GAME MAGAZINES

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inspired by this post recently: https://rpgmaker.net/games/8/media/5872/?post=874153#post874153

Yo tell me your game mag memories, it's a media that still sorta exists but not in the same relevancy that it was in the 90s. Even though the internet was in circulation in the 90s, magazines were still pretty much the best way to find out about games and what they looked like. It was just enough to see a screenshot of a game and to imagine what it could be was it's own entertainment separate from actually playing it.

I didn't have a subscription or anything (though I think I got a weird deal where I got 3 issues of GMR, which I think might count?). But I do have fond memories of random circumstances where I happen across a magazine that ends up being a window to another world.


This specific issue I think I begged my mom to get this for me at the grocery store we don't normally go to, it's that or I got good grades idk. I mainly got it for the Pokemon Gold and Silver preview. But the magazine also included coverage on Neo Geo games a console I had no idea existed, and it showed a lot of japanese only game screenshots that kind of made video games an even more mysterious and vast thing. Nowadays you can look up any game library, get a whole summary of a console and find a torrent somewhere housing all of the roms for it pretty easily.

Also I didn't really play much of Link's Awakening at the time but a lot of knowledge of that game I got from this magazine's walk-through. We live in this weird age where more people probably watch games than actually play them, but it's interesting how imagination becomes it's own content in itself.



This is not a magazine, and barely a guide. People shit on this thing because it basically told you to go online to get pretty helpful tips using provided keywords on Squaresoft's website. This was during the .com boom where WEBSITES had to be integrated into everything, even if they weren't that practical. Gamefaqs was in circulation at this point, but guides like this were a way to get firsthand info on 100%ing the game and making sure you got everything.

But the thing is, I didn't own FF9, nor did I own a PS1 at the time even. FF9 was the only ps1 FF that wasn't on PC, so I thought the PC version would come out eventually right?* I ended up just reading through the magazine, looking through the screenshots and just imagining the story and the world. It literally displayed every background and how they connected along with pretty illustrations. It was an odd experience when I finally got to play FF9 that a lot things played out differently than I thought. It's like watching a version of a movie where the camera angles are all different even if the story plays out as expected. People shat on this book for the playOnline bullshit, but for me it served a completely different unintended use.

But yeah those are my childhood poverty** gaming memories in a nutshell. Feel free to share yours.

*(by 2016)
**as in 5 dollars a month for doing chores
Mirak
Stand back. Artist at work. I paint with enthusiasm if not with talent.
9300
Club Nintendo was my favorite. It was one of the very few mexican videogame magazines, and it was very valued and precious back then. If you brought a club nintendo issue to school you were the cool kid of the day.



It stopped publication many years ago, but while it lasted it was a very beautiful monthly magazine full of very personal articles written by known mexican videogame nerds that sadly have long since moved on with their family lives.

The very first issues I had had complete guides to levels of various games like Mario 2 and 3, the first Zelda and stuff, and the map "screenshots", including every single tile and sprite, were all hand drawn with airbrush since this was a time where it was either that or crappy blurry camera photos of the screens, and this being one of those unique "for the love of the art" magazine, they always went the extra mile.

It used to cost $8 Old Pesos.
It cracks me up that in that cover Mario paints an official Mario thats better looking than himself.
A Dutch gaming magazine, that somehow still exists to this day, I used to read back in the late 90's and early 00's. Best part of it were the funny captions they did with game screenshots, meme'ing before it was cool.
I think the funny captions was a staple of gaming magazines back in the days. Because I remember Super Power a nintendo magazine I read in the mid-nineties also just going to town with the captions.

I basically still have my Nintendo-Magasinet from 1989-1993-ish and then Super Power from then on until it became Super PLAY and then eventually I stopped subscribing and it stopped existing (I assume).

I should take some random pictures.

Until then I did a blog post elsewhere and uploaded some images from an old issue (1991) of Nintendo-Magasinet to my locker that I will now share:


An image of the upcoming Game Boy F1 racing and it's four-player(!) capabilities.

