shadsy

Hi! I'll happily take and scan these for VGHF. Can DM you shipping info if you're still interested.

We can narrow it down to the quarter it was published, at least! When there's no sell-by date, we tried to base the date on, like you said, the games that were covered, but also the dates on the sweepstakes in the magazine and the copyright date in the masthead. That's where "est. late 1988 – early 1989" came from; since some of these early issues had a longer shelf life than 1-2 months, it's hard to tell exactly when this one was published apart from the turn of the year.

Huh, interesting, I didn't catch that. I did check, and our copy of V2N3 does explicitly say inside that it's June/July 1989 (not August/September like I said, that was a mistake, can't seem to edit the post). That date is not in the version you scanned, so I'm not sure what order those were printed in. But I think that supports that idea that the missing V2N1 and V2N2 were not reprints (since there's more than 2 reprints) and are just missing issue numbers. Whaaat a mess. I think the real takeaway is that Signal/GP were not thinking about people reading these 35 years in the future. And yes, that's why PC is so weird! That's why we chose to do Game Player's Guide separately, because otherwise it would go: V1N2 V1N4 V1N1 V2N2 V2N3 etc.

Hey folks-- Phil here from the Video Game History Foundation. I wanted to share our thoughts on this because we spent a long time trying to figure out what the deal with Game Player's was. (Can't seem to embed images, forgive the raw links!) Here's what we determined: the first four issues of Game Player's was a separate series referred to in their masthead as "Game Player's Guide." The focus of GPG switched back and forth every issue between Nintendo and MS-DOS. Here's all four, in order: https://i.imgur.com/tKMj3s9.jpg The dates and issue numbers line up for these. This is Volume 1, Numbers 1–4 of Game Player's Guide. That first issue was reprinted a couple times as a result of Nintendo getting mad at Signal Research, but it was never given a new issue number. Those are all V1N1 of Game Player's Guide. https://i.imgur.com/uoCEWaV.jpg At this point, Game Player's was relaunched as three separate magazines: a Nintendo version, a PC version, and a non-branded Game Player's covering all platforms. All three of these magazines started over at Volume 1. Here are the first two issues of the relaunched Nintendo magazine: Volume 1, Numbers 1 and 2: https://i.imgur.com/sJbAd5X.jpg Here's where things get fun, and where we think the smoking gun is. On the next issue, somebody had a change of heart and realized that since they already printed Volume 1, the current run should be Volume 2. So the following issue (August/September 1989) the Nintendo magazine was renumbered Volume 2, Number 3, completely skipping Volume 2, Numbers 1 and 2: https://i.imgur.com/7nHnbaW.jpg https://i.imgur.com/Ipg7Enp.jpg The reprints of V1N1 and V1N2 are just reprints, similar to what they did with the very first issue of Game Player's. V2N1 and V2N2 simply don't exist! The PC version of Game Player's also abruptly switched to V2 around this time -- without any reprints -- meaning this was a decision they made to clean up their sloppy numbering. From this point on, everything should make sense and the dates/numbers for Nintendo should line up. The other versions of Game Player's have their problems, but this is what happened with the Nintendo one. I don't envy how y'all have to categorize this, since technically speaking, those first four issues are considered a different magazine. But we spent a whole day sprawling all our issues of Game Player's out on the floor until we figured this out, and this is as close as it gets. For reference, this is how we have them cataloged: Game Player's Guide, Winter 1988 – 1989 The Game Player's Guide to Nintendo, Volume 1, Number 1, Winter 1988 The Game Player's Guide to MS-DOS Computer Games, Volume 1, Number 2, December 1988/January 1989 Game Player's Nintendo Strategy Guide, Volume 1, Number 3, est. early 1989 Game Player's MS-DOS Strategy Guide, Volume 1, Number 4, February/March 1989 Game Player's, Nintendo, early 1989 – May 1993 Game Player's Nintendo Buyer's Guide, Volume 1, Number 1, est. late 1988 – early 1989 Game Player's Nintendo Strategy Guide, Volume 1, Number 2, est. late 1988 – 1989 Game Player's Strategy Guide to Nintendo Games, Volume 2, Number 3, June/July 1989