Gaming Magazines: Gaming journalism used to be cool man...

LostintheCycle

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In 2013, Dad brought home a bunch of Hyper magazines from 2008-09, which I would occasionally flip through. If you don't know, Hyper was a general gaming magazine, not console specific, and I think was full of interesting takes, reviews that were fun to read, and some really interesting features. One that was titillating for me once I reached puberty was the 'Sex in Games' feature. Another I like now was about games that touted moral dilemmas (think inFamous, Bioshock) but more or less just gave you a choice to be the Hero or Villain; all delivered with a great snark and humor. One part I loved were the articles written by this character whose a wealthy, 19th-century gentlemanly gamer. I also collected the PlayStation AU magazine from 2015-17. It was mostly a PS4 shill magazine, full of a lot more reviews and less features/articles than Hyper was, but it had some personality and a similar humor style. In retrospect, I found even the same writer or two between the two magazines.

Most gamers I know who are into games don't like game journalists thanks to shit like Kotaku, the Cuphead Tutorial Incident, and so on... but that's all digital stuff. Are printed gaming magazines in a decent state or have they been flogged? Also lets just talk in general about gaming magazines --- old and new --- in this thread.
 
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Andy Kaufman

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I used to read this back in the early 2000s. Always had a CD with cool games on it too.
 
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Be the change you want to see in the world. Maybe IP would consider putting some game reviews or a gaming section in the Agora ezine. I'd consider writing a review or something. And if you get really into it, maybe start your own ezine.
 
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punishedgnome

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I used to read Gameplayers/Ultra Gameplayers, PC Gamer and Gamepro a lot back in the day. Ultra Gameplayers shit itself and became Game Buyer or some shit that had all the excitement of a newspaper classified section and then folded shortly after. I think Gamepro lasted well into the 2000s. I think PC Gamer is still going, but it's not the same as it was. You used to get a little demo disc because downloading anything over a few megabytes took hours, and getting that disc with a dozen or so demos in the back of a magazine was almost as exciting as getting an actual game. I must have logged 100 hours into the Age of Empires II demo, because you could play a stripped down version of multiplayer with it. PC Gamer also had this weird mascot thing that was a coconut monkey.

There's a pretty extensive Gamepro archive on archive.org.

There was nothing like picking up a brand new issue of your favorite gaming magazine right before a long family road trip.
 
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SolidStateSurvivor

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I have a bunch of PlayStation Underground disks that came with the magazines, and those are pretty neat. I love when they would show the behind the scenes work or actual development, and they would have these charming menus too (demo disks are a gold mine for Y2K aesthetics)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3RB22sVB4M


Even if some of the magazines were biased in terms of reviews it was still fun reading their previews for new games. I remember a game informer from 10 years back (holy shit it's been that long?!) talking about GTA V before it came out, and it detailed features that never made it to release (cut/beta stuff has always interested me)

By far the best part of these magazines was the ads though.
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s0ren

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I was a big fan of EGM -- before it relaunched in like 2010 anyway -- as well as Nintendo Power when I was kid. I haven't picked up a gaming magazine in years though. I like deepfreeze's idea of adding a sub-section for reviews akin to stories from travelers to the video games section. Love the DIY ethos and this is finally something I feel like I would be able to contribute on. There's a lot of very niche and interesting games that we can all share with each other!
 
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TRXTR

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I used to love gaming mags as a kid, I eventually centered in on Playstation magazine because the demo discs were absolutely OP. I remember seeing an ad for NGE as a kid, it was just the profile of Unit 01 screaming, and being swallowed by the blackness of the void, and I thought even back then that it looked "too mature for me to handle", and NGE is no fucking joke even today, ~20 years later. Gaming Magazines were pure literary and aesthetic kino back as a kid during Y2K.
 
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LostintheCycle

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Be the change you want to see in the world. Maybe IP would consider putting some game reviews or a gaming section in the Agora ezine. I'd consider writing a review or something. And if you get really into it, maybe start your own ezine.
Despite fancying myself a writer, I haven't got enough humor to spread out across a whole article. I mainly wanted to spark a conversation about this niche topic, but I'm not out to revive gaming journalism. I wanted to get to see what state it is in at the moment, and check out some other old magazines. However two users in here talked about having a Review space, which is an idea I appreciate.
There's a pretty extensive Gamepro archive on archive.org.
I checked out a random one from December 2007, since that's a similar period to my old Hyper ones, and it's interesting. They had a little side thing which I found interesting: "Gamers understand the need to protect the investment that goes into developing the best PC games, but when will publishers realize that nonsense such as online activation, installation counts, and invasive DRM systems consistently does little more than punish legitimate customers?" I was still five years old at this time so I've been unaware that DRM bullcrap has been going on for this long now. 15 years at least.
It's mostly just full of ads though. Sometimes they are funny like the advertisement for acne cream (really targeting their demographic here), but mostly just current games shown. These would be great for making collages though.
 
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shinobu

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Be the change you want to see in the world.
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I made this last month and then I came across this thread.
Basically, I've read a bunch of gaming magazines from Spain and they had some very nice aesthetics that I tried to replicate for a Disillusion review.
It's not 100% like the originals, since those used a lot more textures, but it's my first try
 
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Cobalt

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I remember growing up around 2009-2014 there were these free gaming magazines that Walmart would have. They were kind of short but they were pretty decent given that they were literally free. I don't think they make them anymore, but I don't really shop much at Walmart either.

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