Mega Man at some trade show in 1991

(this one's about the new 16-bit Nintendo machine that will be called "SFX" in the US. Or at least that's what the people writing in the magazine think. At the time. (this is in reference to the SNES)

Top games of February-March 1991

And then a bunch of Super Mario Bros. 3 spreads:



I used to read a monthly gaming magazine called Games Master for years. It had a competition section where readers would design their own video game, and back in February 2004 I won!

They wrote a little article about my game, and made comments on my ideas and *cough*artwork*cough* and it was just the most flattering thing that ever happened to my 12 year old self I still have the magazine along with all the work I did in my parents loft with all the things I created for it.

For winning I got their review copy of Castlevania: Lamont of Innocence. Of course, the real prize was running around the school playground the next day screaming "I'm in magazine! I'm in a magazine".

Next time I'm at my parents house I'll take some photos of the article. My game idea was absolutely bonkers. It's hilarious.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
I started with abc, which was (it still exists but I wouldn't buy it to my children) a magazine about all cool things for boys like space, racing and dinosaurs. It wasn't very focused on games in 2000, but during my several years long subscription games gained more space. What was initially one page usually covering 2 games and 1 other software, became 2 pages around 2003 and 4 pages even later on, replacing instructions on how to build various electric devices like buzzers, counters and such. Very influential on me was the first article on mmorpgs back in 2003 (most of their archive is online!) and their review of Dungeon Seige. That game's probably my favourite action rpg.
This was the the first issue of the magazine featuring a video game on its cover (during my subscription period).



Later on, in age of 17 I became more interested in video games and started buying dedicated mags eventually. Score was great for the amount of good older games they enclosed on 2 double sided dvds to every issue. The writing was very teenage, mildly sexist and full of masturbation jokes. I got all issues from late 2009 to late 2013, when the second gaming magazine in my language reformed itself in something more interesting and started publishing critical texts and more serious reviews than Score. The cover is from one of the later issues I got.


I have several older issues of Level. It used to be a magazine like Score with less dumb jokes and newer games on DVD. In 2013, they dropped the DVD and started being more industry and insight oriented. They even had regular articles from video game academics. It suddenly became so much better than score that I started buying it for a while. Coincidentally, It got me more interested in gammak and that led me here in 2014. I got about 15 issues of Level total. The newest one is almost 4 years old.

YO!!

...AAAaaa!! なつかしい!!!
(AAaaa!! This brings me back!!!)

Darken you always make like, the best threads ♥!! Holy Shit.

(Reply to Darken's cool stuff!)
But yeah, Frank Cifaldi, video game preservationist, owner of lostlevels.org, recently worked on megaman legacy collection - but also former software pirate and rom dumper of the elusive and incredibly rare Bio-Force APE. said the exact same thing - He said in some cases, magazines were usually more valuable than the games themselves now because they provide invaluable historical context to the past and how these games were marketed.

It's interesting you mentioned PlayOnline, I've been trying to get access for years now - when PlayOnline the website was up, the squaresoft PS2 Beat-up "The Bouncer" in japan, had an online multiplayer component supposedly. There was also this really weird promo video for PlayOnline where these players logged into Final Fantasy 8 on their PC and played the game together - this blew my mind as a kid (the video is thankfully on youtube now, but I'll post it here another time) But yeah, back when PlayOnline worked, you could actually order/download/print any squaresoft manuals that you might've lost, which would've been so cool to have now. But everything is locked behind that stupid login account stuff and flash as well.

(This is as far as I've gotten: http://web.archive.org/web/20020607191213/http://www.squaresoft.com/playonline/)

I'm so glad, someone else got inspired by that fake magazine ad I did for Beloved Rapture. But unfortunately, I feel bad now cause I could talk about this stuff forever, I'm sorry guys. I'm kind of cheating here, I started collecting magazines recently, because they're just so energizing. I just bought the 3rd issue of Playstation Magazine (formerly P.S.X.) And what's really cool about it, is that, they were saying in the first issue that not only was the Playstation 2 already in development but that it was going to have DVD playback, as early as October 1997.

