Retro Magazine memories

[Leathco]

This may be an odd idea, or a great idea. What are your memories of reading those old mags when they were new, on the newstands?

Even in my early years at school, my grandma got me a subscription to Nintendo Power, mostly for the free copy of Dragon Warrior that came with it. The game was decent, but the magazine was even better. It was great to see titles coming out that I could rent every other week at the game store, or even get real lucky and get a copy of on my birthday or Christmas! Through this mag I got my love of games like the Mega Man series, and the preview of Mario 3 was great!

IAs I got a little older, things changed. Things were kinda hard for me as a kid, and often times I would use my lunch money to buy these mags and skip lunch at school. My mag of choice was usually Electronic Gaming Monthly, with the occasional Nintendo Power, rarely a Gamepro. Later that changed to Next Generation, I really enjoyed reading about the latest and greatest. I wanted a 3DO so bad during that period, I thought it would be the next big system. Instead though, it died a slow death, and I used money from mowing yards the whole summer to get a PlayStation. I couldn't even get any games for it for months, instead playing the demo discs from the Official PlayStation Magazine. These became a must buy for me, as it was a cheap way to play some next gen games. I fell in love with demos for certain games like Ace Combat 2, Armored Core, and Parappa the Rapper.

Sometimes I even skipped school, even though I walked to school at the time and had no place to go other than the small wooded area a few blocks from school. I would sit on a stump out there reading the latest mags I could get. I got discovered and got into some big trouble for doing this though! Still, it was nice escaping the school grind just for a day to indulge myself in the latest gaming news and reviews. And at the time, EGM was HUGE. There might have been a ton of ads, but there was also a ton of content.

Eventually the need for me to get mags died off. I had a computer with internet access after another summer of mowing yards, and a year later I had a decent job and had gotten an X-Box. I got OXM for the demo discs only, but they didn't have the same magic as those OPM discs did, just because I now had a job where I could almost get games at will.

Years later I re-discovered retro magazines, not through here but through a now dead "underground" gaming torrent site that had tons of Nintendo Power magazines. I began engorging myself in any old mag I could find, memories flooding back. Now I love catching up on what issues I missed and reliving the ones I had as a child.

So, what memories do you have of your childhood reading these mags? Also, thanks to everyone at Retromags that keeps the site going and new mags coming in. It's a great nostalgic run for people like me, I appreciate it greatly.

[Areala]

Like you, my first subscription to Nintendo Power was because of the Dragon Warrior give-away although I received the first issue free for being a member of the Nintendo Fun Club.

My brother and I often pooled our allowance money to pick up a new issue of GamePro or EGM, especially when a game we were interested was featured on the cover.

Next Generation was really something else, wasn't it? I mean, even now the articles still read intelligently, the interviews with people like Bill Gates, Trip Hawkins, and Shigeru Miyamoto are still enjoyable today and perhaps even moreso with the benefit of hindsight. The Trip Hawkins interview where he basically ragged on 32-bit by claiming it was a non-starter and 64-bit and up like Nintendo and his forthcoming M2 were the wave of the future? Still compelling reading even though you know he's wrong, even though you know the M2 never appears, even though the PlayStation beats the pants off every other competitor in the arena. His predictions were wrong, but his reason for making those predictions wasn't.

We didn't get a PC in the house until I was in high school, so aside from reading Rainbow Magazine (the magazine for TRS-80 Color Computer fanatics), I had little to no idea what was happening in the home computer world. Nowadays my excitement comes from reading old issues of Computer Gaming World and PC Gamer and seeing the history I missed out on due to lack of technology.

*huggles*
Areala

[marktrade]

Next Generation is the magazine I have most memories of, too. I remember the day I saw the "100 best games" issue on the newstand at the grocery store and I very politely asked my dad if I could get it and he said yes. I didn't even have a modern game system at the time. All I had was an NES in September 1996, but I did like to dream about games, and game magazines definitely helped me to do that.

Years later I re-discovered retro magazines, not through here but through a now dead "underground" gaming torrent site that had tons of Nintendo Power magazines. I began engorging myself in any old mag I could find, memories flooding back. Now I love catching up on what issues I missed and reliving the ones I had as a child.

There are a few underground-gamer.com veterans here. Not a day goes by that I don't miss that site.

I would say Inside Mac Games is the magazine I have the biggest emotional connection with (waiting for my first issue on Christmas morning) but I guess a lot of people would not consider it a magazine since it's not made of paper and you can't read it without a computer. It was all on a CD.

[Leathco]

Glad to see I wasn't the only one to really like Next Generation. It always felt like a more intelligent magazine, and the interviews really hit hard, you could tell it wasn't just predetermined questions. EGM came close, but there was nothing like Next Generation, with perhaps PCXL on the PC front.

[vnerob]

I only ever bought one issue of NextGen. It was the one with the drooling guy from the Saturn campaign on the cover. I remember liking it, and the sort of brain stimulation it provided. Though back then, I guess I just knew that I liked it. There's something really important about exploring, through reading, stuff that is sort of 'beyond your level'. It's like hanging out with a bunch of older and wiser people, and where you're not expected or obligated to interact back. You just sit there and take it all in. That's real education right there.

I'm reading all the issues I missed, now, and holy crap, what a fantastic magazine it was.

I don't know if there's a name for this, maybe there is. Like, I know I have a tendency, and I'm assuming others might as well, to think of people from the past as dumber and more naive than we are? More...simple? Does that make sense? Like, you don't expect them or the things they talk about to be relatable, somehow.

But in reading these old NG's, I'm reminded (as you are) that that is not the case at all. In fact, it's kind of the opposite. If anything, we're the less sophisticated ones. 1995 culture was just as 'clever' as our culture, if not more so. Speaking of which, and to also zero in my thoughts on the thread topic:

Game Players:

The humor. I was around 14,15, when GP gradually (though I guess it was only over the course of a few months) became more and more wacky (in a good way). I can say that I did not always understand all of the jokes, but what I got, I loved.

Once a month, our family would make a lengthy trip to a larger center for medical appointments. I loved these days so much. It meant a day off from school, and a multi-hour car ride. On the trip in, we always stopped at the same 7-eleven where I'd buy the latest Game Players, a bag of chips, and a slurpee. The town I lived in was small and GP wasn't always available, and it certaintly didn't have a 7-eleven, with it's wide assortment of magazines and junk food, so this was always a big treat.

This stop on the monthly trip was still a couple of hours away from our destination, so those two hours in the car were pretty awesome. Sometimes, when I had money, I'd buy games in the destination city based on info I'd got in that months GP! But there wasn't always a lot of time, so I had to think/act fast. Great memories.

Another memory would just be concerning reading them at school. Some teachers wouldn't mind if read them after you finished all your work. So there was always this big rush to get whatever annoying assingment over with so you could get back to what you really cared about.

Somre more:

-There was GamePro around 93 or 94. It had some Jurassic Park game on the cover I think. There was an ad in that isse that used the word "Bitch". I remember that was a big hit amongst me and my friends as I'm sure it was with other boys our age. I remember where we were and everything. Just laughing like idiots.

-I remember seeing "S.W.A.T. Pro" for the first time and buying it. It had Road Rash 2 on the cover. I owned Road Rash 1 and loved it, so I bought the issue. I think it was summer holidays. I remember it was a really rainy day, and I was with my dad, and he was meeting someone for coffee. I didn't want, nor was I expected to, have coffee with them, so I just hung out in the car, reading that issue, and enjoying myself. Not sure why this stands out so much. I think maybe, and this probably has a lot to do with a lot of my other memories of gaming mags, is that it's just "you" time. I liked being alone a lot as a kid, but this wasn't always possible, and being a kid, these things really aren't often in your control, even though you desire this autonomy the same as an adult would. Something like that.

