Areala

5 hours ago, Rando1975 said:

Maybe I'm remembering it wrong, but I'm sure there was 1 magazine that did have Thrill Kill on the cover. But I don't remember which one. I know it wasn't GamePro or EGM. It was one of the lesser known magazine. I want to say Tips & Tricks? 

Good memory! Tips & Tricks from October 1998 did, indeed, use Thrill Kill on their cover. I stand corrected.

*huggles*
Areala

7 hours ago, mvangord said:

Maybe Thrill Kill as well even though that game was technically released (although not officially).

Thrill Kill may have been mentioned on covers, but to my knowledge it was never the featured game on the cover of any magazine, at least in the US.

*huggles*
Areala 

3 minutes ago, E-Day said:

MigJmz can have those. I have enough of my own problems 

"Operation: Make @MigJmz Cry" officially underway. 

1 minute ago, E-Day said:

That's up to you. GamePro would get scanned right away I think ;).

What's a few more issues added to the 100+ already?

Ah, so I should throw in the "Computer Games Strategy Plus / Computer Games Magazine / Computer Games" issues then too?

*huggles*
Areala

2 minutes ago, E-Day said:

Happily I am done editing everything listed in that last post and they will be released (hopefully) daily over the next two months. Apart from some odds and ends that I will be doing next (Atari, Intellivision, Colecovision game catalogues, a VG&CE), I first want to concentrate on restoring the August 1995 issue of GamePro from the digital files I got from @TheRedEye which will get released with a new scan of the magazine. After that I have a couple of boxes from someone on Facebook that I have been sitting on for years. Those are exclusively Nintendo Powers from 1996 onwards, about 114 issues. And I still have a box of the very early Nintendo Powers from that massive donation that I still have to get to. Plus more from @daemonZ. It never ends!!

So what you're saying is you want me to send those GamePros right away?

*huggles*
Areala

32 minutes ago, MigJmz said:

my output is slow because i'm scanning on a flatbed but I will eventually get to all the PSM mags donated by Areala.

We need to use some of the slush fund to get you a better scanner. I did, I think, two mags on a flatbed before I gave up.

*huggles*
Areala

1 hour ago, mvangord said:

Man they really hyped the hell out of that Lord of the Rings game nobody remembers

True, but at least they got in a mention of the massively-underrated (and now massively expensive) Kuon in their "16 Games No One Cares About (But Should)" piece.

*huggles*
Areala

Looks like we only have a few of the issues preserved here at the moment. I'm not sure if anyone else grabbed them off Archive and has them in their collections, but once something's taken off Archive, there's no way to recover it from that site. Maybe one of our members saved them though, so we'll see if anyone pipes up who can help.

*huggles*
Areala

Welcome to Retromags, @BlitzFitness!

There's no single, easy-to-check way to learn exactly what our scanners have on hand, but I can give a few pointers.

First, the Magazine Database section has an option for editors to set issues to "Scanning" status. Most scanners will do this for the next several issues in their queue just so people know what's coming or so two different people don't work on the same issue independently. In the case of PSM, you can see that, right now, issues 13, 16, 17, 28, 29, etc... are currently marked as "Scanning", so sooner rather than later, they should be popping up. But since I recently sent 38 PSM issues to @MigJmz, the database hasn't been updated to account for those yet, so there's more than meets the eye in many places; just because it says "Missing" doesn't mean we don't have it. Issues 14, 19, 22, 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 33, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 56, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 97, and Code Book 2000 were in the haul I sent, so there's plenty of PSM goodness still to come.

The second way is to check the forums. Some members, like @E-Day, keep a "Work in Progress" thread they update periodically to show what's coming down the pipeline. As you can see from that thread, he's got his hands full with a ton of EGM's. We received an absolutely monstrous donation of mags back in 2019, and they all wound up on E-Day's front porch. I'm not entirely sure he knows everything that showed up in that haul, but as you can see it's kept him busy for over two years already.  

The third way is to do what you did here, and make a new thread or ask in the ShoutBox. Late-era PSMs (and early-era PlayStation: The Official Magazine issues) seem to be fairly hard to come by these days, so I'd be surprised if we had more than a handful awaiting digitization. Donations are always welcome, but everybody always has a lot on their plates, so I'll let them work out how best to proceed. Thanks so much for becoming a member, and for the generous offer! I hope your stay here is as exciting as it can be! If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask. 

*huggles*
Areala  

10 hours ago, mvangord said:

I had an issue of this despite never owning a Sony system at the time, it was something I got at a dentist's office they let me keep since it was a back issue.  I don't remember the cover but there was a story on making an RPG with no cliches (you're not the chosen one and your hometown doesn't blow up) and they had an image of a healer who was covered in blood.  Pretty sure it was late 2002, Vice City might've been on the cover?

Finally, my time has come to shine!

This is issue #50 (SSX Tricky on the cover) from October, 2001. The feature is "PSM Makes the Ultimate RPG", with artwork by Adam Warren.