But yeah, Magazines are so great now - the internet is weird, it doesn't preserve everything as we remember it and the devices we use to access it, become obsolete, meaning, there's going to eventually be a time between 2007 - 2010 and onward, where no one remembers anything that happened, because we're no longer printing it. Everything is on the internet now and the internet changes more drastically than print. But magazines, man, magazines are like a time capsule , as long as you preserve them and take good care of them, these memories will last forever.


Before I start, I wanna mention retromags.com. these were the guys, that were uploading nintendo power mags to web.archive.org awhile back. They're still available on their site, they're just in a .cbr comicbook reader format, and I wanted to mention them cause, I'm gonna be using some of their stuff since I don't have access to my scanner at the moment.

If it's preserved, you can usually look up your magazine on the site, and export the pages to png format.
(to get the right size for RMN - output the width of the image to 800)
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I'm gonna just pick one for now. I think my first magazine was EGM's 1994, February issue 54, I think my mom bought it for me for my birthday but I solely wanted it because Sonic was on the cover and I wanted to try and copy and trace it:



...I'm cheating here and jumping ahead 2 issues, to the April 1994 issue 56, because that was the only issue that survived my childhood - I think my favorite section of EGM was the "Arcade Action" Section, they'd have on the left side, cause growing up my cousin who was much older and I, would frequently go to the arcades in the mall and there were so many great games there, mostly street fighter 2 at the time. One of the games my cousin would play though was Lethal Enforcers, but I could never play it cause I was too short at the time and I remember the gun being super heavy so my aim was off - but it was always cool to see news about these games in this section - there was this really great spread on Lethal Enforces 2: instead of being a modern day cop, you were a cowboy in the wild west, It blew my mind and I always wanted to play this game. I played Lethal Enforces 1 alot later on the SNES but I haven't found a proper version of the sequel that lives up to the hype (The Playstation Port is awful/The Justifier doesn't work): The screenshot of the Bosses Skeleton at the bottom right is SO COOL!



There was also this really cool spread on Capcom's Arcade Brawlers: Alien vs. Predator and Dungeons & Dragons we never got to play these games but my friends thought it was the coolest shit ever. I was really into this Dungeon and Dragons Arcade game though - I always imagined from these screenshots that the Dungeons and Dragons arcade game, played like, a very generous arcade version of Secret of Mana: I imagined it was a game, where there was no timelimit, you could just chill with your friends, kill monsters and solve puzzles - like in the one screenshot at the bottom of this page where the elf chick is throwing a knife over a pit of spikes to undo the trap and open the door.



I never got to play these games. I only got to play D&D:Shadow Over Mystara at a local amusement park in 1998. I also played it briefly on my friends JVC Sega Saturn from China, in 2007, but the second controller didn't work. The two D&D Arcade games are now available as a collection on Wii U, PS3 and Steam - But looking back, I wasn't wrong about the first game, it does play a lot slower than it's sequel. I just wish I had a chance to play it when it was in the arcades so I could appreciate it more - There's a certain high you get from trying to make that one quarter you asked your dad for, last as long as possible in the arcades. It was like this rush, when you have kids looking over your shoulder amazed at how far you got on your own - it so cool aaaaa...
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...Everytime I turn a page in this magazine I always find something interesting to talk about - But I'm gonna try hard to keep this short: I wanted to show you guys this really interesting blurb for Final Fantasy under the "International News" Section. They talk about these CDs for Final Fantasy 6 and mention that Final Fantasy 1&2 were being re-released for the NES/Famicom in Japan:



A few years later, I got obsessed with Final Fantasy 6 and I'd stumble across this blurb again and in my childhood mind, I'm like "WOA...FINAL FANTASY 1 and 2...FINAL FANTASY 1 must be like THE BIBLE!....and FINAL FANTASY 2 must be like... THE DICTIONARY!" Years later, we'd get both, in Final Fantasy Origins, which is just as equally hyped. But for years, I'd stare at that giant chocobo behind the four characters and imagined what the first two final fantasy games played like. I finally got to play Final Fantasy 1 on my iphone, and it was really cool to play cause at the time I was juggling two jobs and the only free time I had was while taking the streetcar or the subway, so that' where I got all my gaming in. Later on I'd go back and buy it on PSone and PSPGO.

