Which gaming magazines did you read?

[ThatsNotRich]

Game Pro
Tips & Tricks
Game Informer

 

[Grumpy_Old_Man]

Mostly the already mentioned Club Nintendo and found one or two Spanish gamepro in a local Blockbuster.

 

[sparkychechard]

GMR was the the first magazine I subscribed to ? best part was the the bit at the end of the magazine written by the Game Geezer ? that ranted about certain games ? it didn't have a very long run but I loved it

 

[Karnik]

 

[bjork]

I think the first game-adjacent magazine I had was an issue of Compute in 1988. I would read my classmates' copies of Nintendo Power from issue 1 onward, and sometimes they would have Gamepro or EGM. I had a couple issues of Videogames and Computer Entertainment around 89-90, my brain is specifically remembering ones that had strategies for NES Strider and Blazing Lazers, though it might've been the same issue. The first Gamepro I bought was in 1990 and had Gremlins 2 on the cover, the first EGM was 1991 with a giant Sonic on the cover. If I got magazines pre-1995 or so, I'd generally go with Diehard Gamefan first, then EGM, then Gamepro. I think at this point Nintendo Power was still subscription-only?

In 1996, a friend wanted three variant Star Wars figures I had, so he offered his NES with almost 40 games, and all of his gaming magazines. I agreed and so this got me the first Gamepro, the first 5-6 years of Nintendo Power, and maybe 50 issues of EGM. All those good fat EGMs that were like 400 pages. A bunch of random Gamefans. So cool to just get a tub full of them. I spent a good amount of time reading all that stuff, even then it felt cool to revisit old issues of Nintendo Power that I remembered from middle school. I also had a lady at the Wal-Mart I worked at who mentioned that they got a free subscription to Next Generation, but that no one read them, so I could just have them if I wanted. I wanted.

From 96-2005 or so, I bought basically every gaming magazine I could find at a newsstand. I had entire runs of smaller titles that came out here. Intelligent Gamer is the one that springs to mind. For the ones I picked up mid-run (Ultra Gameplayers, Tips and Tricks, Gamepro, etc) I had every issue from the time that I started buying them, but game stores didn't really do back issues then. At one point I think I had one completely full bookshelf and stacks around here and there. Then I decided to sell and throw away a bunch of stuff and I threw out almost every video game magazine I owned. Currently I have 2014 preview issue of EGM, and a few issues of Nintendo Power: 25th anniversary issue, Wii U launch issue, and 2 copies of the final issue. I think I have a handful of Retro Gamer issues too, but that's different in my mind since it isn't so much covering anything new, or isn't the full focus anyway.

Anyway! Game magazines! Love em

 

[χKai]

9-Year Old me was stoked AF when I discovered they had gaming mags at my local library; it was enough to keep me coming back on a regular basis, and check them out in order, as much as I could, until I got through 'em all and had to wait for new issues to be published.

The mag I read? It was back when it was still called Electronic Gaming Monthly instead of EGM, and introduced me to a lot of new things, not just games or consoles but terminology and aspects of gaming my young mind hadn't considered beyond the activity of playing the game itself.

/inb4 hate t(^-^t)

 

[bjork]

No hate here, the only magazine I ever kind of scoffed at was... I think it was PC Accelerator? Because it was trying so hard to be cool and edgy but came off as anything but. I liked EGM from back in the Ed Semrad days and it was always fun to open and see what new games were coming out.

 

[Lazerith]

Game Informer
Official Dreamcast Magazine
EGM <Electronic Gaming Monthly>
Next Generation

A few others I have forgotten about, I am sure.

 

[MasterEn]

my first gaming magazine was also my first magazine ever: nintendo power.

first issue featuring kirby.
much later, i started getting gamepro:

for the articles, of course.

 

[Renirambus]

Nintendo Power
GamePro
Electronic Gaming Monthly
Tips & Tricks

But mostly Nintendo Power.

 

[Dyne]

I was a GamePro/Nintendo Power kid!

Hell yeah! Me too

 

[Cuestionador]

Club Nintendo, Next Level and Extreme PC.

 

[Yousef]

Call me Spoderman cuz this thread has been stickied.

 

[Ikagura 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.

 

[Antilocal123]

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.

 

[shadowcat]

I used to get Gamepro and Nintendo Power from the library as a kid and save up for the games I thought looked cool in them.

 

[Amakuchi]

The only gaming magazine I ever read was Game Informer, I remember this was the first issue I remember reading. I always wondered what happened to this game when I read about it, only to find out decades later that it got cancelled LOL.

 

[ThirteeTooBeets]

I looked through many here and there but I one I was very loyal to was a local magazine named LOADED