Unkillable Cat's Gaming Magazine Nostalgia Thread

[Unkillable Cat]

Don't think they do. They're clearly a "me-too" clone from someone trying to cash in on the Lemmings craze. Online review scores aren't very high, and the magazine scores I recall from back then weren't very hot either.

As for the sequels - Lemmings 2 added lots more roles, so while the core gameplay is unchanged, its simplicity is lost. Lemmings 3D tries going back to the simple formula, but still needs more roles to account for the game now being in 3D.

No comment on the Lemmings Chronicles.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Issue 141 of Retro Gamer is out, and it has a large bundle of interesting articles and interviews, with the primary focus being on "failures" of the video game industry like the Power Glove, the Mikroplus cartridge, Virtual Boy and Daikatana.

They sent off a few questions to Romero about Daikatana, and one of them is somewhat relevant considering current events in gaming:

Q: Whose idea was it to have the 'Romero's about to make you his bitch' line?

A: I'm sure you'll be surprised at this one. On the Quake packaging project was a woman named Sasha Shor who designed all the packaging, CD printing, the Quake Font, ads, you name it. When I started Ion Storm I naturally wanted to keep working with her so we signed up with her company, Industry Media. Mike Wilson wanted her to be really edgy and one of the art concepts she came up with was the Bitch ad. Yes, a woman created the Bitch ad. Mike showed me the ad and I told him I would never say something like that. He said that it didn't matter and that it was edgy and he wanted to run with it. Bad judgement on my part.

Then there's a section which is badly rushed, which is a look at PR and media disasters related to gaming, including Nintendo's betrayal of Sony in 1991 which led to Sony releasing the Playstation console, how an ad for Command & Conquer featured high scores from players such as Adolf Hitler, Jozef Stalin and Jacques Chirac, and SEGA's disastrous tag line for Virtua Racing in 1994: "Score some speed from a dealer near you".

There's a 4-page spread on Driller, the first Freescape game. A good read for those wanting to know how 3D was done 30 years ago.

But the big thing for most of you is the in-depth 8-page inteview with Brian Fargo, where he goes over his career right from Wasteland to Wasteland 2. I'm not gonna type that up, so interested people will just have to get a copy of Retro Gamer themselves.

 

[pippin]

That actually sounds neat as fuck and the kind of gaming journalism we need.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Retro Gamer is usually a "hit or miss" affair. When they're good, they're REALLY good. When they bad it's cringe-worthy. Still, they cover many areas of gaming that standard games journalism wouldn't even begin to touch.

EDIT: Clarity.

 

[m_s0]

It's worth noting that Romero already talked about that when interviewed by J_C. Easily one of the best episodes.

Still, Retro Gamer gets points for not misspelling the creator's name every single time they mention it this time around

Might have a look at that interview with Brain Fago, though. Sounds like it could be interesting.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Yeah, I figured that someone from the "Cult of Romero" might be able to chime in with the first appearance of that fact.

To the mods: Thanks for making this a seperate thread.

 

[m_s0]

Honestly, I don't know whether that's even the first appearance. It seems like he must've been asked that question a couple of times over the years. Not really into worshipping Romero either, but I am a sucker for the kinds of stories he tells during that interview.

 

[Don Peste]

Then there's a section which is badly rushed, which is a look at PR and media disasters related to gaming, including Nintendo's betrayal of Sony in 1991 which led to Sony releasing the Playstation console, how an ad for Command & Conquer featured high scores from players such as Adolf Hitler, Jozef Stalin and Jacques Chirac, and SEGA's disastrous tag line for Virtua Racing in 1994: "Score some speed from a dealer near you".

Wow. I was just reading about this... in a 1995 magazine...

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Thanks for the screenshot, this is hilarious.

 

[Don Peste]

And another one.

 

[Spectacle]

Fuck, why did the world get so uptight?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Because "edgy" was a thing in the 90s.

Also, Westwood wasn't owned by EA at the time, otherwise those ads would never have seen print.

 

[warpig]

Different target audience I guess, it used to be a "niche" hobby, now the main target are normies.

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Anyone wanna hack the PC version of Golden Axe?

Someone found out that the baddies in the game are kept as [NAME].SPR files, so if you want to replace some annoying baddies, just copy/rename one .SPR file over another.

Let's say you want to get rid of the knights at the end of Stage 7 and replace them with blue magic-giving gnomes, you'd copy and replace KNIGHT.SPR with BTHIEF.SPR.

Presto! Your mean knights of malice are now cowardly loot-carrying gnomes, awaiting a good kicking!

(Make a backup of the game files first, of course.)

 

[Unkillable Cat]

In gaming mag-related news, I'm going through a stack of old PC gaming magazines, and found some "PC Format Collector's Series" that focus on specific topics, most often on software developers.

Volume 1 is Origin.
Volume 2 is LucasArts.
Volume 3 is Mindscape.
(Volume 5 is an upgrade guide, 20 years out of date. LOL.)
Volume 6 is MicroProse.

