kitsunebi

Before writing in this box, I always do a quick flip-through of the mag and comment on whatever happens to strike my fancy, so to speak.  This time, it was Bruce Willis.  Bruce's rugged bald pate from the ad for his PS1 masterpiece, Apocalypse, really stood out from the rest of the ads, not to mention the rest of the games featured in the mag.  It's just so...Western.  Not that Apocalypse is the ONLY Western game to appear in this issue, but the other one is Crash Racing, and that's just cute enough to almost pass as a Japanese game.  But Bruce can't be bothered with cuteness, he's too busy blowing $@^& up.  Yippee kay yay, mother trucker.

*COMPLETE* kitsunebi Edition!
The other scan of this issue available here is very good (albeit partially incomplete), so this is not a slight against that scan - I simply scan everything in my collection for my own sake.  It does offer some improvements, however, so if you want to decide if this new version is worth your trouble downloading, I'll try to highlight the differences below.
Higher resolution (3200px high) than the older scan (2200px high) Whiter pages Debound with heat gun to get a complete scan, so every page has slightly more information on the gutter side Images that cross both pages have been better joined A complete scan has been made of an advertisement which was partially blacked-out in the old scan An 8 page fold out advertisement is included (missing from other scan) subscription card inserts are included (who cares, right? Not me. But they're here if you want them) Here are some comparison screenshots to help illustrate the above points (new scan is shown on top):


I don't know what's going on with the older scan of the below ad - looks like part of it is covered with something?  Weird... But now fixed!

Highlighting some of the gutter joins:


Notice the album title: "To Bring You My Love" vs. "To Bring Yor Love" LOL.   (Little fish, big fish, swimmin' in the water.  Come back here, man, gimme my daughter.)

And of course there's the 8-page fold-out ad which was missing entirely from the older scan (smushed into one pic here for your viewing convenience🙂)

It's been a while since we've had one of these double-number issues of Famitsu, so for anyone out there who's confused, here's a brief explanation.  This is a single issue that is counted as two.  The preceding issue is numbered 1358 (December 25, 2014), and the following issue is numbered 1361 (January 15, 2015), making this issue #1359/1360.  This sort of thing happens 3 or 4 times per year.  It doesn't mean that the double issues are double length.  Sometimes they're longer than average, sometimes not (this issue is 280 pages, which isn't unusually long for Famitsu.) 
What it DOES mean is that the staff took a vacation.  As you can imagine, turning out over 1000 pages of magazine per month is nothing to sneeze at (especially when you consider that Western mags were typically producing less than 100 pages of content per month), so a few times per year, the staff would be...ALLOWED TO SLEEP!!!  This particular mag came out around New Years, which is the biggest holiday in Japan.  Everything shuts down for 5 days or so while everyone stays home to celebrate with their families (its closest Western equivalent would be Christmas.)  So every year around this time, Famitsu releases a "double issue" so that its staff can enjoy the holiday like the rest of the country.
But since this is Famitsu WEEKLY, I guess they don't want to break the illusion by having less than 52 issues per year, so whenever they skip a week, they just add an extra issue number to make up for it.  So since this issue was on newsstands for two weeks, it gets two issue numbers.  Kind of dumb, and definitely a pain in the ass when I was first putting together the database, but that's the way it is.  Now you know, and yadayadayadaYOJOE.

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!!!!!"

Hope you all are enjoying playing with whatever toys Santa brought you this year.
This mag was released in early 1998, and was an exciting time to be a Star Wars fan, what with the prequels looming as a still-nebulous but guaranteed new hope on the horizon.  I was actually buying quite a few of the toys at the time, mostly out of nostalgia for the original Kenner toys I had as a kid, despite the absolutely fugly sculpts on many of the new releases...

Of course, unbeknownst to me, tragedy was just around the corner, as when the prequels actually began appearing a year later, they mercilessly slaughtered all appreciation and goodwill I had toward the franchise to the point that I can't watch anything "Star Wars" to this day.  But for the time, at least, all was right with the world, and Boba Fett was still one of the coolest dudes you could slap on a cover.

ADULTS ONLY
I uploaded the CD-ROM that came with this issue HERE.
One day I'll have to find something to scan I can upload with a big "KIDS ONLY" warning.  Maybe if I find a mag that's cover to cover Minecraft, Fortnite, and Splatoon.  Or maybe if I ever re-scan any Nintendo Powers.  At any rate, this is not that mag.  (If an issue of Tech Gian DOES ever appear with the words "kids only" attached, for god's sake don't download it - you're likely to be arrested and have your hard drives confiscated by the FBI.)

