Guide books, magazines, and "mooks" thread

[Ikagura]

Joypad, Console+ and maybe Nintendo Magazine.

 

[miguk miguk]

I had a bunch of them when I was young.

• Nintendo Power: Subscribed from the NES era to the beginning of the N64 era. My first magazine aside from a few issues of some more obscure one that I found at a newsstand. Pretty well detailed, full of maps, mini-guides, artwork, and game-related info. Only problem was that it was heavily controlled by NoA, so they hyped up what the boss wanted hyped and excluded anything not on Nintendo consoles, including most arcade games that would be or could be ported over.
• GamePro: Subscribed for 1 year in the SNES/Genesis era, then "subscribed" for 2 years in the ~PS2 era. The lame mainstream magazine. Always felt like it talked down to the reader with its cartoon reviewers. Review scores felt rigged and turned out to actually be that way for major releases that had advertisements. Funny thing is, I only resubscribed later on because of their free subscription giveaway, which ended with them begging me to resubscribe again for free. I resubscribed only once and then decided I didn't need them taking up space.
• EGM: Subscribed from the late SNES era to the DC era. Better at previews than NP, more variety in consoles covered. Reviewers were mostly named people, and they gave honest reviews and exposed any company that threatened to pull ads for bad reviews. (Capcom did it when they said Resident Evil sucked.) They got a bit too bro-ish later on (the EGM-to-Cracked pipeline was real), but generally did well.
• Game Informer: Subscribed in the PS1 to DC era. Got the subscription as part of a Funcoland promotion. Flimsy, ugly magazine that was mostly ads. Nothing memorable.
• Computer Gaming World: Subscribed for 1 year some time in the late 90s. Boring magazine with nothing memorable in it. Only got it as a gift.

 

[Deleted member 257420]

Playboi.

 

[NeonKnights]

I grew up in the 80s and 90s so I have read many issues from all of the mags in op's post except for the psp issue. I have also had a subscription to Otaku USA for many years, though not recently.
Outside of the odd half read issue of Nintendo Power or Electronic Gaming Monthly at a store
Animerica was nearly the only place I got all my game news in the mid/late 90s and early 2000s.
I remember reading about the first PS2 game not only inspired by but staring Gackt, Bujingai.
Along with many other JRPG reviews I think Animerica was how I first heard about Golden Sun and Star Ocean: Till the End of Time. I still remember quite a few nights spent listening to Visual Kei and reading Animerica.

 

[emotionalskyscraper]

Nintendo World from Brazil. I had a bunch of Pokémon and anime magazines, but these are the ones I remember the fondest. My dog also wanted to appear in the picture as a bonus.

 

[Gorse]

(the EGM-to-Cracked pipeline was real)

Yes, I too remember Seanbaby! Though I didn't always agree with that feature he did on the last page of every EGM issue, I thought that having that feature alone was quite a good way of closing off every month's magazine. I seem to recall kind of liking his output in the early days of Cracked, too (I was a major Cracked devotee in the late 2000s), but he wasn't one of the site's best writers and a lot of his tone came off as being really forced. I wasn't surprised to learn his lost his mind later on in life.

 

[Shameless]

When i was younger i used to read NAG (South African magazine) and occasionally PCformat was kinda the only way to know whats new and get demos, patches & software since internet was and still is kinda a premium. think as of recently NAG got brought back.

 

[groundbeef]

EGM
Game Pro
Game Informer
Official Dreamcast Magazine
Next Generation
Nintendo Power (rarely though)
Official Playstation Magazine
PC Gamer
Tips and Tricks (rarely)

 

[miguk miguk]

Yes, I too remember Seanbaby! Though I didn't always agree with that feature he did on the last page of every EGM issue, I thought that having that feature alone was quite a good way of closing off every month's magazine. I seem to recall kind of liking his output in the early days of Cracked, too (I was a major Cracked devotee in the late 2000s), but he wasn't one of the site's best writers and a lot of his tone came off as being really forced. I wasn't surprised to learn his lost his mind later on in life.

Seanbaby was already around online years before he wrote for EGM. He had one of the big Web 1.0 comedy websites (peak 90s design and all), filled with his "fratire" style of humor that covered random topics (processed food product jokes, nostalgia jokes, bad video game reviews, etc) while coming off as a cross between a less loud Dane Cook and a less heartwarming Kevin Smith.