The first one was kind of cool, I haven't finished yet, the second one I haven't tried it yet - I dunno, memories are a tricky thing, I'm not a believer in nostalgia, I think memories and feelings are always genuine. It's just as time passes, it gets harder to reconnect to those memories, because the circumstance and situations surrounding those feelings change (like the cheap movie theatre I'd go to on fridays that's no longer in business, or when a food company changes an ingredient in your favourite soda.) - but everytime I look at this page, I remember those feelings like it was yesterday.
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One of the last ones I want to show you guys is this Ad. This is the Ad that got us to buy the multitap. It is just as exciting to see now as it was back then:



(It's actually a 3 part AD, where they show Madden and NBA JAM first before showing secret of mana)..The Mana Fortress gaunlet of bosses was really cool to play with all 3 players - we played the shit out of this thing. I think one of the best games to play with the multitap though, was Super BomberMan and later on, the snes port of NBA: Hang Time. We'd have friends over every night. those were good times.
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And lastly these two ads for Secret of Mana and Lunar: The Silver Star for Sega CD:



Like, looking through this magazine reminds of a conversation I had with a friend recently: back then, it was mostly action, arcade games or shooters that were selling - JRPGs hadn't hit mainstream yet in the mid 90s. During that PAX interview, when Sakaguchi said that he wished more people bought Final Fantasy 6 when it originally came out, this is what he meant. JRPGs back then were still sort of an afterthought, it's not like what it is now. Where the translations are better, or there's an indie market; there's more variety and access now than there was back then.

So while these ads are incredibly creative, it also sort of illustrates how difficult it was to market JRPGS back in the mid 90s - we loved Secret of Mana, but often, my friends and I would pick up games like Ultima or Wizardry for the SNES and realized they weren't the same thing. It was very hard to get that message across, when the market for these games just wasn't there yet - which is why stuff like Earthbound fell into obscurity.

(People knew about Earthbound. but they just didn't want to play it. It was a hard sell, compared to stuff like DOOM, Street Fighter, Super Metroid or Donkey Kong Country -- Earthbound was 100 dollars, but so was Phantasy Star IV, but people brought up Phantasy Star IV more, when talking about Chrono Trigger, because both games had combination techs and great animation at the time and it was already similar to what was already out on the market -- Earthbound was just too different, it wasn't the right time to subvert or parody the genre yet.)

There's something to be said about, a streamlined role-playing experience, which is what these games excelled at, back then.

But ya, I'm rambling, I apologize guys, Darken this was a trip ♥. Guys, please do more of these. I could talk about this stuff forever.
author=LordBlueRouge
(People knew about Earthbound. but they just didn't want to play it. It was a hard sell, compared to stuff like DOOM, Street Fighter, Super Metroid or Donkey Kong Country -- Earthbound was 100 dollars, but so was Phantasy Star IV, but people brought up Phantasy Star IV more, when talking about Chrono Trigger, because both games had combination techs and great animation at the time and it was already similar to what was already out on the market -- Earthbound was too different, it wasn't the right time to parody the genre yet.)


TopHatGamingMan or whatever his name is on youtube claimed that every retro game store he visited on a trip to the US had a copy of Earthbound for sale. I also recall hearing that there were a bunch that were never sold and may be sitting in a warehouse somewhere, but I kinda doubt it.

On the PC side of things, here's a site that's got scans of old Computer Gaming World mags. https://www.cgwmuseum.org/
I can remember owning a couple of these from...1995 or 1996, I believe. We had a computer that could actually run the then-modern stuff, an upgrade from an old commodore. I could never convince my parents to buy me the full versions of games (I think this is when you had to get them via mail order, maybe a little past that?) But our city used to have a big CompUSA, and my dad bought them for me as if to say "Check out all this cool stuff you can't have". And I remember the awesome demo discs they had...at least they were awesome for a 6 year old.
That, to me, was PC gaming. Not like now when we get terminally early access survival sandboxes, multiplayer asshole simulators, and console games BUT WITH BETTER GRAPHICS LOL CONSOLE PEASANTS. You know, Doom, Duke Nukem, The Lucasarts adventure games, Daggerfall...