There's also a "Best of British" mag which focuses on UK software developers, like Bullfrog under Molyneux and Mythos Games of X-COM fame.

These extra mags were released between 1994-1996, so keep in mind that *some* information may be hopelessly outdated. However, quickly leafing through them leaves me with a question: What's this underwater game "Creation" that Bullfrog was working on in 1995?

EDIT: Ho-ho, this keeps getting better, the Bullfrog article mentions not only "Creation", but also a superhero game using the Syndicate Wars engine called "Indestructibles", slated for a November 1995 release.

EDIT 2: This quote kills me.

There still aren't enough genuinely new ideas around. It's all Doom clones, combat or driving games. One of our philosophies is that there's got to be a twist to everything we do. All of our new titles have something different, we spent a year with these designs.

DMA went on to make Grand Theft Auto, and are now known as Rockstar Games...and all they do is re-release GTA-like games over and over again.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Now this is interesting: A Top 50 "Greatest Games of All Time" list from a PC mag (PC Power, March 1996) that covers games on all formats, not just the PC.

The list is included below, and which platforms where relevant.

50-25

50: Road Rash (Sega Genesis/Megadrive)
49: Wing Commander 3
48: Ghosts 'n' Goblins (Spectrum/C-64 (?!?))
47: Starglider 1 & 2 (Atari ST/Amiga)
46: Duke Nukem 3D
45: Sega Rally (Sega Saturn/Arcade)
44: Mercenary (Spectrum/C-64)
43: Day of the Tentacle
42: Bubble Bobble (Spectrum/C-64 (?!?!?))
41: Apache Longbow
40: Virtua Fighter 2 (Sega Saturn)
39: Sensible World of Soccer
38: Hypersports (Spectrum)
37: Shadowrun (SNES)
36: Spy Hunter (Arcade/C-64)
35: UN Squadron (SNES)
34: Lords of Midnight (Spectrum/C-64)
33: Little Big Adventure
32: TIE Fighter
31: Roller-coaster (Spectrum)
30: Link's Awakening (Gameboy)
29: Cannon Fodder (Amiga)
28: Back to Skool (Spectrum)
27: Fade to Black
26: Atic-Atac (Spectrum)
25: Tetris (Gameboy)

24-10

24: Championship Manager 2
23: Lemmings (All formats (?))
22: Wizball (C-64)
21: Civilization
20: SimCity 2000
19: Bomberman (PC Engine)
18: Quazatron (Spectrum)
17: System Shock
16: Missile Command (Arcade)
15: Super Mario World/Super Mario Bros 3 (SNES/NES)
14: Need For Speed
13: Space Invaders (Arcade)
12: Super Mario Kart (SNES)
11: Robotron 2084 (Arcade)
10: Formula 1 Grand Prix

9-6

9: The Sentinel (C-64/Spectrum)
8: Street Fighter 2 Turbo (SNES)
7: Starquake (Spectrum)
6: Manic Miner (Spectrum)

5-2

5: Command & Conquer
4: Head Over Heels (Spectrum)
3: Doom 1/Doom 2
2: Elite (BBC)

Can you guess the No 1?

1: Defender (Arcade)

The biggest problem I see with this list (besides being SO outdated) is that the Amstrad CPC doesn't get a single nod on the list, and that some of the versions named for some games range from dubious to outright retarded. But clearly this list is compiled by someone who's played a lot of games, not some punk kid who started gaming with Counter-Strike or Super Mario 64.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

After having spent a little time going through some old gaming magazines, I can safely say that the worst mag of them all is PC Gamer (US).

# Each issue is between 250-300 pages.
# At least half of those pages are ads, with some of them stretching to over 10 pages.
# To make matters worse, even pages with content can include ads, as much as half the page.
# There is no index. At all. At least I had a hard time finding one. The review section (once you stumble upon it) has a "best of" index for their reviews, but that's about it.
# Each mag is big and heavy. I have six issues and they weigh 3.8 kilos.

Straight to the trash bin they go. I'll be glad to be rid of them.

At least I organized my mini-mountain of PC Format issues.

 

[Infinitron]

After having spent a little time going through some old gaming magazines, I can safely say that the worst mag of them all is PC Gamer (US).

# Each issue is between 250-300 pages.
# At least half of those pages are ads, with some of them stretching to over 10 pages.
# To make matters worse, even pages with content can include ads, as much as half the page.
# There is no index. At all. At least I had a hard time finding one. The review section (once you stumble upon it) has a "best of" index for their reviews, but that's about it.
# Each mag is big and heavy. I have six issues and they weigh 3.8 kilos.

Straight to the trash bin they go. I'll be glad to be rid of them.

At least I organized my mini-mountain of PC Format issues.

Is PC Gamer the only one of these magazines that is still being published today?

