triverse

I completely understand Waremongers point of view, it is valid 100% through and through. I just have a problem debinding for some reason (I have those debound issues you sent me in various states of safety, covers are in frames in my home office and I have the Zelda guide in one of those 3 ring binders with the pages in sleeves for my fiance to reference when playing the game-thank you). I am getting to the point where I may have to debind, like my issue of NGamer #1, they printed so close the spine inside that it is impossible to get a clean scan out of it (the print is within 1/2 inch of the spine in some sections, I am not sure if I just have a messed up copy or not). I have a duplicate Gamefan here, one is perfect, as usual in print while the other everything looks like it was printed twice and you shifted slightly so it appears to "ghost." After having the floor fall through in my storage area (where the mags were kept, they are all over the house now, distributing the weight) I have decided I will have to do something else.

That is awesome, the pages look A LOT better now. There is oh, I don't know, CONTENT! I have been to the new magweasel site and it is quite different than the old one, much more than just a new color scheme there folks. It is a definite site to be watched.

Retromags.com is proud to welcome an icon to the project. You may know him as the Game Doctor (most promintent in Video Games and Computer Entertainment for me, but the Doctor has been printed in many other magazines too, including a short run in Electronic Gaming Monthly and the 80's and 90's run of Electronic Games, a remake of sorts of the 80's Electronic Games, the magazine credited as starting this fine section of the gaming industry we enjoy here at Retromags. You may know him as Bill Kunkel from his various articles in many different magazines and also on the web having written quite a bit of material on games and the industry. Any way you know him, he has surely earned your respect and is now a member here with Retromags. Now for the visit to the Game Doctor's office: KKW (I call them the Gaming Tri-Fecta) Retromags: When did you get into writing about games? BILL: When both the Atari VCS and Odyssey2 hit in the late 70s, Arnie and Joyce bought an Atari so my first wife and I grabbed an Odyssey2. We had previously owned an original Odyssey as well as a series of those hard-wired Pong-style and multi-game (shooting, driving, etc.) systems but these new systems, which Arnie dubbed "programmable" suddenly presented us with a hardware-software scenario. That meant there would be more software and just like videotapes, 8-Tracks and records, there would be a need for people to review them. Fortunately, Arnie had worked for several years at an upscale trade magazine with Bruce Apar, who had since moved on to edit VIDEO magazine for Reese Publications. So we pitched Bruce on the idea of a videogame review column and he went for it. I actually wrote quite a few pieces for VIDEO, including one on a new cable station that was going to specialize in sports programing. They were called the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, better known today as ESPN. But the plum assignment was "Arcade Alley", the first regular magazine column to review video and computer games. It was that column's success that helped sell Reese on publishing ELECTRONIC GAMES and becoming rich. Retromags: At what point did you meet Arnie Katz and Joyce Worley? BILL: Well, we were all New Yorkers, except for Joyce who had moved to Brooklyn Heights from Missouri to live with Arnie. My then-fiance and I started attending parties that Arnie and Joyce gave on Friday nights around 1971 through our mutual interest in publishing science fiction fanzines. Awesome parties. Arnie and Joyce had just married and moved into their own place and the people they knew were just amazing; writers, editors and artists from DC Comics like Denny O'Neil and Steve Skeates, science fiction writers like Terry Carr and a whole generation of budding artists and writers and it was through my meeting Denny at one of those parties that I sold him my first attempt at a comic book script for House of Mystery, which he was just assigned to edit. I wrote comics for DC, Marvel and Harvey in the following years. Through the 70s, my first wife Charlene and I worked with Arnie and Joyce had one ambition -- to find a way to make money writing about something or things that really interested us. We wrote, edited and published a pro wrestling magazine and did a wrestling radio show, but videogames did the trick. Retromags: If you could go back and do on thing differently what would it be? BILL: I would have asked for a piece of the action on the original EG but we wouldn't have gotten it and it might have queered the entire deal anyway. Honestly, I'm not one to rehash history and wish I'd done things differently. There are certainly a few ladies I wish I'd done but professionally, I seriously can not think of anything. Believe me, we had lots of opportunities to invest in things like AOL (back when it was called Quantum Link and only ran on the C64 we knew Steve Case was going to make a fortune with this thing) but you can't do that when you're a journalist and expect to keep any credibility, so you pass and you live with it. Unreleased issue of Electronic Games from the 90's (affectionately known as Issue 0) Retromags: How did you get involved with J2games.com? BILL: It was right after LFP gave up on its last gasp attempt to save Tips & Tricks by hiring me to be EIC for about a year. I am very proud of what we were able to do in the issues we produced but I don;t really think anybody could have saved it. When Larry found out that EGM was folding, he tapped out. Of course, when they originally brought me in as a consultant I recommended they sell the property but Larry kept reading about all the bread the game business was making and he'd been running this magazine -- which was a direct descendent of VIDEOGAMES & COMPUTER ENTERTAINMENT -- for 13 years. So he hired me and flew me out to LA for every third week but we couldn't