I thought long and hard trying to decide what I should say here, but I've opted instead to convey it via interpretive dance.  248 pgs

You know, I think I saw this Lara Croft in a movie once.  I still wake up screaming sometimes.
 
    Life choices  

Is there a more data-packed mag than Dengeki PlayStation?  Not that I've ever seen.  I'm not talking about typical magazine preview fluff, or data on how many polygons the game's engine can crunch, but rather just cold hard in-game data.  Just count the numbers of charts and graphs tracking the tiniest details that appear in DP's pages.  I wonder how much of this stuff got reused in strategy guides...

Sometimes I struggle to have anything interesting to say here, and I think, maybe I should just type:
Dengeki PlayStation Vol.115 (August 13/27, 1999)
and leave it at that, just like anyone else would do.  But then I think, nah, I've gotta say SOMETHING, no matter how small or insignificant an observation it might be.  So today, I bring you a line dashed off in one of the Syphon Filter reviews which says something like "The exhilarating feeling of becoming a strong hero like 007...and defeating bad guys is truly American!"
How ya like them apples, UK? 😜

ADULTS ONLY
It's interesting how Tech Gian front-loads all of the advertisements. All of the ads are grouped together near the start of the mag, and once the magazine proper starts, there isn't another ad until the inside back cover.  This is a stark contrast from the ad-heavy American mags I read in the late 90s where every other page was an ad.  Which do you prefer? 🤔
The CD-ROM included with this issue can be downloaded from my Internet Archive account HERE.

These days it's pretty much nothing but visual novels, but back in the day, both the consoles and computers were flooded with dating sims.  The "sim" part of these games usually involved micromanaging daily routines in an attempt to woo the girl (or boy) of your choice right out of their pants.  Nowadays, no one has the patience for that, I guess, but looking at old gaming mags like this gives you access to some hilariously dull "strategy guide" features like this one which breaks down the times throughout each day of the game that you can reach each girl either at home or on her cell.  Any veteran of this type of game knows that this kind of extreme attention to detail is no joke, however.  Miss one opportunity to make contact or fail to say just the right thing when you do, and you can pretty much forget about ever seeing those pants come off.

This issue hit around the time of the PS4 launch, making the weekly sales chart look a little lopsided:

That's the PS4 standing alone on top with 322,083 units sold, with the next best selling system being the 3DS with 30,284 units sold.  Congrats to the Xbox360, which managed to outsell the last-gen Wii with a whopping 239 units sold.  It's not often you see a Microsoft system anywhere but dead last in Japan, so thank goodness 148 people bought a 7 1/2-year-old Wii that week, giving the poor 360 a chance to have an edge over something.
As an aside, I just flipped through an issue of the UK's GamesTM mag lately, and it had the results of a reader poll where the 360 was voted the best console OF ALL TIME.
Cultural differences make the world interesting.

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 came from Retromags, where anyone can download it for free. Magazine preservation is for everyone. Thank you!

This issue includes a Dark Souls II supplement book, which I've appended to the end of the archive.
Ah, supplements...I've been guilty of it myself once or twice in the past, but releasing supplements separately from the magazines they belong to is a practice I'll no longer be a part of, unless of course, I have a supplement but for some reason DON'T have the mag it came from (as was the case with many of the supplements I scanned, which were thrown in as part of a donation years ago.)  I like to adhere to the primary definition of the word.
supplement /sŭp′lə-mənt/ noun Something added to complete a thing, make up for a deficiency, or extend or strengthen the whole. So please enjoy this magazine, complete with supplement. 🙂
260pgs

*kitsunebi edition*
This is the place where I usually wow you with comparison shots with the older scan available here, showing off some of the two page spreads.  I can't do that this time, because...THERE AREN'T ANY!  Nope, just single pages the whole way through. 
So this is what this download will get you:
Higher resolution - this scan is 3200px high, while the other is 2200. Whiter pages This mag was debound with a heat gun in order to get an edge to edge scan, while the other was debound with a guillotine cutter, cropping part of every page.  However, as I mentioned before, there are no two-page spreads, so the cropping on the other scan is barely noticeable since it was mostly just white space on the gutter side that was cropped away.  So the improvements to this scan in this regard are of minimal importance. To anyone who previously downloaded my scan from OGM or the Internet Archive, this version has been remastered/improved and those sites will be updated with this version once I'm able to do so. Unlike some of the other scans I've done my own updated version of, there isn't anything flawed about the older scan available here.  Which you prefer may be a matter of taste, but this new scan is still noticeably different enough that I feel it's justified offering it here for anyone interested.
This scan is on the LEFT, the older scan is on the right.


