Thread 12003361

How much did you trust game magazines in the 90s?
Everyone is so jaded when it comes to reviews these days.

I trusted the criteria of one single mag that usually happened to be very aligned with my impressions, the others I read I took them with a pinch of salt and bought them just to have something to read or because they shipped with demos/VHS

>>12003392
How do they fit a huge VHS tape in the magazine?

>>12003361 (OP)
even then I could smell the bullshit
>uh this game is supposedly good but I still don't care
>damn this game sucks but I still want to play it

>>12003396
With plastic. Although sometimes it came separate and you had to ask the shop's manager for the VHS

>>12003361 (OP)
Vf4 sucked ass but 60 bucks for project justice wuznt fair either

>>12003396
Powered by WinRar

>>12003361 (OP)
I midly trust them some of them were bought by sone, others by ninentendo, etc...

I actively avoided most magazines since they are obviously just long-form ads. I quit reading Reader's Digest over that too.

>>12003807
Mi moro.

>>12003361 (OP)
for the most part i trusted them. though there was a few games that were highly rated that I didn't like and low rated games I enjoyed.

from mid 90s to early 2001 they often came with a VHS like this anon said: >>12003392 but here it cost twice the prize when it came with that VHS. After 2002-2003 they often came with DVD too, but not price increase then.

Official playstation magazine came with a demo disc, that it was the same for whole Europa except France and Deutschland.

About reviews they were too high for most of the games, except those tha were plain bad.

>>12003396
Packaging.

>huge
Video tapes aren't that big zoomie.

>>12003361 (OP)
magazines were decent enough until the mid 00, then they realised the market was too big to let some nerd compromise your sales with a bad review.

>>12003392
What mag?

>>12004084
Superjuegos, Spain. They weren't just AAA shills, and often praised and gave great scores to games that would be looked over by more shill magazines like Hobby ConTrolas (the one the other anon is posting scans of), they were also weebs but so was I. It was good at least until mid-6th gen, I remember the quality declined at that point because they weren't getting many sales and became 70% ads 30% content.

>>12004095
>they were also weebs but so was I.
Loading were even more hardcore about doing weebshit. Though they didn't have that extra magazine with fake Japanese models like Superwueos did.

>>12004328
They were ahead of the curve.

>>12003954
>then they realised the market was too big to let some nerd compromise your sales with a bad review.
I remember when reviews were honest enough to tell you not to buy the sequel of a game and told you to stick with the older game.

I didn't read them I would just go to the grocery store and steal the discs out of them

>>12003361 (OP)
Briton here:
I did not trust game magazines published by Future Publishing, as they were very anti-Sega. Even Future's Sega Magazine was negative about Sega! Cunts. That said, although I dislike Future's "Edge" magazine for being anti-Sega and sucking Sony and Nintendo cock, I was pleased when they gave high scores and good reviews to Sega games. For example when they grudgingly gave Saturn Virtua Fighter 2 a 9/10, I knew the game had to be something really special.

>>12004513
I liked Future publishing editions, but I couldn't bear any era of EDGE, they strike me as really snobs.

>>12004513
>Even Future's Sega Magazine was negative about Sega!
Guess they got proven right, huh?

>>12004328
That FF7 cover is forever kino.

>>12008214
Innit?

>>12003361 (OP)
I 100% trusted game magazines to tell me what I wanted to know, which was that cool games were coming out and they had particular names that I could use to identify them at the store. I believe I was justified in this in a very high percentage of cases (though not quite 100%). I have never been interested in making use of their recommendations concerning the quality of particular games, and since their writers were not paid to be expert critics and did not have time to thoroughly examine most games, I see no reason to pay attention to that aspect of their work at all when choosing or evaluating games for myself.

>>12003915
They're pretty big

>>12003361 (OP)
If you have any kind of intelligence you realize even old magazines were shilling. You give it a pass because of nostalgia but it doesn't change what it was.

>>12003361 (OP)
youtube killed any sort of need for reviews for me. I'm not buying a game until I see 5 minutes of uninteruppted gameplay at minimum. No talking. Me just taking it in.

>>12004095
I always felt bad for non American video game magazines. If shit like nintendo power barely talked with the people at nintendo I can't imagine the south american and europoor magazines had it any better. They barely had any exclusive info.

