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Video Games & Computer Entertainment magazine tribute archive

Should I also post scans of ads?


  • Total voters
    19

Jason Liang

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Issue #19 8/1990
 

Jason Liang

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Issue #20 9/1990

COVER
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FEATURES
- Inside Gaming: The Future of CD Games
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REVIEWS
- Ultima VI: The False Prophet by Ed Dille
- Prince of Persia by Bill Kunkel

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Jason Liang

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Issue #22 11/1990

COVER
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FEATURES
- Interview with Alexei Pajitnov (Tetris)
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REVIEWS
- Castlevania III by Chris Bieniek <- one of my favorite reviews
- Final Fantasy (NES) by Clayton Walnum
- Dragon Warrior II (NES) by Chris Bieniek
- Ys: Books I and II by Lee Pappas
- Champions of Krynn by Alan Roberts
- Megatraveller 1 by Bradley Andrews
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ADS
- Worlds of Ultima: The Savage Empire
- Wing Commander
REVENGE OF THE Origin STRIKES BACK
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Jason Liang

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Issue #23 12/1990

COVER

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REVIEWS
- Yo! NOID (NES) by Chris Bieniek
- Back to the Future 2 and 3 by Howard H. Wen (here we go again...)
- Rings of Medusa by Bill Kunkel (consigned to oblivion)
- Leisure Suit Larry 3 by Ed Dille
- Secret of the Silver Blades by Frank Tetro Jr.

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ADS

- Eye of the Beholder
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TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Metal Hurlant

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Yes, this was WAY before the internet so you couldn't pirate anything, and game makers could charge a premium. Nowadays if a game is too expensive, people will still play it but no one will buy it...

You have to remember, in 1989 computer gaming was still very niche. Most American households didn't even have a personal computer. This was several years before Myst, and Myst was one of the first games families bought computers to play (and get online. Myst came at the right moment when the internet was starting to catch on). In 1989 if your house had a computer, it's primary use wasn't for gaming. You bought a NES for $150 to play games. You didn't buy a personal computer for $2000 to play games.

As Unkillable Cat mentioned, piracy was definitely a thing and widespread back in the early 80s. I had hundreds of games for the C64 and Atari XL/XE and eventually the Amiga but only purchased and kept maybe 10. There were some niche shops that sold copy cartridges (eg. Expert) to the public. The prices were way too high for me to buy and keep games so I copied them. What was usually done is you buy a game, copy or crack it, return it for a refund and give copies to your friends. Your friends did the same. Eventually, after a couple of years the major stores caught onto this and wouldn't refund or exchange unless the game wouldn't work.

It was a big thing in Australia. I lived in a remote area but even travelling to Sydney every few months on school holidays I was able to meet people who had copies of games. Word got out (mostly by visiting stores and talking with other people) where to meet and recall State and Federal police officers would be there to copy games. I'd bring blank disks to give to people and they'd come back the next day full of games. It seemed everyone and their dog had either a C64, Atari XL/XE or something similar and most of my friends at school had one. Maybe it wasn't the case in the States, but definitely in Australia. I was seeing Amiga's (not so much Atari ST) flying off the shelves around early 1990. Shops couldn't order them in fast enough.

But I do wonder with prices not going up that much but costs (wages, rent, electricity, etc) have. Anyway, back on topic....

So, hopefully, we're going to see this magazine cover the foundations of modern computer gaming as it is being laid, month by month- Prince of Persia. Loom. Monkey Island. Wing Commander. Star Control 2. Wolfenstein 3D. CotDS.

:bro:
 

Jason Liang

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My meaning was that growing up in the late 80's and early 90's, we didn't expect our entertainment to be free, the way we do now due to all the free pirated content on the internet. So people thought it was normal to pay for games, movies, books and even porn. People used to *rent* games, movies, and porn! Ownership still had meaning. Nowadays, purchasing a game almost feels like charity- you're "supporting" or "backing" the developers or the gaming industry, but you're not actually "buying" anything that has exchange-value. Yes, games still have use-value, but games no longer have exchange-value. When you used to buy a video game cartridge or even a computer game, you could resell it later for $5-$15. If you bought a computer game, you would swap it with your friend's computer game disks when you were done playing it. These days content is consumed, you are spending your money on pure consumption, but back 25 years ago, your games were actually commodities that could be resold or traded. Even RPG books could be traded, gifted or resold!