Oh, and WOW.  While I was comparing my scan to the other just now, I noticed that one of the pages is completely different.  Page 122 of my scan is again on the left, while page 122 of the older scan is on the right.  Perhaps there were regional variants?  Or maybe my copy of the mag was sold at Toys R Us stores?  Who knows, but the fact that there's an unexplainable and confusing variant of a Game Player's magazine shouldn't be too surprising to anyone familiar with their first several years of publications.  At any rate, now you know you need to download BOTH scans of this mag if you want your copy to be 100% complete BWA-HA-HA-HA-HA!!!
page 122:

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.

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...

There's a Ranma 1/2 remake anime that just began airing about a month ago.  It's a trip seeing kids in my schools doodling the same characters that were my gateway into manga over 30 years ago.

Scanned by the Great J of Oz and debound, donated & edited by the fair to middling me.
Lots of DS9 love this issue with interviews with Sisko, Kira, & Odo.  Well, the actors.  But I don't trust y'all to know their names.

Scanned by the great J of Oz.  Debound, donated & edited by the not so great but OK I guess me.  Downloaded and enjoyed by people who are awesome.  More than happy to be ignored by any "SF fans" who would rather be watching the SW prequels. 😜
 

This issue's cover is by Tony Taka, a famous artist and character designer known just as well for his work in mainstream games like Sega's Shining series as he is for numerous adult manga and eroge.  In stark contrast to America, Japan is more like Europe in this way - having some of their most famous and successful comics artists known for producing adult material. 
This cover features Kirika Towa Alma, one of Taka's characters from Shining Resonance for the PS3.  According to the Shining Wiki, "she is an elf who learns the song of magic which allows her to freely change the power of nature. However, she is a better healer than a damage dealer. She may seem withdrawn at first, but she is generally known to be a kind person."

 
But more importantly,

Tony Taka, ladies and gentlemen.👏

*kitsunebi edition*
Here's the part where I let you know what's different about this file from the previous one available here in case you don't want to download them both to compare:
The images in this scan are 3200px high.  (The other scan is 2200) This scan was debound with a heat gun so that the entirety of the pages could be scanned from edge to edge.  (The other scan was debound with a guillotine cutter, cutting off part of the gutter side of the paper from each page) This scan was edited with the two-page viewing option in mind, so facing pages with connected images or backgrounds have been more carefully joined. Pages are whiter, colors less saturated.  Which version you prefer may be a matter of taste. I didn't scan the subscription card inserts (maybe I didn't even have them, I can't remember.)  So if you want to try your luck at printing out and sending in the postcard to subscribe to Game Player's Sports for Kids, you can get them from the other scan offered here.  Incidentally, the subscription cards in the other scan were placed EXACTLY where they appeared in the original mag, which actually interrupts one of the only two-page-spread ads in the mag, making it impossible to see both pages of the ad side by side, so if you DO want those cards, I suggest moving them to the end of the archive. For anyone who may have downloaded this mag from my Internet Archive account, I've "remastered" the pages somewhat from that release, so I'd recommend replacing it with this one (the file at IA will be updated with this one whenever they allow uploads again) There honestly aren't very many two-page spreads in this issue, so on most pages you won't even notice that the older scan has had each page slightly cropped, but for those who care, this scan should offer a more satisfactory viewing experience in two-page mode.
Examples of color/center join differences:
This scan is shown first (on the top).  Older scan is shown second (below).
 

It's been a couple of days since the Dodgers won the World Series and Japan couldn't be happier.  We even got to watch the end of game 5 during lunch at school.  You know, kind of like how we got to watch space shuttle launches in American schools.  It's that important, what with Shohei Ohtani being a national hero, and all.  A lot of people may think he's so beloved because he's such a great baseball player.  Others may think he's respected because he's so successful - the highest paid baseball player, EVER.
They're wrong, of course.  The reason Ohtani is a hero is because he's somehow managed to overcome the crippling clumsiness that normally afflicts all Japanese males from puberty onward.  The entire nation beams with pride as they watch him walk in a straight line without even once tripping and falling onto a female in a compromising position

or stumbling face first into the crotch of the nearest female wearing a short skirt

or accidentally taking a tumble and saving himself from falling by reaching out and grabbing two handfulls of boobs and clinging on for all he's worth BUT HE TOTALLY DIDN'T MEAN TO THO.

Yeah, he knows what I'm talking about.
                   

This here's a magazine 'bout PlayStation games.  I reckon some of 'em you heard of, and some of 'em you ain't.  Either way you got near two hunnerd'n fifty pages full of purty pictures and lots of them squiggles they call writin' in Japan.  Get it while the gettin's good, y'all.