included)
By kitsunebi
Complete with both supplements. First being a Kantai Collection (KanKore) manga, and the second being a double-sided B3 poster for Hatsune Miku: Project Diva F 2nd. If you don't know who Hatsune Miku is, she's the vocaloid software/singer on the cover of this issue, star of many Sega video games, and the happily married for 6-years wife of this completely normal and well-adjusted Japanese man:
https://tribune.com.pk/story/2508555/japanese-man-celebrates-six-years-with-cartoon-bride
What is this place I live in...
89 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1332 (June 26, 2014)
By kitsunebi
Interesting how the cover article on Bloodborne starts immediately on page 2 (the inside front cover.) That space is usually reserved for what I assume are the most expensive ads (in addition to the cover, the first several pages of Famitsu are printed on thicker, glossier paper than the rest of the mag), so I'm guessing Sony paid a %#$!load of cash to get Famitsu to give that space up for the feature on Bloodborne.
214 pages
133 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0049 (May 20, 1988)
By kitsunebi
このスキャンは皆のために作ったので、ぜひダウンロードして、友達に伝いて、楽しんでください！もしほかのところでこのスキャンを分け合ったら、「このファイルはRetromagsからで、そこで誰でもでタダでダウンロードすることできる」と伝いて下さい。雑誌電子化は皆のために。よろしくお願いします！ *
Thanks to ccovell for donating the issue. Also the gavas bucks page was missing, so he provided a scan of that page to make the mag complete. For anyone who missed it in my forum thread, Gavas were a big scam run by Famitsu to trick kids into thinking they could win fabulous prizes by buying every issue of Famitsu that hit the stands. Below is a closer look at just how impossible getting those prizes actually was. Listed are the prize, the amount of Gavas needed to win the prize, the number of Famitsu issues you would need to purchase in order to have enough Gavas, and approximately how much that many issues of Famitsu would cost. These are all in 1988 dollars, so it would be much more today.
As of May 1988 (these are not all of the prizes, btw):
A Famitsu Pencil Case - 780 Gavas - 49 issues - approx. $195 A Famitsu T-Shirt - 1680 Gavas - 105 issues - approx. $420 A Famicom Game - 2900 Gavas - 182 issues - approx. $728 A Famicom System - 9800 Gavas - 613 issues - approx. $2,452 A Sega Master System - 11200 Gavas - 700 issues - approx. $2,800 A PC Engine (TurboGrafx16) System - 16500 Gavas - 1,032 issues - approx. $4,128 It should also be worth noting that Famitsu was bi-weekly at this point. So assuming you really wanted that PC Engine and you bought one copy of every issue that hit the stands, you would expect to finally have enough Gavas approximately... 38 years later. So...sometime in 2026. Of course, Famitsu eventually went weekly, of course, so you actually would have been able to finally get that PC Engine sometime in 2009. Well, except that PC Engines had long since ceased production by then.😒
*This scan was made for everyone, so please download it, share it with your friends and enjoy! If you share this scan elsewhere, please say that the file is from Retromags, where anyone can download it for free. Magazine preservation is for everyone. Thank you!
870 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0002 (July 4th, 1986)
By MigJmz
Bi-Weekly Famitsu Issue 0002 (July 4th, 1986)
714 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1362 (January 22, 2015)
By kitsunebi
This magazine is 212 pages, which is fairly reasonable for Famitsu. They're usually a bit longer, though issues exceeding 300 pages aren't common. Considering they put this thing out on a weekly basis, it's still a remarkable amount of pages per month, sometimes entering quadruple digits.
But this issue also has an ad for a Monster Hunter strategy guide, which weighs in at 1,568 pages. That's more pages than an entire year's worth of any Western game mag published contemporaneously with this issue. That's pretty impressive, I'll give you that.
I'll also give you a slap on the face if you ever ask me to scan it. 🙂
78 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1363 (January 29, 2015)
By kitsunebi
Flipping through this issue, I noticed a baseball game and wondered if...yep, there he is. 3 years before heading to America and entering the MLB, look who it is - the currently-highest-paid (best?) player in the game, Mr. Shohei Ohtani:
I realize most of you are nerds who stay inside all day, hating sports and sports games alike. I happen to be a nerd who stays inside all day hating sports, but has been known to enjoy a sports game or two (back when I played games, that is.) This guy goes beyond sports star, though. He's a national hero here in Japan, and by far the biggest celebrity. Basically, he's the Japanese Taylor Swift. They let the kids here watch the final game of the World Series (which Ohtani's Dodgers won) in school like it was the moon landing or something.
