Retro Gamer Magazine (uk)

[meppi]

An ugly truth dawned upon me recently.

Starting from 1990, when I was about 13-14 years old, I bought loads of game magazines and loved reading them from front to back.

Actually it should be a couple of years earlier with the Club Nintendo magazines, but I got those free in the mail thanks to Nintendo.

But starting from 1990 I actually started buying magazines.

Like I said, I loved reading through these.

A couple of years later I actually had subscriptions to 5-6 magazines and things were great.

But starting with the DreamCast, all my favorite ones started going down hill fast.

CVG, EGM, (OSS seized existing), The Nintendo only magazine I bought at the time got worse and worse every month.

So in the end the only ones I was left with were the DreamCast magazine and the French Joypad, which were both still excellent. (But with French not being my first language, I obviously didn't get as much from it as from an English magazine)

The DreamCast died, and so did my subscription to DC mag...so the only one that was left was Joypad.

This continued on till last week.

I came to the conclusion that in fact when the new Joypad came in the mail for the last year or so, I barely even looked at it anymore.

The Next-Gen stuff doesn't speak to me, and they developed the same attitude towards Nintendo as you see on so many message boards today. :ermm:

The old crew left a couple of years back, so it was only natural that things would change, but it just took a while before they changed considerably, and even a bit longer before it sank in that they weren't going to go back to the magazine of old.

So I decided that I won't be renewing my subscription come February.

Now, I had heard a lot of good things about the British magazine Retro Gamer, and being someone who loves the classics more than the new stuff, it really appealed to me.

I came across a CD on the net with low quality PDFs of the first 30 issues. A CD that was appearantly released by the magazine creators.

After flipping through these and thinking too bad these aren't available where I live, I went to their site to notice a very nice surprise.

They do subscriptions for the rest of the rest of the world as well.

This was something I wasn't expecting from such a niche magazine.

So I took a 12 month subscription for the next year. :happy:

I also bought 4 back issues as well, which have just arrived, and I must say, this is the first time in a long while that I have enjoyed reading a new magazine so much!

I love it! Hopefully they will be around for a very long time to come.

So if there are people out there who love classic gaming as much as I do, then you can't go wrong with this one.

The newest issue has a making off special of one of my favorite games ever: Blast Corps for the N64.

They cover everything from the classic 8-bit consoles and computers up to the Saturn and N64, perhaps even the DreamCast, but I'm not 100% sure on that yet.

Well they even cover arcade games that predate all of those old systems as well.

If there are people that thought about getting scans from these, don't bother.

I obviously won't be scanning these magazines.

The writers and editors deserve every bit of respect and financial support for the great job they are doing, and as one of the few new magazines that I still find worth reading, I will support the 100% as well.

For subscription details or buying individual magazines you can always check http://www.imagineshop.co.uk/mag_home.php?magID=11

and

http://www.retrogamer.net/flashindex.html

[Phillyman]

I can see where your coming from on this, I honestly go to Slickdeals.net and look for free magazine offers now adays. I have a subscription for GamePro and EGM up until like 2014 because of these free offers, Also I get Games for Windows and a few computer magazines for the next few years. The only paying sub I have right now is Nintendo Power.

[meppi]

To be honest, if we had a Nintendo magazine like the US Nintendo Power over here, I would certainly get a subscription as well. Seeing as for this generation I opted to go Wii and DS only, since there isn't a new Sega system.

Too bad that the official Nintendo Player magazine, which changed to Nintendo Ultra I believe, stopped being published somewhere in the mid 90s.

Other unofficial ones simply weren't as good.

[Zilch]

Retro Gamer seems like a good magazine although it may be too expensive for those living outside the UK.

[meppi]

Nah, I don't think it's too expensive at all.

With my subscription I pay about ?8 per issue, shipping included. (And international shipping isn't cheap, I should know )

Looking at how they were selling EGMs over here a couple of years back for around ?15 in the shops, I think it's a steal actually.

Sure, it's not like they are free like thousands of US subscriptions for EGM, but then again that magazine stopped being worth reading about 5 years ago. Well, for me anyway.

When you also take into consideration that it's pretty much the only retro gaming magazine out there as far as I'm aware. And that it's written by a crew who absolutely know their stuff to a tee, I truly can't complain about the price.

For example, when I found the Xevious special in one of their magazine, I immediately went to check out if they did mention Xevious Fardrout for the PC-Engine, (a game that I didn't even know existed until several months ago. And I'm a huge import retro gamer and also a huge Xevious fan!) and sure enough the game was indeed in there, along with Super Xevious Gamp No Nazo for the Famicom, which I own on the Famicom and blew me away when I first played it that it wasn't simply a port of the arcade Super Xevious game, but instead a completely different one. And an incredible shooter as well. :grin:

So these people surely are true experts, and true gamers as well, which shines through when reading their views on these kind of games.

[Christopher1982]

Is there an American equivalent to this magazine? Or barring that, are there any American stores that carry it?

[Phillyman]

Is there an American equivalent to this magazine? Or barring that, are there any American stores that carry it?

Check your local Borders or Barnes and Noble, I grab a latte and read it for free each time a new one comes out :whistling:

[Beppo]

I dont like this magazine. Quite expensive...

[freedomorfire]

we should scan it up

[meppi]

we should scan it up

No we should not!

And for various reasons.

The 5 year rule is in place for a very good reason. We don't want to scan magazines that are still more or less in rotation.

It's not the intention of the project to pirate or provide a free alternative to buying magazines when they come out.

The people who originally work on these magazines deserve to be able to put food on their table just as much as you and I do, so we won't have anything to do with something that might jeopardize their career.

That being said, I realize that the first issue came out in January of 2004, so technically it would be alright to start scanning issue 1 on January 2009. But due to the content of the magazine itself (retro only) and the fact that the magazine is still coming out monthly, I don't think even the 5 year rule in enough for this one.

On top of that they have released a DVD which is for sale on the Retrogamer site, that includes PDFs if every issue from 1-30.

So technically, as long as that DVD remains for sale, even the old magazines are still in rotation, which would mean that Issue 1 could be scanned in September of 2012 at the earliest if they decided to stop selling the DVD this day. :tongue:

In other words, don't count on it. :alien: