miketheratguy

First of all, I absolutely agree with the opinion that PSM was the best with single-console reviews. But as I've been spotted saying repeatedly on this site, I think that the entirety of PSM's content was, on the whole, top notch. Since I'm also one of the people who's praised the quality of Gamepro's reviews I'll try to explain my opinion. When I talk about the reviews I'm not counting the numerical score "face" system, only the text itself. As you mentioned, Gamepro's reviews tended to get an entire page (if not two). And while it was often punctuated with (some would say riddled with) bad jokes, I felt that it usually hit multiple aspects of the game that your average consumer would be interested in knowing about: They'd take some time to describe the play control, spend a paragraph on the graphics and sound, and throw in a sentence or two about challenge. The tone was hardly adult and I'm sure that the depth still could have been greater but I really liked that space was often dedicated to describe each element of a game. Not always, but often. EGM reviews, by contrast, often read like they were written by distracted fanzine staffers who scribbled out a handful of notes while their game was paused. I grabbed an issue completely at random (#25) and sampled a few reviews to find examples of what I'm talking about. It didn't take long. One editor's entire review of Super Mario World: "Easily the best Mario adventure yet but I had hoped that Nintendo would do more with the game than just make another Mario adventure. This should show off the system's capabilities but there just aren't enough special effects when compared to other S-NES games. (Score: 9 out of 10)". In that same issue is a reviewer's thoughts on Sega's Streets of Rage: "This is the way a fighting game can be made when the programmers know the system. Easily the best fighting game ever with moves that are unique. The two player version sold me on the cart and with games like this Genesis does what Ninten..." The last and best example is a "review" of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves for the NES: "I saw the movie and the best thing in it was the king and he only occupied 30 seconds of film. This game left me with an equally unsatisfied feeling, not because there was anything wrong with what I was supposed to be doing, after awhile I just realized it wasn't much fun". I mean W T proverbial F??? Granted, I obviously chose examples that helped to make my point and I know that some of the other reviews are more coherent and informative. And again, I totally give the mag credit for its unique four-person review structure and recognize that they were severely limited by the little windows that they had to fit their text into. You said that Gamepro reviews were nothing but a page of fluff that closed with "a brief final paragraph or sentence that (sort of) indicated an opinion on the quality of the game", and I'm sure that sometimes this was totally correct. All I can say in response is that when the entirety of an EGM review is the kind of stupid, useless prattle that I quoted above, then.......well, I'll take the fluff.

Oh no, I thought that the Smaug scene was rather well done. I mean I didn't like the choices that were made regarding the performances (and the fact that Bilbo is just standing there visible the whole time, which unless my childhood memories of the book are really off I don't think was how it went down) but visually it was an extremely good scene. When I think of how much I dislike the overuse of CGI I'm thinking of characters like Azog and scenes where it really wasn't necessary such as the barrel riding sequence. Compare that whole scene with the climactic battle of Amon Hen at the end of Fellowship of the Ring. That scene was entirely practical and it shows: There's a presence, a dramatic grit and sense of peril that (in my opinion) is completely absent from the majority of the Hobbit trilogy. As a whole I still enjoyed the films, but I think that such heavy reliance on CGI is the biggest factor in why they don't hold a candle to the Rings trilogy. Which is a shame, because Gollum is a landmark example of CG done right. How they managed to nail him yet again in An Unexpected Journey yet drop the ball on almost every other computer-rendered element, I don't know. Holy shit, The Raccoons! Had I not rediscovered them in 2005 or so after a twenty year search I would have gone absolutely nuts seeing that post. "The Christmas Raccoons" was one of the first Christmas specials that I remember watching as a wee lad and it made an impression on me because poof, after that first time seeing it I never saw nor heard anything about it again. It took some extensive digging to find something to back up my vague memories of heroic raccoons and evil anteaters but sure enough, I discovered that they were a real thing. Bonus points for Kids in the Hall. Judging from SCTV I didn't count myself a fan of Canadian humor but KITH was probably the most consistently entertaining sketch comedy show I'd ever seen. If you people out there watch this and don't chuckle at least once, you probably don't have a soul.

This. That's the...let's say, more "historical" version of my post. I do think that Gail Tilden deserves a big mention though. She was extremely instrumental in editing the magazine, designing the covers, and acting as a go-between betwixt the American and Japanese arms of the company.

The only problem with The King of Kong (which, don't misunderstand, is an absolutely phenomenal film) is that it, like all documentaries, are skewed to present the perspective that the director wants you to have. While Billy Mitchell obviously does have an alpha male personality (and I guess to an extent deservedly so, since he had the drive to find extensive success not only in the video game arena but also with his line of hot sauces) the film was edited in such a way that he came across as more of a one-dimensional bad guy than he probably was. For example the film strongly implied that Billy and Steve never played against each other directly when in fact they met on more than one occasion for some friendly games of competition (even during the production of the film, if I recall correctly). That said, I have to also agree with the opinion that Billy Mitchell is a "tool". That's a pretty apt word for him. My buddy Howard simply calls him "Silly Bitchell". But my god, does that man have an amazing head of hair.

Out of the "big three" of late 80s video game magazines I would say that EGM struck me as the most blunt, even if their reviews were often kind of simplistic and awkward (I guess this was the inherent flaw of their four-man review structure which limited the space for their comments to a scant few sentences each). I found Gamepro's reviews to be the most thorough, though like you said, to each their own: I hated their relentless and never-ending stream of terrible puns. Nintendo Power was less about reviews than presenting strategies and tips and keeping readers informed with news about upcoming games. Their little "power meter" review icons were often completely unsubstantiated, you'd just see an arbitrary review score without any real critical evaluation in the accompanying text. The one time that I DO remember NP as having anything resembling proper reviews (at least in the old days, I quit getting the magazine in the mid 90s) was when they featured "George and Rob", two random goons who provided shallow (though apparently frank) opinions on recent games.

I could be wrong but my understanding is that it was actually the opposite: since Nintendo Power was completely owned and operated by Nintendo itself and because the magazine was hugely successful with a user base of a couple million U.S. kids, publishers were anxious to have their products featured (and highly rated) in its pages. The magazine was basically a monthly commercial for Nintendo products, after all.

Yeah it's kind of rare for there to be so many bad games - not just bad games, but famously bad games - highlighted on a single cover of a magazine. I can't speak for them personally- with the exception of a limited demo of the Star Wars game I haven't played any of the titles that are featured- but I know that they're all considered to be remarkably bad and / or largely disappointing. Kind of an interesting occurrence.

Way to kill my snarky joke, you seriousness-slingin' spoilsports.

Fighting Force? Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi? Batman and Robin? This issue is a monument to FAILURE! Seriously though, thanks.

Turn up that remix that I just posted on the previous page and do it!

Actraiser had one of the best soundtracks in all of gaming. It was one of the first and best examples of the power and richness of the SNES' audio capabilities. I feel that that, F-Zero and Final Fantasy II were the system's first major "sound" games. I loved Demonhead's soundtrack. So much so that about a decade ago I tracked down an amazing remix of my favorite stage that an independent musician had done. First, reacquaint yourself with the first 50 seconds of the official track: Now turn your volume to a comfortable level and listen to this. What this artist was able to do with that tune is just awesome. http://vurez.com/tracks/arrangements/Vurez_-_Ride_to_Demonhead.mp3

Ah okay, I guess it was the Turbo CD attachment then. I wasn't aware that the Turboduo was its own dedicated unit. The TG-16 was very much not my forte, I only had like five games for it. Still pissed that that thief robbed me of my ability to play Ys though.

This thing seems awesome!

"Free Dreamcast"? Holy shit, what a prescient blurb. Give it another year and Sega couldn't GIVE the things away!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAwait, that's actually really sad...

That's actually totally true. It already sucks to have something stolen, but it's even worse to know that the person who took it doesn't even appreciate its worth. The guy probably went to the nearest pawn shop, said "dis is uh CD playuh" and received fifteen bucks.

Seems very handy and informative. I tried a couple of the links and they took me right to the relevant lists. Happy to see a PSM land in the scanning section. I've always wondered what it meant when an issue was "preserved" but no further action was taken on it (such as no download links, as stated here). I guess I've just forgotten, I can always go back and look at the faq.

I miss my Turboduo. I bought it from my friend (and current podcast cohost) Howard back in 1994. In early 1997 I was on a short vacation and when I got back to my apartment I saw that someone had broken in and stolen the CD attachment, along with a bunch of other games and electronics. I had my suspicions about who was responsible and while I never got it back, a houseful of undercover cops (seriously, they were like a bunch of feds who were working from an unassuming, unmarked neighborhood house) got the majority of my other things back. I bet that the ignorant ass didn't even know that it was a component of a gaming machine, he probably just figured that it was a garden variety portable CD player.

