Be Excellent To Each Other

Crikey, I thought something looked different. Hopefully not a prelude to the ol' AP, "Um, we don't actually have that much to review - here's an article about JFK's head-blossoming."

Actually, that was ace.

Or a beanbag review.

Or a *shudder* joystick round-up.

I think I may cancel Edge, citing the prog porn as a reason.

I dare say it is going that way - I have several older issues about that I'm leafing through from a few years back and they're huge and thick and absolutely PACKED with stuff.

I'm surprised people still buy games magazines. They're far too expensive, are typically out-of-date by the time they go to press, the editorial is bland (or in Edge's case: so far up its own bottom it's a chore to read), most of the content can be found on the web for free and the scores most reviewers give are often questionable at best. And don't even get me started on cover CD/DVD cover-mounts and other "freebies".

Even Retro Gamer, which was a firm favourite, has taken a massive turn for the worse. I had to stop buying it when page-filler crap like Retro Booty started to appear. And I wish they'd ditch the letter pages, too.

I buy games mags because I don't get a good wi-fi signal on the toilet.

Rarely buy it these days. I glance over it in WH Smiths and only get it if it grabs my fancy. If I read another interview with Eugene Jarvis I'll fucking scream.

I like magazines and it breaks my heart that there's nowt exceptional out there anymore. Retro Gamer used to be the best, but it's been a slow decline since it was bought by Imagine. At least it has a style and different writers are actually identified.

But there's no sketch of he who shall not be named.

, but for music magazines. I feel your pain by association.

One of the things I hate most about a lot of modern games mags is this constant referral to "we" and "us", as if they genuinely expect readers to believe that all the staff and freelancers pile into a room and review every single game as a hive-mind collective or something.

I don't think that's a new thing, man.

Do you mean... they don't?!? Wow.. I always imagined all the reviewers being the best of mates and having loads of fun reviewing games!!

I'm pretty sure they had that when I still read it. That was a fair while ago.

I like mags, and read HiFi+ on the bog.

I have a huge stack of Land Rover magazines in the bathroom

Well Retro Gamer has picked itself out of a 6 month doldrums with excellent bits on Ultima and Legend.

Game mags are brilliant, you should all buy more of them.

I smell vested interest there

I still have my name down at the newsies for the next edition of Amstrad Action. The next month page of the last edition I purchased promised much, but its now 14 years late.

I was really sad when Super Play ended. Even if it was down to four reviews per issue. I loved that magazine.

*sigh* Retro Gamer runs another fucking article on Dizzy this month. Chasing its tail. We'll be back to Matthew bastard Smith soon.

The US Department of History is on the phone; we're running out of past!

I can't remember the last time I bought a games magazine.

The internet is more than enough, see also frottage.

Is that the vacuum behind the big bang?

I made the mistake of flicking through a stray copy of Edge at the local bookstore the other day. The sight of a 50 page article about game developers in Texas was enough to freeze my blood in its veins.

Yep. Huge goppin photos of programmers. I really wish writers would stop sniffing around their arseholes. Fuck developers. I don't want to hear from them.

Interview with Ben Dalglish.

Interview with Archer Maclean.

Comparison feature of Speccy/Amstrad game where the Amstrad game comes out on top.

Feature on 'The Last Ninja'.

Ben Dalglish being interviewed by Archer Maclean.

Ben Dalglish being interviewed by the last ninja.

Feature about why Renegade on the Amstrad is better than The Last Ninja on the Spectrum.

How 'Robotron' was made.

How 'Robotron' was made.

How 'Robotron' could be made better if Ben Dalglish played flute on it.

Interview with everyone who has ever worked at Atari.

Interview with everyone who has ever worked on Robotron.

How 'Robotron' influenced Last Ninja.

R-Type on the speccy and why it's not as good as the Amstrad version of Robotron.

Desert island discs article where the guy who made Robotron picks out his favourite games. Including such favourites as Robotron and Solitaire and some pinball shit.

Ben Dalglish interviewing Atari about their favourite Atari games.

Feature about the Neo Geo and how Metal Slug would have made a great Last Ninja game.

Rainbow Islands and why it looks better on a green screen.

Ben Dalglish's top eight Neo Geo Pocket games.

Archer Maclean's guide to completing the Last Ninja on the Amstrad.

Oric computers and why they are better than Spectrums.

Ben Dalglish's favourite ninjas.

Interview with Amstrad Action's Sam Stradaction. Including his eight games that are better than the Spectrum versions.

That is all very true. Still, at least it's not the guy who wrut E.T. talking about how making E.T. was just like everything else in the world ever EVERY FUCKING MONTH or something.

