Leathco

Just saw the huge update to the torrents and just wanted to say thanks for all the hard work to catch everything up!

If you consider a Steam Deck a console, that. If not, a Series X.

A 3DFX Voodoo 3 PCI card for my Gateway 366 AMD K6 system. Made Quake 3 run like a dream. Later on I built a 1 GHZ Athlon setup with an AGP Voodoo 5 card.

I only had the Nintendo guide as a kid and had no clue this existed. I was late to the party on Final Fantasy 3. I was a huge fan of the original on the NES, than out of no where someone from school traded me the two SNES games for some others I had (around this time the PS1 and N64 were in their early days).

I remember when this came out, I was so excited, and had hoped it would result in a reboot of PCXL, which I greatly preferred over PC Gamer. Sadly, it was not to be.

So after looking at "the new EGM" I kinda feel lied to. When I stated my specialty was in older games and the history of gaming, I was told that they really weren't looking for anyone or anything in that field. I go look at the revamped site today, and see a detailed analysis on "Sneak King" a game close to a decade old. I would have rather been told my writing needs more work or that there were other candidates in the area I specialized in they would prefer to work with than be told they aren't looking for someone in my field of expertise, than bring in someone working in my field of expertise at launch. Again, I am fine being passed by, as I am an amateur. But an honest reason would be a lot better than them doing the opposite mentioned to me. It left a bad taste in my mouth when I checked the site.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one excited for this release. The last batch of games is the weakest, but they at least made it stronger by adding two games to it and having a couple of them be previously unreleased (Tetris and Darius, plus Wily Wars in the previous batch). I've already bought a Retro-Bit 6 button controller back when Street Fighter 2 was announced, and it will also come in very handy for Eternal Champions, which for me was the biggest headline of the last batch. Still hoping for a hack after release to add games. And did you guys see what looks like to be a Japanese exclusive "Tower of Plastic" which adds a -nonfunctional- Sega CD, 32X, Sonic and Knuckles lock on with Sonic the hedgehog on top? Even if its a hunk of plastic, it looks pretty neat and I'd prolly snag it, especially once the console is hacked and we can add Sega CD and 32X games to it via USB.

It was announced that the RetroBit 6 Button Genesis controller will be compatible with the Genesis Mini. So even though it ships with a 3 button, a 6 button will be available, at 20 bucks per controller. I have a Genesis Mini on preorder and also plan on getting at least one of the 6 button pads. Honestly, I'm just glad the game selection is good and has some gems on each of the announcements, like Bloodlines, Hard Corps, and Wily Wars. Just hoping a miracle happens and we get Sonic 3 along with Sonic and Knuckles in the final games announcement, maybe even with lock-on tech available digitally for it. Seems unlikely with the Sonic 3 licensing issues but we will see.

I had this as a kid. Used it mostly for the Golden Chocobo methods, but also the monster stats came in handy.

They have obviously made mistakes, but I am holding out some hope they got a new crew in there that can make some changes for the better. If not, I'll keep doing what little I can blogging and such. I really enjoy Retro mag from the UK, and wish I could get hardcopies here in the US without the expensive shipping. I had high hopes for the US version of Retro that Mike Kennedy did but that quickly turned into a disaster. The best US gaming alternative I have found has been the HardcoreGaming101 digests. I actually have a few of those Fusion books. I have the Ocean one on Kindle, and I won a hardcopy of the Commodore 64 in Pixels book from the RGR Podcast news section a couple months back.

Best I can tell, yes, it is purely digital. However, one of the ideas I had in my pitch was to bring back print EGM as a bi-yearly or even yearly special done in the style of the Hardcore Gaming 101 Digests, but with the EGM magazine styling. The idea was to choose a game series to cover as a main feature (Super Mario Brothers franchise as an example) that would fill half the book. The other half would be news, a combination of game reviews of both old and new, a Letters to the Editor section, and finally a few reprints of classic EGM reviews and articles from the past. I didn't get this far, but I was also thinking funding could even be done via Kickstarter if necessary, with a free mini-mag being part of the Kickstarter pitch and backers would get a special edition with an alternate cover and a few extra pages of articles. No ads would be ran if this were the case. Just a pipe dream of mine.

I remember getting a VHS tape for Diddy Kong Racing with Nintendo Power, was a funny watch. If I remember right, Sega kidnaps a Nintendo dev in it.

My wife is wanting to see it in the theater. I usually wait for home releases as I have a projector in the game room we use for movies, plus I can no longer eat popcorn due to me having diverticulosis but I love popcorn and the smell drives me nuts, but this will be one we go out and see. My predictions? We see Captain America and Iron Man sacrifice themselves to save the others (possibly Thor and Hulk as well). The sacrifice doesn't need to be life ending, but the end of their time as a hero until they are desperately needed again (think Halo 3 "Wake me when you need me"). Thinking we will get a new Avenger team though. I could see Spider-Man joining up, along with Ant-Man and Doctor Strange, to form the nucleus of the new Avengers. All 3 were Avengers in the comics, so it may happen. I don't think Disney got the rights from Fox in time, but it would be awesome to also see Wolverine join up.

I got an e-mail today saying they were gonna go in another direction. Totally fine, as I am an amateur at writing anyway, and my largest accomplishments are 2 self published books and a blog for a fairly popular podcast. Should be interesting to see what changes they make! I made a pitch for a "Retro Corner" feature that would cover older games from the Atari 2600 to PS1 era, and a "Paper Days" segment that would showcase some of the highlights of EGM such as the April Fools jokes, standout reviews, and writers who portrayed Sushi-X, among other things from the magazines history. It looks like they would prefer a focus on newer games, which is likely more profitable, but also outside my writing specialty minus certain areas like the Switch and the Mini Console fad, which I am a huge fan of. It should be interesting to see how things go!

Wow, I actually remember Rip magazine from the late 90s, it competed with Hit Parader here in the US for metal and rock magazines, which died when the Rock and Metal music genre went underground. Myself, I'm still a metal fan (mostly listen to Iron Maiden, Iced Earth, Blaze, Judas Priest, Gamma Ray, Helloween, Blind Guardian, stuff like that) while the rest of the world has moved on to preferring country, rap, or pop. I do some modern rock, like Disturbed, but mostly stick with the older bands, especially if they are still active (and honestly Maiden still puts out great new material). The fact that you guys actually got copies of all these and scanned them for April 1st is great, and actually brought back some childhood memories, as I had forgotten all about Rip and Hit Parader until today.