EDIT: Here's one that I used to have! http://www.cgwmuseum.org/galleries/issues/cgw_141.pdf These ads are amazing. I remember playing Total Mayhem and Gearheads, two obscure games I wish were on GOG. Also check out the ads for "VR" headsets.

But anyway I used to have a hoard of Nintendo Power magazines from the heyday of the N64 when I got a discount subscription through one of those fund raiser thingys. The last one I remember getting had the Game Boy Advance on the cover. I wish I still had them - this was around 1998-2000 when they ran little mini pokemon comics in them.
author=Bluefeathr42
TopHatGamingMan or whatever his name is on youtube claimed that every retro game store he visited on a trip to the US had a copy of Earthbound for sale. I also recall hearing that there were a bunch that were never sold and may be sitting in a warehouse somewhere, but I kinda doubt it.

Yeah, like its great how the game is finally getting the recognition it deserves now . But to anyone who lived it, it was pretty clear why this game didn’t sell well: By the time I got Earthbound, it was 1997 and I bought it brand new at an abandoned Kmart that was going out of business – I still have the price tag on it. I even remember one of my friends asking me, “Why do you want to get this game when you could use that money to buy two or three games used?” and I just said, cuz “it was Earthbound”

But the dude knew what was up! - If you took any video game and made it twice the asking price of what people were going for - of course it's not going to sell well, no one was going to buy it. There should be no question why Earthbound was overlooked.
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...But yeah, this is quickly becoming my favorite thread on RMN. I owned a Commodore 64 that ran Windows 3.11, which later got a huge virus - But while it worked, I played alot of shareware stuff like Wolfeinstein 3D, Mario Bros VGA, Golden Axe and Test Drive 3 (which are all available on ClassicReload.com)

Our family was kind of poor and couldn't afford a new computer, (the reason why we had some many games back then, is because we mostly rented or bought most of our games used). But I do remember stuff like the weird PC port of MegaMan X which my friend had, who also showed me, Maniac Mansion: Day of the Tentacle - which was really cool to play alongside Earthbound, because they both were comedic sci-fi games, about time travel and aliens, which wasn't that far removed from the 90s with shows like the X-Files.. But yeah, I missed out on the late PC craze multimedia craze.

But I'm really glad you shared this mag with us! Bluefeathr42

(EDIT: the VR advertisements are great too)

Cause I always wondered what stuff like the DIG looked like, when it was advertised. (loved that game, not a great ending)
But we should be totally using this stuff guys!! and like incorporating it into our games. Like, that advertisement on the right for Power Slave?
That could totally be like, an ad for Darken's Kryopolis. I love the tagline!!



"Ramses Was Dead When They Entombed Him. You May Not Be So Lucky."
Like DUDE!!! Aaaa, it's so good!!!

It's really cool to browse through this, cause I remember Computer Gaming World magazines usually being twice as big as regular magazines. What I always wanted to know was what certain Simulator Games played like on PC, cause these things were always advertised, but I never played them. I think the highlight of this particular issue for me is this review for Street Fighter on the PC:



You can just hear the announcers voice in this review. Emulation was a few years away, but ya like one of the biggest problems back then was just trying to merge PC and console platforms together. Stuff like the FF7 port, ended up being a real treat for players who had a family PC that their mom and dad did taxes on, but couldn't afford a Playstation.

Also I thought this ad for FoxHunt was pretty cool. Fox Hunt is like, a bad game, but I remember seeing it back when Capcom's website would let you play a demo of Puzzle Fighter for free through javascript. But I'd argue, that entire experience, single handedly created those cheesy B-Movie Cutscenes found in the original Resident Evil - it may be considered bad by today's standards, but only a handful of studios were doing stuff like that back then like Digital Pictures NightTrap and DoubleSwitch.