jumpstart the sales. Once I signed off on that contract, I went back to my other projects (LFP never hired me as an employee, so I was EIC of T&T as an independent contractor) and Jay contacted me and not only asked me if I'd be willing to write for J2 but he actually offered me a very generous minority partnership percentage. So while I have actually been working on several non-game-related projects, J2 gives me a chance to write about whatever I want and add my two cents on any subject that comes up. It's been great fun and it's helped me remember so much that I'd forgotten. Retromags: Have you been involved with any writing over the years since most of us last saw you write for VG&CE and Electronic Games from the 90's? BILL: I wrote for various online sites but around 1996, my partnership with Arnie and Joyce ended (on the best of possible terms -- Arnie, for example, was Best Man at my second wedding several months later). I formed a new company with Ed Dille and our long-time agent Barry Friedman called Fog Studios and we produced dozens of strategy guides and signed a deal to provide extensive content to the popular download site HappyPuppy.com. That led to a three-year lawsuit we eventually won. In the meantime I worked briefly for Metropolis Media, which then owned Diehard Gamefan and created Gamefan Sports Network magazine with Rustin Lee. It lasted two issues before Metropolis went belly-up. Fog then attempted to launch a magazine called PC ACE, which focused on simulators, strategy games and science fiction. That lasted three issues before the financial backers folded up. After that I wrote exclusively on the Internet. I worked at InsideGames.com, edited numerous categories on a site called CollectingChannel.com and spent a year working with Platinum Studios to help make movie-to-game projects happen. Around 2004 Chris "Cav" Cavanaugh suggested that the memoir pieces I was writing for the Digital Press site should be expanded and turned into a book. He even suggested RolentaPress.com and Lenny Herman said yes, so I wrote my meoirs, "Confessions of The Game Doctor." This book was a real shot in the arm for my career and led to several gigs, including the T&T deal. And for over a decade now I've been a member of Running With Scissors, Vince Desi's group of creative madmen who brought us the POSTAL franchise. Retromags: What is your favorite game of all time? BILL: You know, my stock answer to that was always Tetris, but since the Wii came out I've had more fun with the Sports package than I have with any game since Air-Sea Battle on the VCS. Retromags: Not meaning to name drop here, but have you kept in touch with many colleagues over the years? BILL: Of course, not all of them are still around. But yes, things like Facebook are great for discovering old friends and having them locate you. I've never missed a CGE and I've attended every VGXPO since Ed Fleming started it. Retromags: What is the most treasured gaming item you have? BILL: Probably that mounted gold VCS joystick that CGE gave to Arnie, Joyce and I at CGE '99 as our Lifetime Achievement Awards. The following year they gave us much nicer lucite plaques, but that gold joystick means a lot more to me Retromags: Also, when did the Gamedoctor idea/persona come about? BILL: We created the Game Doctor for the first issue of EG in '81 because Arnie, Joyce and my names were already on almost everything and we wanted to make it look like a bigger staff. Over the years, the Doc began to take on his own personality, to an extent. When I "came out" as the Doc's secret identity in the final issue of the 90s EG, I was amazed at how many people were surprised. People in the industry soon started calling me "Doc" and "Game Doctor." Then in 2005 I was at the Hollywood Bowl with Vince Desi for Tommy Tallarico's VGL show and I was seated at one of about a dozen long tables filled with gaming notables signing autographs. My placard read "Bill Kunkel, aka The Game Doctor" and I soon realized that while only a few people knew who Bill was, an incredible number of them knew the Game Doctor name. I realized I had inadvertently created a brand. Of course I have protected it vigilantly over the years as other writers have attempted to usurp it, but a quick letter has always been enough to settle the issue of who, exactly, the Game Doctor is. Retromags: How about some some comments on the pictures you sent me and just some information you would like to share with the members of Retromags, maybe something along the lines of how you first learned about the project and what you think about it. BILL: I sent you several pictures, from Young Bill to Old Bill, along with some covers of very rare magazines -- including one '90s EG cover that never actually appeared on an issue -- it was used as the Sales Kit to sell ads for the first issue. I first learned about RetroMag from Carl [triverse], but I had passed by it while doing Google searches in the past. Then folks started contacting me about putting up digital versions of the old game magazines, which I think is a fabulous thing. It's not like the companies that published them are still making money off them and the fact that you guys make these magazines attainable is indeed a Wonderful Thing. Bill "The Game Doctor" Kunkel For anyone interested in what the Game Doctor has been up to or is interested in reading more about his life and views on the gaming industry should definitely check out his book "Confessions of the Game Doctor" available now on Rolentapress.com. On Rolentapress.com you can listen to Bill Kunkel give the CGE keynote speech Classic Gaming Expo 2005. Audio is courtesy of Earl Green and www.thelogbook.com (credit Rolentapress.com). I would like to formally thank Mr. Kunkel for his contributions to some of the magazines that we are trying to preserve here on Retromags.com and also for the intangible uncalculable contributions he made to the industry as a whole through his writing of and his working on and in the games industry. Bill has quite a bit of wonderful and amazing history posted on the J2games.com forums, you definitely should take a look at it.