>>12008241
kek wtf? spics just slapped horny fan art on covers?

>>12014478
this is a nintendo problem, the average devs\publishers were less full of themselves and quite eager to promote their games.

>>12008214
Its now illegal in the UK

>>12014475
>gameplay

Story, music and soul > gameplay

>>12003361 (OP)
I just saw them as entertainment. It's not like I let them influence my taste in games.

>>12004485
the shonen jump mags never had the yugioh promo cards in them

>>12014475
yea I'm glad I can watch game play vids on youtube. has saved me a lot of download time and money in the past.

>>12003361 (OP)
I trusted them in the sense that I almost never bought a game if it had low review scores.
Around Dreamcast era when I started using my own money and didn't have to feel guilty about wasting my dad's money, I started getting more experimental and buying more 7/10 games like Cannon Spike.

Never "trusted" them, just wanted the screenshots and artwork they provided

>>12013190
>Hop in, dude

>>12016270
>325 pesetas
I hate inflation

A fair bit BUT with platforms that had demo discs a magazine preview/review was often another viewpoint to consider but would never beat hands-on gameplay.

>>12003361 (OP)
They were very sexist... so I trusted them with all of my heart.

Early gamepro. Stuff they gave near perfect scores (red face icon is highest 5 out of 5) stands the test of time.

There was a point in 1990-1991 and the ealy 16 bit era overall when they were wowed by graphics a bit too much, but that was just new gen enthusiasm as they were reviewing those new SNES games side by side with 4 more years of NES titles.

>>12003361 (OP)
I just looked at screenshots and decided on that. Only read reviews to imagine the game I like rather than whether its good, because even back then I assume the reviewer can be full of shit.
I lost trust in my fav magazine when they gave GTA2 5/10, I still bought it and still love the game more than 1 or 3.

>>12014480
Slav here. One of our magazines (kids-friendly, mind you) slapped this pic on its front cover.

>>12018169
Based. Only magazine with naked girls I bought as a kid were the anime magazines.

>>12003361 (OP)
Mexifag here. I trusted Club Nintendo like nothing else, but I was like 8 and it had no real competition, at least where I lived. I did start to become more aware of their role as a biased Nintendo shilling publication when the 5th gen started and it became clear Nintendo was losing a lot of third parties to the PlayStation, and they were left with promoting shit no one cares about because there was fuck all else between the big releases, and they did everything they could to pretend the competition didn't exist.

>>12019646
I've been trying to find that issue where one of the readers asked them how they felt about the N64 losing developers to the PS1. They gave a flimsy numbered list about why people should stick with Nintendo. This was in the late N64 era, just before the Game Cube and GBA.

>>12003361 (OP)
I always liked that EGM had little profiles for their reviewers in each issue, listing their most liked and most hated genres, so you could find one with taste like yours.

>>12019651
Yeah, I no longer kept up with them by then. In fact, the last issue I ever bought was the F-Zero X one from 1998. I still liked to go through my old issues for the sake of nostalgia, or to look up a guide for a game like Super Metroid.

>>12003361 (OP)
I never gave a shit about the reviews. It was just fun to read about new games. I simply bought anything that looked interesting to me, regardless of how it scored.

I loved collecting demo discs for the Dreamcast

I gave them all away to my cousin who didn't even say thank you. Oh well

>>12003361 (OP)
When it comes to trust, for me it was:

Demodisc > Gameplay VHS/DVD > Friends > Television program about video games > Magazines > Advertisement

>>12003361 (OP)
Gamepro was IGN before IGN

>>12016445
This, 1996-2002 era of demos was great. 2003-2006 was the last farawell

>>12025173
>G-Police
I have come here to shill this game. PC version is a bit better but you can't go wrong either way.

>>12025230
I played the demo countless times, what I enjoyed the most was the setting and sound desing was quite superior.

>>12026057
Fun fact: there are a number of bugs in the demo level that are present in the final release and are in the pc version as well, such as the traffic getting stuck going in circles and one section of an elevated road being invisible yet still having collision. The droid battle secret mission is the same level as the demo, just with a droid rather than havoc.

>>12026084
Thanks anon for that tip of info.

BTW, I never liked edge, even gameinformer was better.

>>12028548
Fun fact #2: the pc version has more detailed animated billboards including a wipeout trailer.