Sorry guys, I get so pumped talking about this stuff because, cause we've come so far from where we were back then. Like, things are so much easier now, but the finer get lost too.
Took me a long ass while to find this magazine on google as I was going off of pure cover memory. I think I got this at a cafe just because it had Lara Croft on the cover. I was a big tomb raider fan and was kind of unaware of the celebrity status of Lara. She's a bit more 3D CGI doofy than what was in my mind's eye. So bizarre that they photoshop warp a logo over her right breast lmao.



Probably the most generic of names though. "PC Games" "games.net"? (is still up actually, redirects to a different name but it still has the IDG name). Generally seems like a giant web of publishing name changes and brand mergers Sadly this issue isn't fully scanned anywhere, I'm curious to see if any deep memories will unlock when reading through them.

Some preview scans in this ebay, I'm almost tempted to buy this just for reminiscence sake.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/PC-GAMES-MAGAZINE-FEB-1998-TOMB-RAIDER-II-JEDI-KNIGHT-MORE/123624384335?hash=item1cc896674f:g:5hgAAOSwAThcVK0g:rk:1:pf:1&frcectupt=true
author=Darken
Some preview scans in this ebay, I'm almost tempted to buy this just for reminiscence sake.

Unless there’s another available copy floating around on ebay for sale, I'd say, probably grab it and post your memories here afterwards XD. Like, it’s not worth that much anymore today right? (with shipping it’s usually kind of costly tho...) but there was this one time, I wanted a particular old magazine. But unfortunately it sold out before I could grab it and I had to wait, another 3 months, before another copy would show up on ebay again.

...There’s an interesting story I have about this particular magazine, that’s kind of related to this thread, and memories and nostalgia in general but I’m gonna hold off on telling it for now, cause I wanna see if this issue comes up in other peoples stories.

But yeah, this is really cool phenomena, how like, old media, is usually really good at planting and fostering old memories when you're a kid.
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EDIT: I wanted to mention this since we're talking about tomb raider.
I had this guide for tomb raider 3 back in the late 90s:



...I'm having trouble framing a sentence here. It was cool that it was a pocket sized guide and it was sort of thrifty, but...
This was like, one of the worst strategy guides imaginable, and one of the things I don't miss about old media.
Every paragraph, in this guide read like, really bad parking directions. it was insane.

EDIT2:( I wish I could find a scan of it, so I could show you guys how crazy this thing was.)

I remember PRIMA was usually really good, at making really great guides, for games like tomb raider, because they'd always have these really great, screenshots, as you read along their walkthrough, so you knew exactly what landmarks you'd need to look for so you'd know where to go - the guide was so detailed, reading it, was like reading a let's play, only in print.

...But without those screenshots, this pocket guide was absolute nonsense.
I eventually just learned how to beat the game myself but it took awhile.
I saved a bunch of my Nintendo Power magazines from the 80s and 90s. The most striking thing to me about that era is the art direction in the magazines.... it's all traditional art. Pen and ink, watercolor, even oil paint. Several of the covers used scenes modeled out of clay. Scenes were constructed out of actors and props and then professionally photographed. Lots of practical work.
EDIT: Totally unrelated, but sort of related...with memories anyways. I plan on posting more with this though. But I had a weird dream the other night - Does anyone remember the sega arcade game "Title Fight"? It was a first person boxing game? Two arcade cabinets jointed together? One player for each cabinet? The joysticks felt and looked like boxing gloves? I played this game a lot at the arcade by my local theater on fridays.

Anyways, I had this weird dream the other night, thinking that this game came out on home consoles during the 90s - turns out it wasn't a dream, it's just one of those things you misremember. A spiritual port actually came out for the Genesis and 32X called "ToughMan Contest" that uses the same green outline and well animated boxers "Title Fight" used -- I'm not gonna post screenshots cause it's nothing worth mentioning, but I thought this story was interesting cause I found this out while browsing through some old gamepros today. (I'm trying to look for that preview of Tales of Phantasia)
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author=Zachary_Braun
I saved a bunch of my Nintendo Power magazines from the 80s and 90s. The most striking thing to me about that era is the art direction in the magazines.... it's all traditional art. Pen and ink, watercolor, even oil paint. Several of the covers used scenes modeled out of clay. Scenes were constructed out of actors and props and then professionally photographed. Lots of practical work.