-EGM Buyer's Guides. I looooved these so much. Especially the early nineties ones. I remember a friend had the 92 or 93 one, and whenever I would go over there, I'd just stare at the system comparison/stat 'matchup' pages. I also remember it was really hard to get these issues where I lived. I think it was something to do with how they were distributed maybe? Like, the only place I could get EGM, would always get every issue of EGM, but they'd never get the annual buyer's guides. Maybe for the stores, they weren't part of the same "package"? I dunno.

I need to stop now or I'll be writing all day.

[VGBounceHouse]

Howdy!

After taking care of some auctions I figured I'd check the forums and what do I find but this thread. Hope this is something fun?

My memories may be a bit different than others given when I got into gaming: 1974. That was the year I was given the original set of Dungeons & Dragons booklets (along with Chivalry and a mess of miniatures), and the year I discovered videogames. The local dug store had brought in an original model Pong and after tugging on Mom's pants she gave me a quarter. There was already a man playing so I watched a bit before taking him on and getting trounced, which if I remember correctly was mere seconds. Eight year-old me, already enamored by television, was hooked.

Other than the Sears catalog we didn't get a whole lot of information in print back then. After getting Atari's home Pong, which as Dad predicted didn't hold interest for long, I began to search out coin-ops as various stores and movie theaters started getting them. Also on the horizon was the VHS recorder which I hoped to talk Dad into getting. There was finally a confluence as I picked up a copy of VIDEO magazine in 1977 and while waiting to see a movie (and for the one coin-op in the lobby to free up) I started reading the issue and came across an article about videogames. I can't remember the issue but I believe while coin-ops were the focus there was also some information about the Atari VCS.

The next month I sneaked a copy of Video Review into Mom's grocery cart having already exhausted my allowance with the new issue of VIDEO and a few comic books. I now had news on videogames from two sources, plus the few stores around town with coin-ops, plus any trip to the mall and head down to Sears and the videogame section which would grow to an eighth of the floor in the coming years.

I never thought about a subscription, but every month grabbed those two magazines and their meager videogame coverage. Sometimes if would be expanded around CES, but otherwise it was just a few pages with news and the occasional review.

The first arcade to open in Rockville was around this time but I don't know the year since I only discovered it when someone at the local RPG store, Dream Wizards, was talking about it. I wasn't allowed to go often, but it was a great place and here I discovered Billboard magazine. While it wasn't available for sale the manager often had an issue out and I asked to read it while I was there. Sales figures, news and distributor information, Billboard showed me the "inside" part of the industry as best I could understand back then. I'd often strike up a conversation about success of a particular coin-op relative to its position on the sales charts in Billboard and I'd hear stories about repairs or kids so good they monopolized machines. He probably just thought I was strange asking about such things.

I was so excited to hear about Electronic Games in the pages of VIDEO. The same trio that wrote most of the articles was in control of the new magazine which was to debut in 1981. At this point the VCS had been on the market for four years, and the Intellivision for one, so many of Mattel's best attack ads were in the past by the time the gaming press really kicked off in 1982. Coverage continued in VIDEO and Video Review so now I had to stagger my allowance to get everything. And then 1982 happened.

Electronic Games goes monthly, Video Games arrives, Videogaming Illustrated makes it's debut, and Electronic Fun with Computers & Games arrives before the end of the year. By this time I had an Intellivision, trips to the arcade, computer games on the school's TRS-80 Model I/Level II, and a decent amount of print coverage. Modern videogaming had arrived years before, but the breadth of the consumer experience was only now being served.

...to be continued.

Chris

[RobertDuncan]

I've read some old magazines I belive the first one I read was a gamepro. Even though in the 90s Nintendo power was hyped (now your playing with power)and I wanted to buy one so badly I never did. The first game mag I bought was electronic game mag during the era of fighters thanks to arcade craze. Boy the covers were so captivating when I saw primal rage or Mk I knew had to buy it. They were so fun to read too. Looking back some magazines that I never purchased I think had really cool cover art like any official dream cast mag. Now I'm trying to collect retro gamer magazine.