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1990s games-magazine nostalgia! :D
Pengling Jun 3
Recently, I stumbled across a 1997 cover-scan of a magazine that was never available in the UK, and yet it still felt very nostalgic because it was completely dripping with the 1990s games-magazine zeitgeist. I ended up going down a little bit of an old magazines rabbit-hole afterwards, and felt compelled to write a little bit about it all here.


"Online Gaming Explodes!"
"Bomberman returns! The world's best multiplayer game is set to ignite online gaming on the PC"
"In NG 21's "Top 100 Games of All Time" Super Bomberman 2 for the Super NES ranked #2. We said "Four players won't have more fun doing anything else," and we meant it. Interplay now plans to bring the magic of Bomberman to the online PC world. The full, exclusive story begins in page 48"


Can you imagine seeing something like that nowadays? Today, you'd never know just how big of a deal Bomberman really was back then, and sometimes I don't think that people believe me when I say it. But there it is plain as day, from a time when Atomic Bomberman was genuinely expected to be THE killer-app that would draw the mass-market to play video games over the internet.

The scans of the full article are viewable here if you want to read the whole thing; It's interesting to see that the magazine felt that Bomberman matches had more staying-power than the likes of multiplayer Doom, Command & Conquer, and Warcraft II! This was not unique to this publication, and was a very widespread view at the time.


After that, I ended up discovering this excellent overview of an issue of Ultimate PC - a short-lived magazine that I somehow never heard about at the time. I guess that it didn't get widespread distribution? It looks like the sort of magazine I would've enjoyed, though - and at £3.95 for a magazine with a cover-disc, it was clearly great value even for the time!


And then I found this read-through of an issue of N64 Magazine (an unofficial UK publication I often bought) that I actually owned back in the day - I distinctly remember the letters page mentioning a PR stunt by Nintendo that some sports team tried to steal the credit for!

You just don't see stuff like this anymore - I hope it makes you guys as happy as it makes me. If anyone's got any nostalgia for old gaming publications to share here, please do so!

Last edited by Pengling on 3 June 2024 at 1:13 pm UTC
Ive got some interesting articles from old magazines......





And there is a video game store here in Australia called "The Gamesmen" that been going since the 80's...... And they have a bunch of the old dogalogues online now...... I know they arnt strictly "magazines" but they are close enough and still really interesting to flick through...... Sometimes you would even get a sticker sheet with them with stickers of Mario and Sonic and Co as well as The Gamesmen logo.......
Pengling Jun 3
Quoting: StoneColdSpiderIve got some interesting articles from old magazines......
Haha, I remember us going over these a while back! That one from Amiga Power is still incredibly relevant, since it hails from a time when gaming publications were morphing from enthusiast-led "zines" into what were basically PR-brochures. Amiga Power actually got A LOT of flack for calling out that stuff at the time, even as far as getting nasty phone-calls from various companies (including Commodore UK, if I remember rightly!), but they were right!

Side-note for people who aren't Spider and haven't seen this before: When you see us throwing around a joke review-score of 73%, this article is why.

Quoting: StoneColdSpiderAnd there is a video game store here in Australia called "The Gamesmen" that been going since the 80's...... And they have a bunch of the old dogalogues online now...... I know they arnt strictly "magazines" but they are close enough and still really interesting to flick through...... Sometimes you would even get a sticker sheet with them with stickers of Mario and Sonic and Co as well as The Gamesmen logo.......
Oh man, I love seeing old catalogues and mail-order pages*! The second-ever item in my gaming memorabilia collection was available from a mail-order outfit that a friend had a membership to, and after I saved up the money they and their mother helped me to order it and then called us over to their house for a quick visit to pick it up when it arrived. Very fond gaming memories indeed.

*Youngsters today don't even know what mail-order is! Oh my God.

I used to have a desk covered in stickers from various gaming promotions, too!

Last edited by Pengling on 3 June 2024 at 9:51 pm UTC
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