I agree 100%. I think that's what I miss the most about these magazines. Back then, there was still a large industry behind print media, and design was everything. The fact that we feel so strongly about this material today is probably a testament how well designed this marketing material was - In someways, it wasn't just advertising, it was art. Former Flinstones and Jetson animator Greg Martin, made a career out of this stuff. https://www.creativebloq.com/illustration/nintendo-artist-passes-away-11410273 (supplemental material really is something we should be keeping track of, print may be dead now, but there's an entire industry there that has grown and envolved as well.)

...But yeah, if you guys like claymation promotional material you guys should definitely check out http://touchygameart.tumblr.com/ they have a list of assorted advertisements, mostly done in clay or practical materials - my favorite one hands down is the cover for this Final Fantasy Tactics Strategy Guide:



it makes me wish there was a Final Fantasy Tactic HD rerelease with a plastic- posable-stop-motion-toy-Ramza.
Anyways, today, I wanted to upload some of the NP covers, since Zachary_Braun mentioned them I feel like they're worth looking at and talking about: (I didn't upload all of them, just the ones that weren't photoshopped or illustrated, I missed the ninja gaiden one,
I missed a lot of good ones actually...)

an easier way to look at these would probably be browsing retromags:
(https://www.retromags.com/magazines/usa/nintendo-power/?d=5& - nintendo powers mags:)



...But I think my favorites are like, the Castlevania one, Zelda 2 and Dr.Wily's Revenge (the Dr.Mario one is also really cool too).
These covers really sell you the idea, the impression of these games, while making you completely forget these were originally 8-bit or 16-bit games. But ya, as soon as Donkey Kong Country came out, they moved further and further away from the really cool claymated stuff, cause I guess, Computer Generated Graphics was more of the trend then. But I do miss it.I'm kind of disappointed that games like Kirby's Rainbow Curse or Yoshi's woolly world are very far and few in between - like, when a game like that comes along now, they're more of an aesthetic choice, instead of being incorporated into the games design.

I'm rambling here, but yeah, there's so much more we can be doing with this. If I missed any really cool Nintendo Power covers that are worth talking about, throw them up!

EDIT2: I have a sneaking suspicion that the dudes who worked on the claymated nintendo power covers may or may not have also done the claymated japanese mario commercials (look up the japanese super mario world commercial on youtube) - the way they treat the character and the way mario moves is just too similar to ignore.
Wow, so many cool magazines.

Well, here in Brazil I had access to some very cool magazines too.

CD Expert had some really cool RPG magazines, some of them were smaller though:



Another cool magazine was the Digerati's RPG series:





There was also the Digerati's 'Top Games' Series:


The coolest of the Top Games magazines were the 'Top Games Surpresa', of which had a ton of variety of games, and even when it was just RPGs, it came not only with JRPGs but some were CRPGs / Western RPGs too.



My family and I would buy Nintendo mags and do the buy/swap/sell in the back for games.

I also have the magazine from FF9's release with the walkthrough (the wrong one!) in it.

I never really collected gaming magazines, sad to say.
author=Liberty
My family and I would buy Nintendo mags and do the buy/swap/sell in the back for games.

I also have the magazine from FF9's release with the walkthrough (the wrong one!) in it.

I never really collected gaming magazines, sad to say.


I remember N64 Gamer and Hyper Magazine and I bought them most months, I dont know that I remember seeing any other Australian mags though. I did occasionally see imported copies of Gamepro at my local News Agents but the only time I bought one was for the preview Pokemon Snap, otherwise they were usually too expensive.
Electronic Gaming Monthly was my favorite growing up. I used to read it in study hall at school and before bed. Loved it.

I still remember the one that featured MK and that's when video game violence with consoles was becoming pretty controversial. My mom saw it and was like... "That's the game you rip people heads off!" She then rented it for me so I could play, and she could watch. She sat there for hours with me while I tried to figure out the fatalities LOL My mom was so damn cool.

LOL! Really cool to see another EGM reader♥

author=visitorsfromdreams
author=Liberty
My family and I would buy Nintendo mags and do the buy/swap/sell in the back for games.