The bad news is, we don't have a copy of this one on the site.

The good news is, this issue was included in the lot I just posted to @MigJmz, so we have a copy in the pipeline.

*huggles*
Areala

I dumped two full boxes' worth of PSMs in poor @MigJmz's lap (bet you regret opening that PM now, huh?), so there's a crap-ton more where this came from.

*huggles*
Areala

All apologies. The link points to the wrong file. We'll get it fixed ASAP!

*huggles*
Areala

Yes! All of the Parasite Eve!

*huggles*
Areala

E-Day, when I get the funds to ship those GamePros, you may wind up with a big-ass stack of late-era Nintendo Powers too.

*huggles*
Areala

OMG, all we need is 74 and we have a full run of the first 100 issues. SCHWEET!!

*huggles*
Areala

The only official takedown request we've received (that I'm aware of) came from Game Informer, who explained they have an archival system in place for their magazine already and requested that we not host issues here. That's why GI is marked "Not Allowed" in the database.

When Nintendo went after the Internet Archive for hosting all the Nintendo Power scans a few years ago, we removed our copies as well. This was in preemptive self defense, since the Archive was hosting copies of our files with the credits page still intact, which could have pointed Nintendo at us, so NP went away while all that was being sorted out. With Nintendo Power having ceased publication almost ten years ago, this seems less likely to be an issue.

*huggles*
Areala

13 hours ago, Ethereal Dragonz said:

This is one of my most memorable issues and this is a beautiful scan.

I was obsessed with Mortal Kombat II and while waiting for it to come out on home consoles, I would stare at these preview magazines for hours.

Same here. Mortal Kombat II absolutely conquered my childhood, both in the arcades and at home. Back in those days, if a magazine put it (or anything about it) on their cover, I was sold.

*huggles*
Areala

On 5/15/2021 at 2:12 AM, Sivilius said:

Let's see if anyone can spot the April Fool's joke in this issue. And let's just say the obvious answer is the wrong answer...

I read this issue when it first came out. My brother and I were convinced the joke had to be the presence of some unnamed hidden boss character in the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo game. It seemed the most likely, considering the Sheng Long gag from a couple of years earlier. But of course, Akuma was legit and we were duped.

If memory serves, the gag turned out to be a news blurb about Radio Shack re-issuing tons of Atari 2600 software due to consumer demand for less violent video games.

(Edit: memory did not serve, as the "joke" this issue turns out to be the misspelling of "Streets of Rage 3" as "Streeets" on the cover. That's not an April Fools gag, that's a typo. That's the kind of crap we'd expect from a LamePro entry, not the mag that fooled us with the promise of Simon Belmont in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II but I guess that's what happens when Martin Alessi is no longer around to keep the tradition of quality going).

*huggles*
Areala

With how wildly successful the Trophy/Achievement systems have become in the last few console generations, it's not surprising to see a group of people banding together to do the same with old-school systems. Enter RetroAchievements.org (not affiliated with RetroMags in any way), where you can use your favorite emulator and put your money where your mouth is to earn Achievements on old school games!

I thought this was a fun idea when I ran across it, so I created an account and will be testing it out here before long. The list of supported games is simply staggering, so I guarantee there's one you can find in there that you like.

They support the DuckStation emulator for PS1 games, along with RetroArch and their own builds of other emulators. If you join up and want to add me, my username there is Areala21.

*huggles*
Areala

3 hours ago, Ferneu said:

WOW!

"the first issue of EGM is actually Buyers Guide. Which in turn is not the really the first issue because EGP came before it. And if you dig a little bit deeper you will also notice ... and ... and ... and therefore we can safely conclude that Steve Harris shot Kennedy and knows where Hoffa was burried."

Thanks for all the help. You guys are awesome!

PS: you guys just gave me a lot of cool information and I was going to suggest the creation of a new field in the database where things like this could be added. Then I went to the database entry itself and saw that there is already a "Notable Stuff" item inside the contents and, had I read that before creating this topic, I would have saved us all a lot of typing

PS2: in my defense, I thought the contents of the... contents would have only... the contents. You tricked me!

PS3: if you were asking me, I'd vote to separate the "Notable Stuff" in a new field, instead of leaving it inside the "Contents." Anyway, I'm glad all those cool tidbits exist and are associated with the magazine itself inside the DB, now that I know where to look for it...

You're more than welcome. I indexed that issue of EGM for the database, and I tend to go overboard when I write mine. If you check some of the other entries, they are more simplified. I'm just a big nerd.

*huggles*
Areala

Did anybody else want to be a member of the US National Video Game Team back in '89-'90?

*huggles*
Areala

41 minutes ago, Ferneu said:

So,  is it really issue #1? Or is it #2. Maybe the magazine changed names between #1 and #2 and that is the cause of the confusion? If so, anyone knows the name the previous issue was published as?

The answer to all questions is "yes".

