Recommend me good gaming magazines from the 80s/90s

[Lady Error]

I thought Ambermoon was the sequel?

 

[Rincewind]

I thought Ambermoon was the sequel?

I think he's referring to the last episode of the trilogy that never materialised. The screenshots in the article are of a demo of that third game, I think.

 

[Jarpie]

I wonder if that was planned sequel before they actually made Ambermoon, as the first game was released in 1992 and the sequel Ambermoon was released in 1993, and the article is from 1991...or maybe it's something else they were working on.

 

[Rincewind]

I wonder if that was planned sequel before they actually made Ambermoon, as the first game was released in 1992 and the sequel Ambermoon was released in 1993, and the article is from 1991...or maybe it's something else they were working on.

Yeah, things get a bit confusing with the dates, but basically that's my interpretation of it too.
I would bet on it that they reused parts of that "revolutionary 3D engine which will be the future of dungeon-crawlers" the article talks about for Albion, which came out in 1995 for the PC only.

 

[Rincewind]

This is the intro comment for the CGW issues from 1989:

You feel a twinge of sorrow walking into this gallery, as you notice that less and less games are released for the classic Apple II and Atari 8-bit computers.

 

[Rincewind]

I must quote the starting paragraph of the about page of the CGW Museum website:

The Computer Gaming World Museum is dedicated to the preservation and presentation of all items related to the first magazine specifically dedicated to computer games. Once the Museum's current scans expansion project is completed, you will find scans of every CGW issue, from its debut in November of 1981 to its last issue issue in November of 2006. The Museum's particular focus is on the first 100 CGW issues, which cover a time period that represents the birth and expansion of an industry that is today much, much different than what it was. One of the best ways to explore these early years is by reading what was said back then about the industry, the programmers, and of course, the games. For this, there is no better publication than CGW.

I couldn't agree more, and that's exactly what I'm going to do -- I'm going to become a "reader" of this prestigious magazine, and I'll go through the issues more or less in real-time.

November 1981 starts today!

 

[octavius]

I'm up to April 2003 myself.

 

[Serus]

Poland had lots of good video game magazines, but despite cult following most of them only lasted for 6-7 years though. Difficult situation in the market, sharp competition and then internet killed them one by one.

Top Secret was one of the first (1990-96, unsuccesfully relaunched in 2002-3) entirely devoted to video games (not computer culture in general like earlier Bajtek or to one platform like Moje Atari) - for Atari, Commodore 64, Amiga, PC.

Then they had some conflict and part of the team moved on to create another title, Secret Service (1993-2001, unsuccessfully relaunched in 2014). In later issues they also wrote about some console games.

There was also Gambler (1993-99) which was more thorough, published larger walkthroughs and lots of other stuff.

I used to purchase all of them in different periods of time, but I lost most of my collections moving from one appartement to another. Now I have their whole archive in scanned pdfs for nostalgic consumption.

The only non-console focused title that survived the test of time and market was CD-Action (1996-until today), mostly because they added CDs (since 2018 DVDs) with full games to each issue. I never really liked them as much as the previously mentioned, but some of the authors from the other three found harbor in CD Action when the competiton closed doors.

There are also magazines devoted to consoles (mostly Playstation) but I never had any interest in these. Video game press is dying however in Poland. CD Action only has 4 editions yearly and sales around 70k copies. It's only a matter of time now.

Well said. I only wish to add that Secret Service, unfortunately, lived long enough to become commercialised s**t giving 10 of 10 to titles of publishers who advertised them in there. Also Secret Service is the one that had the infamous review of "King of Dragon Pass" that went like this: "It doesn't have any animations, 1/10". It was quite good in the first years though. Top Secret died before it had time to sink to those levels and was ok to the bitter end. I was regularly buying both but i have much better memories of TS. Not sure about Gambler, only read a few.

 

[Ladonna]

https://archive.org/details/PCPowerplay

This one is still going here. I subscribed to it for a loooong time, but eventually the usual "politics" started seeping in.

I found out about Exile from an Exile III demo on the demo disk from one of the early editions. Also got the full Dark Side of the Sword Coast off one of the disks too. 56k internet was horrible when it came to huge demos and mods.

Just remembered something funny that happened with this magazine not long after the original Xbox was launched. This magazine started a special section for the Xbox, which put off a lot of readers. The magazine guys kept saying how inevitable it was, and how Xbox was the future, blah blah, so the subscribers started ripping out the Xbox section and mailing it back to PC Powerplays office. After about 3 months of this, the editor at the magazine gave in and they canned the Xbox section.

 

[Rincewind]

The review of Crush, Crumble and Chomp! from the very first CGW issue is delightful:

 

[The_Mask]

If you know Romanian, or if you could find anyone to translate for you, I'd recommend LEVEL.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

The review of Crush, Crumble and Chomp! from the very first CGW issue is delightful:

I had/have that on my vic-20. I picked up EAs The Movie Monster Game later. EA was ok I guess. Their Mail Order Monsters was far better IMHO, though I really think they should have included all the Archon mobs in that. At that time I loved Archon.

 

[Don Peste]

You might enjoy this

 

[Theodora]

is this the era of hardware ads that try to convince you buying a particular part will get you laid?

I couldn't agree more, and that's exactly what I'm going to do -- I'm going to become a "reader" of this prestigious magazine, and I'll go through the issues more or less in real-time.

November 1981 starts today!

Cute idea! But also like, I'm curious how long you think you'll last before you get bored of it? Not that I'm doubting that the quality of the work would've been a lot better back then, prior to games journalism being essentially an extension of publishers' marketing departments... ; ;

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

is this the era of hardware ads that try to convince you buying a particular part will get you laid?

That's every era, both hardware and software:

 

[octavius]

Good old days, when fun was allowed.

 

[Daemongar]

This many pages and nobody has mentioned Ahoy! yet? Published from 1984 - 1989 - with reviews of C64 and Amiga classic games. Also, you can track the progress and play the games of a younger Cleve. Read "A View from the Bridge" in any issue and Cleve is regularly mentioned for his contributions.

Archive: Ahoy! There is probably a better archive out there.
I really liked this magazine back in the day and did indeed spent brutal hours entering their version of Assembler to get the games working. Some of them before I even had a floppy disk.

 

[octavius]

Another magazine I can't remember ever seeing for sale here in Norway.