In this game, he's still playing for the Nippon Ham Fighters. Did I ever mention that Japanese sports teams have stupid names? Actually, the team name is "Fighters," but rather than name teams after the city they're in, they name them after whatever giant corporation owns the team. It's super-lame. So rather than the Sapporo Fighters, allowing people in Sapporo/Hokkaido to wear their hometown team's merch with pride, they have to basically be wearing an advertisement for Nippon Ham, a giant meat/food corporation. Plus, when you say it out loud, it sounds like they fight ham.
80 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0169 (March 13 1992)
By kitsunebi
このスキャンは皆のために作ったので、ぜひダウンロードして、友達に伝いて、楽しんでください！もしほかのところでこのスキャンを分け合ったら、「このファイルはRetromagsからで、そこで誰でもでタダでダウンロードすることできる」と伝いて下さい。雑誌電子化は皆のために。よろしくお願いします！ *
*This scan was made for everyone, so please download it, share it with your friends and enjoy! If you share this scan elsewhere, please say that the file is from Retromags, where anyone can download it for free. Magazine preservation is for everyone. Thank you!
A couple of warnings: page 127 has a somewhat terrifying bit of defacement using whiteout. Also, the bottom 1/4 of the page that makes up pages 95 and 96 had been cut out, so I filled it with white space to keep the pages the same dimensions as everything else. Otherwise the issue was in great shape. Enjoy!
776 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0043 (February 19, 1988)
By kitsunebi
このスキャンは皆のために作ったので、ぜひダウンロードして、友達に伝いて、楽しんでください！もしほかのところでこのスキャンを分け合ったら、「このファイルはRetromagsからで、そこで誰でもでタダでダウンロードすることできる」と伝いて下さい。雑誌電子化は皆のために。よろしくお願いします！ *
The credits on this one are more complicated than usual, so an explanation is in order. This issue was a collaboration between ccovell and myself. The magazine itself was donated by ccovell, but after I scanned it, I realized there were some pages missing. It turned out that there was a Dragon Quest III sticker sheet as well as a Dragon Quest III supplement missing from the copy that was donated to me. Normally supplements would be considered separate anyway, but in this case, the supplement was included in the magazine's page count, so I wanted to include it. ccovell was kind enough to scan the supplemental pages from another copy he owns.
So: pg 67-68 and 77-96 were scanned by ccovell. All other pages were scanned by me. All edits by me.
This issue marks the (as of yet) oldest issue of Famitsu to be scanned for our archives (the scan of issue 1 is of a half-size reproduction, not an original issue). Enjoy!
I'll also include some information about the best seller lists and game-of-the-year awards which I posted in my personal thread in the forums, since it's likely that most people downloading this will overlook it otherwise:
And for a complete breakdown of all of the Best-of-the-year Awards, please check out this comment (I can't copy it here without causing an error for some reason):
https://www.retromags.com/forums/topic/10237-kitsunebi77s-random-stuff/?do=findComment&comment=54381
*This scan was made for everyone, so please download it, share it with your friends and enjoy! If you share this scan elsewhere, please say that the file is from Retromags, where anyone can download it for free. Magazine preservation is for everyone. Thank you!
941 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0129 (April 19, 1991)
By kitsunebi
Speculation on what the American redesign of the Super Famicom might look like LOL:
Though to be fair, who would have ever guessed they'd decide that purple and lavender were the way to go to appeal to Americans?
156 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0099 (April 27, 1990)
By kitsunebi
As one would expect, the usual info on Final Fantasy III, Dragon Quest IV and the like.
But the real news here is the food report where we learn that Jolt Cola has twice the caffeine but tastes disgusting, and Teddy Grahams are not only cute and delicious, but healthy, too! Whatever happened to Teddy Grahams...
196 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1333 (July 3/10, 2014)
By kitsunebi
256 pages
Don't get too excited about the included supplement. Despite being trumpeted on the cover, it's just an "illustration card." What's that? Good question. It's basically a regular-page-sized poster printed on cardstock. What purpose it serves is a mystery. But hey, you're still getting a mag two and a half times the length and several bucks cheaper than any of the English-language mags published at the time, so what are you complaining about?
103 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1369 (March 12, 2015)
By kitsunebi
246 pgs.