For me this is the best explanation why games today can't be sold for the value they used to sell for before the internet. Games like most forms of entertainment have completely lost their exchange-value- their value as commodities- so consumers will no longer pay so much for them anymore. Just like there is a real limit to how much you would be willing to pay for lunch, even a very good lunch. You might enjoy a good lunch more than a gold watch, but you'll pay more for the gold watch since you can always resell it at near the value you purchased it.
 
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Jason Liang

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Just for some more perspective...

- VG&CE ran from December 1988 to the final issue, #55, in August 1993. Ronald Reagan was still the President. No one knew what a POTUS was, the acronym hadn't been coined yet.
- The fall of the Berlin Wall happened nearly a year after the first issue was published, on November 9th, 1989.
- The Soviet Union did not dissolve until December 26th, 1991, a year after issue #23 that I've posted. The Soviet Union still existed, and no one would have guessed it would collapse. Hence the significance of Tetris.
- Remember that the Seoul Summer Olympics had been held a few months earlier in 1988.
- The Barcelona Olympics with the Dream Team was summer of 1992. Hence the Jordan vs. Bird cover of the VG&CE May 1992 issue.
- Three months after issue #1 was published, Blake Griffin would be born, on March 16th, 1989.
- The last issue of VG&CE, #55 (August 1993), reviewed 7th Guest and Betrayal at Krondor.
- Issue #54 reviewed Ultima VII: Serpent's Isle and Lemmings 2.
- Myst was published the month following the last issue of VG&CE, in September 1993.
 
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Jason Liang

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You have to remember, in 1989 computer gaming was still very niche. Most American households didn't even have a personal computer.


Meanwhile almost every Western-European home had at least a computer in the house. It could be a PC, but odds were more likely that it was a Sinclair, Commodore or Atari computer. Consoles didn't start to catch on in Europe until 1988 or so.


I'm pretty sure that what accounts for this difference was the North American gaming crash in the mid-80's. Which I had never even heard of until yesterday, re-reading some of the earlier articles. But yeah, I remember when I moved to the US in 1985, and was living with my cousins, they did have an Atari system. But they didn't play it, it was just tossed in the closet. That gaming crash made a huge cultural and economic difference in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

$3.2 billion industry -> $100 million in two years, holy shit.

Computer gaming did not become mainstream popular again in the US until Myst. Myst was the first computer game after the crash that became a mainstream success. Before Myst, Tetris was considered a huge success in the computer gaming industry. Tetris sold 200,000 copies. A "successful" game was one that sold 100,000 copies. Myst sold 6,000,000 copies. So Myst is incredibly important in gaming history. But again, it's not all about the game itself, because households were starting to buy computers to get online, since AOL had started to offer internet for Windows systems in late 1992.

My parents were actually quite forward-thinking compared to our neighbors. We bought our first computer in 1991 when I was 11.

We bought a Mac:0-13:

UPDATE:

I'm searching for some sales figures

1981 Ultima I 20,000
1981 Wizardry I 24,000
1988 Pool of Radiance 264,536 SSI
1989 SimCity 1,000,000 (by 1992) Maxis
1989 Prince of Persia 14,000, including Japanese port 24,000 (by 1990)
1990 King's Quest V 500,000 Sierra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pool_of_Radiance
wikipedia said:
SSI sold 264,536 copies of Pool of Radiance for computers in North America, three times that of Heroes of the Lance, an AD&D-licensed action game SSI also released that year. It became by far the most successful game in the company's history; even the hint book outsold any earlier SSI game.

So there you go. The model for the modern tactical rpg was a game that sold 264,536 copies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardry:_Proving_Grounds_of_the_Mad_Overlord#cite_note-14
wikipedia said:
Wizardry shipped in September 1981 and almost immediately became a hit, the most popular Apple II game of the year. By 30 June 1982 it had sold 24,000 copies, making it one of the best-selling computer RPGs in North America up until that time. In comparison, Temple of Apshai (1979) had sold 30,000 copies and Ultima (1981) sold 20,000 copies at the time.[12] Electronic Games described Wizardry in 1983 as "without a doubt, the most popular fantasy adventure game for the Apple II at the present time." Based on sales and market-share data, Video magazine listed the game tenth on its list of best selling video games in February 1985, and ninth on the best seller list in March 1985, with II Computing listing Wizardry third on its list of top Apple II games as of October–November 1985.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_of_Persia_(1989_video_game)#Reception
wikipedia said:
Despite a positive critical reception, the game was initially a commercial failure in North America, where it had sold only 7,000 units each on the Apple II and IBM PC platforms by July 1990. It was when the game was released in Japan and Europe that year that it became a commercial success. In July 1990, the NEC PC-9801 version sold 10,000 units as soon as it was released in Japan. It was then ported to various different home computers and video game consoles, eventually selling 2 million units worldwide by the time its sequel Prince of Persia 2: The Shadow and the Flame (1993) was in production.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SimCity_(1989_video_game)
wikipedia said:
SimCity was very successful, selling one million copies by late 1992.