I also have the magazine from FF9's release with the walkthrough (the wrong one!) in it.

I never really collected gaming magazines, sad to say.
I remember N64 Gamer and Hyper Magazine and I bought them most months, I dont know that I remember seeing any other Australian mags though. I did occasionally see imported copies of Gamepro at my local News Agents but the only time I bought one was for the preview Pokemon Snap, otherwise they were usually too expensive.

Hero's Realm was featured in August 2010's issue of Hyper Magazine!
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...I originally wanted to post this after releasing the new tech demo. But I needed a break, so I decided to go ahead with this cause talking about this stuff always energizes me - If you guys come across any other interesting childhood magazine anecdotes/memories, please continue to share them. This stuff will always be interesting to me:

Long story short, I finally tracked down the issue of gamepro magazine I originally saw Tales of Phantasia in. It was November 1995. Now to tie into what Darken originally posted – when I first saw this page, with nothing but concept art of Duran's class changes to go by from SD3. I honestly thought Secret of Mana 2/Seiken Densetsu 3 was going to have 4 players and being a kid with a family who actually owned the multitap, this was super exciting! – But what ended up happening was, as you guys know, and the unfortunate reality was that, this game never come out here. It took years before we’d actually get to play this game. When my friends and I finally did play it (over 3 lan computers and a network connection in the 2000s) we realized Secret of Mana 2, was only 2 players, not 4, which was a bummer. (...but you can now expand it to 3 players with a patch)

But looking at this page, the game and the ideas you get while looking at these screenshots, are still fresh in my mind. Looking at the screenshots for Tales of Phantasia, it was like:

“Oh this looks like FF3”.
”…Hold on, how do you play this game? It looks 2D, like Super Mario, but there’s a giant Hammer?”
…”Oh look, I guess you can cast spells, like Ultima!
“I guess you’re supposed to dodge fireballs too?

It looked like a really crazy 2D action RPG platformer, where all you had to do was run around and dodge screen clearing spells!



Tales of Phantasia was always a weird game for me in screenshot form, it's only when you finally see it in motion do you realize how the game actual plays like and how cool it actually is. But the impression of these games left definitely struck a cord with me. To the point where my friends and I would remember them 4 years later once we had access to emulators and stuff - In the same issue, they had a preview for Romancing Saga 3:

...Being a kid, I always thought that name stunk - Who would want to play a game with the word "Romancing," in it? But the graphics were absolutely incredible. And looking at these screenshots today, it's still spellbinding to look at. What always caught my attention was the rooftop battle and the lasers coming out of the ground. But the shots of the Dark Castle, the Parliament building and the horse riding into the forest were great too.



I think I finally got around to playing Romancing Saga 3 around 2004-ish and by that time it was finally playable on Mac computers. But it'd still be a couple of years before I'd get my hands on the english translation patch. Oddly enough what stood out to me the most about the game was the merchant money making mini-game. I thought that was one of the coolest additions to the series, because it was so unusual yet so addictive, but there was this one bug I ran into where you'd reach a stalemate with your rival buyer and if you didn't do right, you'd have to start over or something? Eitherway, this was a blast to play between math classes.

...I dunno it feels funny looking back at this, even after finally playing all these games, I can still look over these pages and get lost in them for hours. It's like looking into an entirely different world - and what's neat about this is that, all it takes is just one glance and I can remember how exciting these games were back then, even if that one impression doesn't hold up to playing the actually games themselves. It's that one impression that still makes me want to play these games.
On the subject of drooling over Japan only SNES games. GRS mentioned awhile back that this 1995 issue of Nintendo Power was probably the first sighting that a north american would have of RPG Maker, or Super Dante rather. Roms did exist of it and were dumped, but they were pretty random to discover and even Super Dante was only partially translated til 1997.

https://archive.org/stream/Nintendo_Power_Issue001-Issue127/Nintendo%20Power%20Issue%20074%20July%201995#page/n63/mode/2up

Interesting to think about how un-exact the knowledge of RPG Maker existing was early on.
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