Technically the first issue of EGM is "Electronic Gaming Monthly's 1989 Buyer's Guide", published in February 1989. This kicked off what is now known as EGM, and three months later in May, EGM #1 was born. The Buyer's Guide was a one-shot intended to test the waters, while EGM #1 was the first issue in what was intended to be a bimonthly, and later monthly, publication.

Neither the 1989 Buyer's Guide or the 1989 Preview Guide (which is recorded as EGM #1 here) have official titles in their respective mastheads (the page where the staff and publication information are listed). EGM's second issue was published as "Volume 1, Number 2", meaning the second issue of its first year of publication, so we know that's officially their #2.

The more I look into this, the more I wonder if we may actually have it backwards in the database. Since subsequent issues of the Buyer's Guide were published as actual numbers of EGM's monthly catalog, it may be more accurate to have the '89 Buyer's Guide set to issue #1, and the issue we have labeled as #1 relegated to a subsection, since the masthead seems to indicate that the Preview Guide was meant to be its own thing, while the Buyer's Guide was the regular feature. Of course, later in the magazine's life, the Preview Guide became incorporated into the standard issue numbering, so your guess here is as good as mine.

But the point is that, yes, there was an issue of the magazine published prior to issue #1, it's the '89 Buyer's Guide, and we set the database entries up in chronological publication order because that's what seems to make the most sense. I hope that helps.

*huggles*
Areala

On 10/6/2017 at 8:56 PM, E-Day said:

I'm convinced that their one-offs like 16-Bit Video Gaming, their Celebrity Gamer issue, CD-ROM Video Gaming, Video Game Greatest Hits July-August 1991 and so on are counted, and because they aren't proper issues, they didn't want to show them.

Anyhow, I think we need an entry in the database for issue 81-90. Phillyman's post can be the description for it. Maybe I'll get to that this weekend 

So I've been combing through my back issues, and I've finally found an official statement from GamePro on the matter!

In the letter column for issue 154 (July 2001), page 18, they printed this letter:

Quote

150 - 10 = 150

I just recently received your 150th anniversary issue [March]. I saw on page 52 and 53 that you made a creative two-page diagram showing all the magazine covers you've ever published. This was a very cool spread indeed, so I, for some reason, began counting the issues on the two pages one by one. When I got to the end, however, I was surprised to find that I'd counted only 140 issues. If this was your 150th issue, there would naturally be 150 issues on those two pages. I have counted again and again. I am fairly good with math and so I don't think that I made a mistake in counting. Where are your other 10 issues?

Nick Caputo -- Springfield, OH

The response:

Quote

Nick, you stickler for detail, you. Surely you peeped the little note on the lower-left side of page 52 that says, "Note: Not all covers shown." Those other 10 covers are special issues of GamePro that we put out in the old days--stuff like Celebrity Video Gaming, 16-Bit Video Gaming, The Adventures of GamePro and other skeletons we don't like to exhibit. Thanks for pouring salt on the re-opened wounds.

So there we have it, finally, confirmed in black and white from the editors themselves: the missing 10 numbers do correlate to the various one-offs, specials, and short-lived spin-offs published by GamePro in the past, and there the matter can finally rest because E-Day has been right all along!

Gawd, what a horrible thought...

In any case, I've updated the blurb on the GamePro Issues 81 - 90 entry in the database with this explanation, and hopefully this is the last we'll need to worry about it.

*huggles*
Areala

Ah, Hudson Hawk...a game where you hit rhinos with tennis balls while angry Dachshunds try to throw you off buildings. I wonder why it didn't do better?

*huggles*
Areala

Welcome, @Moonshadows78!

It's hard to say, since every magazine and every reviewer has their own personal biases, and the 90's were certainly no different. My first thought is EGM, simply because they had multiple members of their Review Crew play and rate each of the games they reviewed, and it's easier for a lone reviewer/editor to let their personal bias slip into a review than for four separate reviewers to do so in the same way. Of course, if you look at the letter columns of any magazine that covered multiple systems in the 90's, you'd see constant accusations of favoritism towards one company or another, but that doesn't mean there was anything biased in the mag itself; some companies were simply more forthcoming with information or preview/review builds than others, and sometimes the editors themselves could see the writing on the wall long before the public would in general. It didn't make sense to devote 20 pages to Atari Jaguar or Panasonic 3DO coverage once it was clear these systems were done for, even if games were still coming out.

There were also publications like NextGen that covered multiple systems, including the PC, and were aimed at a slightly older audience than, say, GamePro and EGM, and for that reason tended to stick to features that limited the degrees into which bias could creep.

It's also good to consider that bias, by and large, isn't necessarily negative. Magazines like PSM or Dreamcast Magazine are "biased" in that they only covered one specific system, and GameFan practically cornered their segment of the market and grew their fanbase by being biased towards import and niche titles other magazines weren't willing to devote column inches to.

This was a great question! I'm curious to see what other answers people have.

*huggles*
Areala