What would be cool is if you could do a comparison with the Jaguar version vs the Nuon (who remembers that thing? I think it got Iron Soldier 3 or something though) and the PSOne version. Here is the wiki for it, covering what systems got what games. Iron Soldier II huh? Never heard of that release. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Soldier

I was hoping for a spiritual successor to Video Games and Computer Entertainment but I will settle for the us equivalent of Retro Gamer. If the quality stays at this level or better in the future then ClassicVGM deserves to be around for many many more years. I am interested in seeing issue #2 already!

To post it here? I say, if it is free and you think it would be interesting, post it. I will edit the opening post with a list when we start getting a page or two of games listed so that people can keep track of what is free. Just provide a link to the game (please if possible also a link to where it is announced as free, if it is like Battleforge there-commercial turned free). Please no WAREZ or illegal stuff here.

For the price of admission it is at least worth a download. It seems to be pretty decent from the shots and videos I have seen.

While most people are not interested in "editing" a mag that is crooked, I for one don't mind, I mean, I would rather have the whole page scanned and spend time rotating rather than lose a lot of it due to clipping.

The scans look great. Are you editing them by cutting the edges off of the scans? If so, when you scan, can you leave that grey or black area that the scanner puts there in there? That allows whoever is editing a little room for clipping after rotating the pages back to straight without removing much of the mag itself. They look good though.

No problem. We are all learning, just some are a little more ahead of the others in the class. As far as sending the pages, just scan them at 300 DPI, zip them up and upload them to either rapidshare or megaupload and post the link here.

That list is way out of date, it was made prior to the date change (formerly it was 5 years back was the cutoff, rolling forward one year on January 1st-1994, 1995 etc). The cutoff date is now 1999 and holding there.