Final Fantasy IV. Final Fantasy VI. Maniac Mansion (in 3d? First-person option? That would be a trip). The original Grand Theft Auto, in the style of GTA V. Starflight. Dragon Warrior III. Startropics. Mega Man 1-6. Take the NES-era games, stick 'em together into a single gameplay experience (we're talking 46 robot masters spread across 46 selectable stages, none of this "play one isolated Mega Man game at a time" collection crap) and touch up the graphics and music just a teeny bit. Boom, best Mega Man game ever made. How has this not happened yet?

My only problem with that is that the Hobbit films, while definitely well made, show what I consider to be a dramatic backslide in terms of directorial quality. The pacing and tone was all over the place, the editing needed a lot of work (the movies might as well have been called "THE DWARF....Plus That Hobbit Guy, I guess", and worst of all - as Viggo Mortensen himself said, regarding the extensive overuse of CGI - "the genie is out of the bottle, and it has him. And he’s happy, I think". Everyone in the world seemed to HAAAAAAAAATE Radagast but whatever, I was okay with him. Didn't have any overwhelming love for the guy but he certainly didn't bother me. Same with Jackson's treatment of the Smaug scene: Well framed, well acted, well put together - but I wasn't especially impressed with it. The best part of the movie, no doubt (MUCH greater than the Cirque Du Soleil cartoon that was the barrel riding sequence), but I simply didn't care for many of the stylistic decisions of the scene: having Bilbo visible through basically the whole thing, Bilbo's flattery coming across more as the desperate acts of a frightened man than the crafty manipulation of an increasingly brave hobbit, Smaug's movement and timbre coming across as snake-like, etc. Just personal preference but I found the scene to be good, if not as good as it should have been. LOL very well said. I actually saw Bakshi's Lord of the Rings film when I was a little kid, just like the Hobbit cartoon. In fact, the one time I ever saw it growing up was when I was at a family get-together and someone put it in the VCR after the Hobbit cartoon ended. Being that I was like six years old, and that the Bakshi cartoon is nigh-incomprehensible even to adults, and considering that I was only familiar with The Hobbit and had no knowledge of the books, I was utterly baffled by what I was witnessing. I couldn't reconcile the fact that the second cartoon seemed to somehow have to do with The Hobbit - there was a ring, and a different character named Frodo. That SOUNDS kind of like Bilbo. But who are all these other people? What's making the movie look all weird and surrealistic? Why is there a viking? By the time they threw in the third film for us kids - the 1980 Return of the King cartoon which seemed to feature the characters from the second film but then went BACK to the style of The Hobbit - I was so confused that I ran into traffic and killed myself.

I've got the perfect tune for a wee little lady. ...Just kidding. This, on the other hand? I have trouble thinking of any video game tune more perfect for a baby. Play this for her when she's snuggling up in her crib for the night and she'll grow up with the best dreams ever.

Man, I barely remember when consoles came a second controller, let alone three games.

I love that by the cover's definition games like Eternal Ring, Snowboard Supercross and Driving Emotion Type-S are games that "will make or break PS2".

Ha, I know the feeling. I rented it when I was 11 or 12 and loved it enough to save up for my own copy, one of the few games that I was able to purchase for myself as a kid. When I read that the band in "Scott Pilgrim Vs The World" (which I haven't seen) is named The Clash At Demonhead I thought "Oh my god, I can't believe that anyone else has ever heard of that game, let alone liked it enough to make a pointed reference to it in a film". It was a good one, wasn't it? The ability to choose your routes, shop for various weapons and ability suits, fight all kinds of eccentric bosses. That game had a lot going for it. Great music too.

To be fair a different manager DID offer me assistant position once but it would have meant switching to a different store, further away, and with my anxiety issues I was too nervous about trying to integrate with a different crew. So I stayed, wound up serving under the evil Asian guy, and quit. I like Game Informer too, or at least I did when I last checked one out a few years back. The last few times that I've gone to Gamestop - which I avoid as much as I can because I prefer to support independent locally owned businesses whenever possible - I have to admit that they treated me fine and sold me discs that were in perfectly good condition. Again though, it really does depend on which store (and staff) you happen to be dealing with. Lol no problem, thanks for reading my Gamestop experiences. Got off on kind of a tangent there.

Yeah the Playstation anthologies weren't the best, what with the loading and script deficiencies and other niggling errors. Final Fantasy Chronicles, in particular, was kind of a mess. A shame since it contains Final Fantasy IV, my favorite in the series, as well as the outstanding Chrono Trigger. Can't say that I've ever heard of the "Retron 5" but now I"m intrigued, and not just because it sounds like some kind of badass Transformers character.