 

[Unkillable Cat]

PC Format is also still being published, but their emphasis is now much less on the games (roughly 5 gaming reviews a month) and more on the hardware aspects of PCs.

But PC Format was turning into shit as early as the turn of the century. But the issues leading up to around #60 are a great source for gamers, especially old-timers like myself.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

I have a copy of "PC Review" a short-lived gaming mag that did the rounds in the early 90s. Can't find much info on it, but the Internet Archive has a few issues to read.

One of those issues (#9) has a "Review update" of Ultima 7, where they end up giving it the rating of 4/10, citing "Origin failing to surprise", "lots of bugs" (which seem to feature a red haze overlapping everything and items disappearing randomly from your inventory) the steep system requirements and choppy performance overall, but by far their biggest gripe is:

Ultima 7 suffers from another problem, the same one that [Ultima] Underworld suffered from. It is very very big, almost to the point where it puts you off.

The reason I bring this up is because my copy of PC Review is #25, where they have a section on Role-Playing Games written by a Cal Jones. The article list many of the classics (with their review scores in parentheses), like Spelljammer (7), Lure of the Temptress (8), Ultima Underworld (9), The Legacy (8), Legends of Valour (8) and Ultima 7 (4), where they mention the low review mark and say:

Early versions were riddled with bugs, hence the unfavourable mark, but this is nonetheless my favourite RPG. It uses a top-down, third-person view, and the graphics and sound are excellent. It's an incredibly involving game with a great plot, but the gaming area is huge and novice gamers might feel a bit daunted by it. Ultima 7 Part 2: Serpent Isle, uses the same engine and equally if a bit tougher.

It seems clear that idiots were also a thing in gaming journalism in the early 90s.

EDIT: Did a quick look-up, the U7 "review update" is done by Paul Presley. Looked him up, found one review from him on Eurogamer.net for Microsoft Flight, which opens up with this paragraph:

Flight Simulator used to be scary. In days of yore, you'd wait for the loading screen to fade, squint at the various incomprehensible menu screens, become bewildered by the sheer amount of options thrown right at your face, then spend an hour or so accidentally crashing a Cessna into various parts of Chicago using the default flight options before loading in your home town and trying to see if the developers had modelled your house.

I see a pattern here, of someone that has trouble grasping large concepts and shouldn't be reviewing video games at all.

 

[Trash]

Back in the nineties those game mags where the best way to get information on games. They generally had a hobby/fanzine feel to them. Not to mention that they had amazing adverts. Usually a mix between outrageous, shitty amateur stuff and niche marketing by wierdos for geeks. Stuff changed with the rise of the consoles and then the growth of the medium from niche to mainstream. Meanwhile paper slowly lost its prominence as the single, biggest source of info. Times changed and so did the mags. And not for the better.

Didn't we have a thread with old adverts btw? The consoles had awesome tv adverts and the kind of stuff you could find in the mags was often hilarious.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

That thread is over in the Codex Library.

There's a clear distinction in advertising tone between mags released around 1992-1993 and in 1997-1998. So much edginess, like the monitor ad which said: "In the end it's all about inches, and some don't measure up." or "Get ready to challenge the greatest warlord in the universe: Floyd from Accounting."

Then there's all the ads for deathmatch and online games. Sometimes I had to do a rather thorough search on a game being previewed/advertised, only to find that it was never released or renamed to something else. (Like how a game called "Forsaken" became "Revenant".)

 

[spectre]

I think the last one of "those" ads I can remember were from Quake III

Mind you, that was edgy by 1999 standards, nowadays I think there are peeps who would find nothing wrong about the above picture.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Mind you, that was edgy by 1999 standards, nowadays I think there are peeps who would find nothing wrong about the above picture.

True, I've seen a similarly cluttered desktop (sans toilet) with my own two eyes, where the user had smoked 2+ packs a day while playing RTS games.

The Omega Turbodweeb thread over in GD has photos of real-life setups not unlike this one, except more gross.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Retro Gamer #142 just came in the mail. The cover is made by commercial illustrator Oliver Frey for the mag's in-depth coverage of shoot'em-ups, meaning retro art goodness. I'm not a big fan of SHMUPS so I only skimmed the article, but their "5 Essential SHMUPS" are Gradius, R-Type, Axelay, Dodonpachi and Radiant Silvergun.

(Julian "JAZ" Rignall gets a sidebar where he's asked about shoot'em-ups due to his arcade origins (his favourite is Dropzone on the C-64) and he mentions that he now lives in San Francisco...go figure.)

Another article is the "Greatest multiplayer games ever!" They decide to list them by categories, but keep in mind the keyword "retro" here - the oldest game is from 1980, while the latest is from 1997.

Westwood's Blade Runner gets a "making of" article. The IP was being shopped out to devs to make a Blade Runner game, and Westwood was the only studio whose pitch was centered around capturing the emotional effect of the film. Other potentials (which seemed to include big-name studios) involved FPS games centered around retiring Replicants.