I think this figure is for PC, and doesn't include sales for the SNES cart. So there, you'd think SimCity sold like 50 million copies. Nope, it sold 1 million after 3 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King's_Quest_V
wikipedia said:
King's Quest V was voted "Best Multimedia Fantasy/Adventure Game" by readers of MPC World. It originally sold 500,000 copies, making it the bestselling computer game for the next five years.

Not sure what that means... maybe non-CD games? But let's just say King's Quest V's 500,000 was a sales benchmark until Myst and Doom. The source of the figure claims that KQV was the first Sierra game to sell 500,000.
 
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Unkillable Cat

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I'm pretty sure that what accounts for this difference was the North American gaming crash in the mid-80's. Which I had never even heard of until yesterday, re-reading some of the earlier articles. But yeah, I remember when I moved to the US in 1985, and was living with my cousins, they did have an Atari system. But they didn't play it, it was just tossed in the closet. That gaming crash made a huge cultural and economic difference in the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_video_game_crash_of_1983

$3.2 billion industry -> $100 million in two years, holy shit.

This is true. The Crash primarily affected the U.S. market, the European and Asian markets weren't hit that hard by it as they weren't big on video game consoles (except for an unending deluge of Pong consoles still left lying around since the late 1970s). The biggest home computers in the U.S. at the time of the Crash were the Atari 800, the TRS Tandy and the Apple II. As they were considered to be workhorses first and everything else second, they weren't affected much by a video game crash so they fared OK (mostly...can't speak much about the Atari systems due to how Atari is blamed for The Crash). The Apple II quickly became the nexus point of video gaming on home computers though, at least in the US. The IBM PC was still in its infancy during these years and didn't have the market shares of the other platforms...but it would get there eventually.

I've left out one company from the above, and that's Commodore. Commodore was big then and growing larger, mostly because it had a strong foothold in Europe even by then, despite competition from Clive Sinclair and his Spectrum computers, The Acorn Company and their eponymous computers and later from Alan Sugar's and his Amstrad computers. In short, the Commodore 64 was a juggernaut of a low-cost home computer and kept Commodore going for far longer than they should have. Anyway, as the aforementioned systems were all home computers they didn't give a toss about The Crash and just kept up their pace. But it did have one impact, and that was leaving a big vacuum in the video gaming market, as there were no big names dominating the market anymore...and a lot of people saw an opportunity there and tried to seize it.

This led to a short but prosperous time period known as the Age of the Bedroom Coders - an era where one or two blokes beavering away at their home computers could cobble together a game, send it to a publishing house and be almost guaranteed to get signed up and published - and if their game was good they'd actually get famous in the process! From this era sprang names like David Braben and Ian Bell with Elite, Matthew Smith with Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy, Mike Singleton with Lords of Midnight (just to name one of his phenominal titles) and tons of other game makers known first and foremost by their names, not the names of the software houses they worked for. This era lasted from about late 1983 to 1988 or thereabouts, by that time the dust had settled in the video game market, Nintendo and Sega had made landfall and the amateurish air of video game development had mostly faded away.

In retrospect, that era can also be called The First Age of Shovelware. We're seeing a Second Age of Shovelware right now, courtesy of easily accessible game maker engines, an army of clueless and talentless hipsters that see their "games" distributed with massive ease via Steam, everyone favorite digital distributor. But I digress, we're talking about the past here.

Computer gaming did not become mainstream popular again in the US until Myst. Myst was the first computer game after the crash that became a mainstream success.

While Myst was a big game that sold a lot of copies, I strongly doubt it was the first post-Crash computer game to become a mainstream success. I can name two other examples, one from 1987 and one just three months after Myst's release. (It's because its release is so close to Myst, and that its success is far greater than Myst's ever was, that I consider it a viable challenger to your claim, despite coming after Myst.)