That is a good question. Off the top of my head, I would say it is too new, even if by just a few months or more (depending on when it was printedin 2000). You could go ahead and scan it since it is falling apart before it deteriorates too much and has to be thrown away. Thank you for your help (I take it you did donate money?), every bit helps in the long run.

Welcome to the project. We are always glad to see new members willing to help out and participate in any way they can. As far as the membership upgrade, I will have to leave that for Phillyman to answer as I don't know for sure (my brain is frazzled at the moment). As far as the guide, when was it printed? I am not familiar with Pokemon and when they released what. As long as it is printed before 2000 then it is ok and can be uploaded here. Checking the game guide download section shows we have no Pokemon strategy guides up yet so no worries about it being a duplicate. Go ahead and scan a few pages so we can get an idea of how you are scanning. You may want to use a piece of black construction paper behind the page being scanned and a heavy magazine to hold down even weight so that everything looks as good as possible. Don't worry too much about keeping it straight, although it is appreciated, it is understood that it is not always going to come out perfect. Just make sure to get the whole page scanned.

Kotaku has a demo for Miami Law on DS up on the Nintendo Channel. Here is the debut trailer:

Kotaku has coverage on the announcement (starting to sound like Kojima now ain't I? Announcing and announcement for an announcement) that LucasArts is releasing Star Wars Battlefront Elite Squadron on PSP and DS.

I know, a day late, I was waiting to see if anyone else wanted to take advantage of that offer Phillyman is offering to members. 5 games were released across Wiiware, DSiware and Virtual Console, one is iffy though so you be the judge, 4 or 5 games? DSi got Photo Clock (200 points), a well, clock for your DSi and American Popstar: Road to Celebrity (800 points) a casual game about maing it as a pop celebrity. Wiiware got two releases also, this time definitely games, Bubble Bobble Plus! (600 points) you know what Bubble Bobble is, and Adventure Island The Beginning (800 points) a decent little adventure series that is making a comeback from the 8 and 16-Bit days (it was on NES for three adventures, SNES for one release and also on the TG-16 for a single outing). Virtual Console picked up Clay Fighter (800 points) based on the Sega Genesis version. Check them all out on your Wii or DSi as needed. Kotaku has the article this list was derived from.

Kotaku just announced that you can get Battlforge for free, the whole game plus expansions and two full decks to get you started. Taken from the Battleforge FAQ: Got any other free games of interest?

Doesn't sound good does it? Sounds like they may be "jumping" ship while keeping a foresaud of supporting their company while secretly unloading what they can while they can. No matter what is going on, it doesn't sound too good especially with the releases of two games later this year that are going to be expensive because of peripherals, Tony Hawk: Ride and DJ Hero. Kotaku dropped the bomb on this one.

2000AD (Judge Dredd is a part of this) content coming this Thursday, May 28th.

I will check around and see what I can dig up on the storyline, or it's placement in the series. edit: Taken from the GoWIII Wiki: edit again: here is a teaser video:

As far as search key words, just use both versions, but on your site, you might want to explain why you use the one you do. Which that could be a bad thing, since Google uses one, and it index's pages, it may be better to use "video game" to get more exposure with them.

I am glad that you liked the review of Classic Video Gamer Magazine and also glad you decided to join up here as you are surely to become a welcome (already are) member and hopefully integral to the project as you have quite a larg collection there. The review came out great because ClassicVGM was so great in the first place. It is easy to write a review about something good. Maybe we can continue this in another forum thread or something but I have a few games that I would like to see reviewed. I will hurry and get the Gamefan list compiled so we have a better idea where we stand on it.

http://www.vg247.com/2009/05/25/loads-of-l...ii-screenshots/ Here is are a couple of them to get you interested in this:

I have caught myself using both but looking at them side by side, I prefer videogame.

That is where I have seen your name before, in Classic Video Gamer Magazine. Great review, I hope to see you do more with them in the future. Have you seen the review here for ClassicVGM? I am going to try and find my list of mags again and see what we have between us on the Gamefan issues.