Another edit finished, another magazine tossed into the recycling bin. And yet the pile of mags waiting to be scanned never gets any smaller. Indeed, just when you think you're making progress clearing out the mags cluttering your home by the box-load, you "accidentally" buy some more. In your head, you know what you're doing is abhorrently wrong, but just like this duck, your body has a mind of its own and your finger clicks the "buy it now" button before your brain has a chance to stop it. You hang your head in shame. This is the scanner's own private hell.
69 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0669 (October 12, 2001)
By kitsunebi
Scanned 6 months ago, I've finally gotten around to finishing the editing on this. But what's an extra 6 months when you've been already been waiting since 2001 to get a copy of this issue? 😋 And remember, if you enjoy scans like this, be sure to click the "like" button . It's such a small thing to do, but your scanners will greatly appreciate it, I assure you. (Just be sure do do it here at Retromags where we'll see it, not somewhere else like a new release post on facebook or twitter)
This scan was made for everyone, so please download it, share it with your friends and enjoy! If you share this scan elsewhere, please say that the file is from Retromags, where you can download it for free. Magazine preservation is for everyone. Thank you!
このスキャンは皆のために作ったので、ぜひダウンロードして、友達に伝いて、楽しんでください！もしほかのところでこのスキャンを分け合ったら、そこで「このファイルはRetromagsからで、そこでタダでダウンロードすることできる」と伝いて下さい。雑誌電子化は皆のために。よろしくお願いします！
PS: Please don't upload this file to the Internet Archive. K thnx bye!
758 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 0666 (September 21, 2001)
By bogusfrank
Famitsu Issue 0666 (September 21, 2001)401 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1346 (October 2-9, 2014)
By kitsunebi
What caught my eye:
First of all, no one really needs an hourglass, but this one is pretty cool. Of course, you could easily go broke in Japan collecting all of the billions of Dragon Quest goods.
The other thing I noticed was a Vita game called Dungeon Travelers 2 that surely wasn't released in America.
Except that it was (this is probably common knowledge, but the last game system I owned was a PS2, so forgive my ignorance of anything released in the past 20 years).
Of course, Americans got it in censored form, duh. The T&A wasn't covered in enough murder and gore to make it past American censors, I guess.
AMERICA:
JAPAN:
What the hell is even happening here though? It's not actually porn, it just looks like it if you squint. Oh Japan. Why you so freaky?😅
127 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1344 (September 18/25, 2014)
By kitsunebi
This is one of those weird issues that was given two issue numbers (it's technically issues 1344 and 1345), and counting all pages individually, this issue weighs in at 316 pages (though the posters and comic spreads are left joined in the archive as they should be). That's the equivalent of 4 issues of Game Players, only with just one issue of Game Players' worth of ads. And since these double number issues are also allotted two weeks on newsstands as opposed to one, there were only 3 issues of Famitsu published in September 2014 for a total of 851 pages, though if we count the last issue from August as well (which was printed within 30 days of this issue) it's a total of 1,189 pages in a 30 day period. Which is just a few more pages than the 76 that Game Players churned out every month.
Why am I picking on Game Players? I'm not. I wish ALL mags I scanned were like Game Players. Scanning 1,189 pages per month versus 76 pages per month...that's one month of Famitsu vs. 15.6 months of Game Players. Imagine how many more issues I could scan if only they weren't SO. DAMN. LONG...😩
117 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1342 (September 4, 2014)
By kitsunebi
I only read Famitsu for the hard-hitting gaming journalism.
138 downloads
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Famitsu Issue 1320 (April 3, 2014)
By kitsunebi
The highest rated game this issue is a tie between girlfriend simulator Love Plus + and the latest Hatsune Miku game (she who is also known as The Vocaloid Who Married A Real Boy™), both of which got the exceptional Platinum scores of 10 9 9 9. But don't worry, there are also a few romance games aimed at women in their teens and twenties which are well reviewed, so digital romancing is an equal opportunity endeavor. And for the older gentleman who just doesn't give a $%^# about trying to please the opposite sex anymore, there's the latest game in the Winning Post horse racing sim series, which also nabbed a Platinum score and allows you to focus on romance of the equine variety, playing matchmaker in order to breed a champion money-maker. Anyone looking for a game with guns 'n' 'splosions is reading the wrong mag - Famitsu only covers games released in Japan, and those types of game are few and far between.
Confessions of love, Japanese style
They're all proposing to the rich old man who breeds the champion race horses, of course.
77 downloads
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