The 1987 example is Dungeon Master, a U.S.-made dungeon crawler that was originally an exclusive Atari ST-title (though conversions to other systems shortly followed). It sold 40.000 copies in its first year of release alone, and due to its sophisticated copy protection you can easily double that number going forward. It's the best-selling Atari ST-title of all time, and the reason for many Atari ST purchases, as well as many 1Mb memory upgrades for the Amiga (as the Amiga port required 1Mb of memory instead of the standard 512 Kb). Considering this was 6 years before Myst, that's saying something.

The other 1993 example makes Myst's success look kinda pathetic in comparison, in all honesty. Released in December 1993, this game single-handedly changed the game industry forever. It changed priorities in the game industry, it showed that the PC was a viable game market, which brought in new people to the industry that brought in new ideas, and set the tone for video games in the 1990s in general. Myst may have sold 6 million copies overall (and due to it being a CD-ROM title there was almost no pirate copies available of Myst, which is saying something) but this other title sold an estimated 2.5 million copies from release until 1999, but had an estimated 10-20 million players it in the first 2 years after its release. (See what piracy can do to a title?)

This game quite literally spelled Doom for the gaming industry as people knew it back then, it would never be the same again. And I'll promise you this: A lot of families may have bought PCs in 1994 because the parents wanted their kids to play Myst, but the kids wanted to play Doom first and foremost. And Doom had online Deathmatch, so kids made sure their parents bought Internet-ready computers. Because the Internet was catching on in early 1994, but no one back then could imagine how big it was going to get...but it could be used to play Doom, so that was a reason to get access to it.

As for Myst being important in gaming history? Not as much as you'd like to think. It's big in the history of PC and Macintosh gaming, yes. But so is Doom, and Doom is YUGE when it comes to gaming in general. Tetris is probably the game with the most amount of conversions to other platforms in gaming history...but Doom has not only been ported to a truckload of platforms, but also digital cameras and printers! Doom doesn't just permeate gaming, it's trying to transcend it.
 

Jason Liang

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I agree about Doom. It had a larger influence on the modern gaming industry than Myst. But I think you'd agree, Myst was the game that got the computers sold in the first place and created public legitimacy for computer gaming. So I would count Myst and Doom together as the games in 1993 that really broke that barrier for computer gaming. We're not talking about innovation here- Myst is Zork and Doom is Faceball- but how a game, by its own merits and by luck and opportunity, breaks through. A few years later, Warcraft didn't invent RTS (the innovations came from Command and Conquer and Dune II), nor was it the first networked game (my cousin would play Red Alert with his roommates through network) but Warcraft and Diablo and battle.net established mainstream popularity for networked gaming.

Coming out a few months before Myst, 7th Guest sold 2 million copies. But the sales figures for Myst really do dwarf everything else that came before it, 7th Guest included. Again, looking at the economic side of things, not the retrospective side where Doom clearly has outgrown Myst. I just feel like younger gamers don't get how economically and culturally significant Myst was.

SimCity, released in February 1989, had sold 1 million copies by the end of 1992. Myst: 6 million.

The computer gaming market from 1988 to mid 1993, when VG&CE was published, is completely different economically from the computer gaming market today. It's quite ironic that the magazine ended literally a month before the explosion began. But the magazine's staff saw Doom coming a mile away- it was the only magazine afaik that put Faceball on the cover and gave it feature coverage. They recognized the future of computer gaming. The other publications only jumped on a year later with Wolfenstein 3D.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_best-selling_PC_games

If you sort the table by release date, the only games that come before Myst are Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Populous, 7th Guest and Return to Zork. And I'm positive the figures for Populous and Carmen Sandiego include console ports.

Update:
Crusader Kings 2- 1.1 million
EUIV- 1 million
Age of Empires 2- 2 million
Baldur's Gate- 2 million
Baldur's Gate II- 2 million
Diablo- 2.5 million
Civ IV- 3 million

On the other hand-
The Sims- 11.24 million
Diablo 3- 12 million
Minecraft- 25 million
 
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Unkillable Cat

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Thanks for that, this plugs up the holes in my collection.

Retromags has the final missing issue listed as being in the pipeline, so we shouldn't have to wait long...
 

Jason Liang

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The final missing issue, VG&CE #43 August 1992, was uploaded by The Video Game History Foundation (shout outs to them!). This is the final issue with Katz, Kunkel and Worley. I've uploaded the issue to my google drive box linked above.

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In celebration, here are the signoff articles from Worley, Katz and Kunkel~

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Finally the computer game previews, reviews and strategy columns, including Ultima Underworld, Treasures of the Savage Frontier, Buck Rogers and Shadow Sorcerer!

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