So when he got into EGM, he took that same humor with him, but had to actually maintain focus on games instead of randomly blabbing about Hostess fruit pies. But his work still felt unprofessional, as if EGM was pulling a "how do you do, fellow kids" on their readers by borrowing from the internet's unprofessional random crap. Don't get me wrong, it was a nifty gimmick for an issue or two, but after a while, it left me wondering why they still let a guy who clearly isn't a professional writer continue on with them.

Not that Seanbaby was always bad, of course. He's like any other 90s-early 00s internet writer: sometimes he was funny, sometimes he wasn't, but the wasn't often outnumbered the was. (And yes, forced is the right word for it; like other fratire writers, he tries way too hard to be badass and manly while not trying enough to be funny.) And that was acceptable because you weren't paying for cheap internet comedy; it wasn't acceptable when you were paying for the magazines.

Not sure what you mean by losing his mind. Haven't heard much about him in some time.

 

[DukeRed]

Can't find any in the shops in the UK.

 

[Gorse]

Yeah, pretty much. You can still order specialist ones online, but all the mainstream print ones died off by the early 2010s.

 

[SBLAST91]

Most gaming magazines have died off due to people using the internet to get gaming news these days, the UK playstation magazines ended back in 2021

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Here they shifted to being about old games, since their audience is more likely to care about reading off paper; many are mail-order only

It's a shame because unlike journos they always felt like average nerds who were just very passionate and had fun writing about games

 

[Bonkers225]

They been largely dead for years now. The biggest one left is Game Informer, and that's mainly due to Gamestop memberships.

 

[SBLAST91]

It's a shame because unlike journos they always felt like average nerds who were just very passionate and had fun writing about games

yeah. I also miss the demo discs that typically came with them, it was fun trying out games I wouldn't have thought of trying out otherwise.

 

[Don Patch]

The entirety of print media in on the way out.
Simply cheaper to throw ads and articles onto the net than a magazine.

It would be neat to see a magazine-style site (whatever that might entail) or digital magazines pop up covering games

 

[Lee__Kanker]

yeah. I also miss the demo discs that typically came with them, it was fun trying out games I wouldn't have thought of trying out otherwise.

I still have all my ps1 demo discs! The one with abe's odisee scared the shit out of 6 year old me

The menus are so cool

 

[marky]

From what I read somewhere - it depends on the country.
In Poland, for example, there are 2 gaming magazines left: CD-Action, which has always been a magazine mainly about PC games (it used to be published monthly, now quarterly) and PSX Extreme, which was initially, according to its name, a magazine about Playstation games, and then changed its profile to console games in general. it has been a monthly since the beginning.
Both regularly publish special issues dedicated to retro games and hardware like this one (PSX Extreme even publishes them in a graphic form that resembles the layout of the press from the era):

I also know that in Japan the gaming press is doing well with Famitsu at the top.

 

[Tr4sh_Kun]

They all died in the early to mid 2010s, we had a magazine named Club Nintendo publishing since 1991 but the last issue was published in December 2014 (The Super Smash Bros for 3DS and Wii U issue) before essentially dying.

Everyone uses the internet nowadays and gets their sources from the same two or three sources so the point of a videogame magazine is completely pointless

 

[marky]

Can't find any in the shops in the UK.

What About Retro Gamer UK?

 

[Lee__Kanker]

Also thanks to the demo disc many games have all their cut stuff preserved for the world to see, like the morbid baby and schoolchild enemies from silent hill

 

[Roto]

Japan has so many! I order some randomly from Amazon Japan.

 

[snes9x]

I lived in England from 2008-2010 as a middle schooler and even though magazines were still somewhat relevant in the US I was blown away by how good the brits got it. Good variety, large high quality glossy paper, even feelies for Official Nintendo Magazine and a few others. Still got an old copy of Retro Gamer from like March 2010 I flip through every now and then.

 

[Evaccaneer Doom]

Spoiler: Final Fantasy joke that I just HAD to make

Died faster than turn based combat in mainline Final Fantasy games

 

[GardeniaSky's icon GardeniaSky GardeniaSky]

They been largely dead for years now. The biggest one left is Game Informer, and that's mainly due to Gamestop memberships.

That's gone too. They recently removed it from Pro.