I was asked to do some writing for a Future mag a couple of years back, the timing wasn't right to keep that up and I moved into my current career instead but I found the hive mind business a little tricky to adapt to, you can't just write normally and swap your I's for We's as it comes out wrong. I forget what explanation the editor gave for the 'universal voice' being used, but there was certainly an element of not wanting the author ego to detract from the subject of the review, as was the case back when I was reading the NME and the Maker in the Nineties. Oddly enough one's name would still be used at the bottom of the article, so readers would get to learn styles of authorship anyway.

When we put on the band Subcircus* in Coventry, my colleague Neil Kulkarni reviewed the gig in MM and it got the lead that week, good news for the band and the venue but talking to people afterwards I felt they were reading it to be reading Neil, not learning abut the band. Looking then at my own more locally published first-person reviews, I was doing similarly and altered my style a little, leading to people discussing with me the music I covered that they were interested in as opposed to that which I just happened to be gobbing off about. I suppose there's an argument that if you love or hate something enough to write about it, you are better off not doing so in such a strong manner as to dominate or stifle the debate. When published, you've got a platform others don't (or didn't, before blogging). It doesn't make your opinion more valid, just louder. As that loudness is a given, you don't need to overdo it. Ferrari drivers don't need to go 100mph everywhere. Well, apart from Alonso and Massa.

One advantage to the universal I suppose is that it allows all writers to feel they are contributing to an end product together, as opposed to just throwing their own brainthink on a pile with the rest for someone else to sort. No-one puts finger to key without being aware of where it'll come out at the other end and how it'll fit.

*see video in that lovely songs thread, if you can be arsed to click half the links I posted to find it.

You forgot the three-monthly little boxout somewhere referencing Llamasoft.

the thing that gets me about RG is how much of a fanboy Darran is.

he takes a pop at the Speccy every chance he gets. I reckon you can find an example in almost every issue. I mean I can be a bit of a Speccy fanboy but I'm not running a nationally distributed magazine that's supposed to be the authority on such matters.

I let your previous post go, but now I'm going to wade in. What a bitter Speccy fanboy you sound. RG does have alot of problems but I believe it pretty much usually calls it right regarding the 8 bit versions of games. And its a refreshing change from the shit publications of the day that were blatantly Speccy and C64 biased such as C+VG.

I can't see any Speccy hate in the mag. Grow up, it's not 1986 anymore, these things shouldn't be looked at through Sir Clive rose tinted glasses.

Retro Gamer could really do without the user content crutch. Really, really badly. Look, Darran and chums, I don't give a pity fuck what SirClive and Rinoa think was the best version of Paperboy, and I'd certainly rather not bother with a four-page article on how they and the forum think it holds up. And then there's the classic regular 'bits from the forum to pad the mag' page, two-page spreads of a single bloody reader review and the aforementioned massive and entirely redundant letters pages.

Basically, once you're spending that much time just reprinting forum threads, you've gone badly wrong somewhere.


I don't mind (or indeed notice) that so much. But I am getting increasingly wound up by the repeated mentions of Garou and Strider like it's some clever in-joke and not just smug, tedious repetition for no real end. Or Darran using the mag to constantly promote his depressingly poor Youtube thing.

sorry Chin if I came across that way, as ever I don't always explain myself particularly well before making statements.

I do have a sub for RG and I enjoy large parts of each issue but I really can do without them recycling the same old topics (there's enough good new stuff though to keep me subbing tho).

I've got love for the Speccy as it's the machine I grew up with but I'm not silly enough to not realise I'd be exactly the same about the other machines if I had those.

I used to post on the RG forums (in fact I started when it was still under Imagine) but I gradually stopped when I realised the entire forum was just a cock sucking feedback loop for the mag. I don't give a shit what some cock from the forum thinks. I want to read professional writers not a load of fanboys.

I now only buy the mag when it has something in it I want to read. Like the Sam article this month. I'm very glad I don't subscribe.

it's time for the obligatory 'I wish Arcade was still running' post.

there we go... I feel better now!

I tried Retro Gamer for the first time with the Ghost 'n' Goblins issue. Largely I thought it was OK although I couldn't imagine wanting to read that much about retro gaming every month so it would be, perhaps, an infrequent purchase. However I was taken aback by the outstandingly poor quality of some of the pages. The column by Ian Lee was the worst thing I have ever read in a 'professional' publication - cringing embarrassing trash. If I had picked the magazine up in Smiths and flicked it open to that I wouldn't have dreamed of a purchase.

Campbell's opening introduction to his Ghost 'n' Goblins article was treated to a clanging editorial intervention. Campbell states that the games have "some pretty mediocre game design" immediately followed by a "Not true" 'Ed' comment. I' d be pretty pissed off if that was my article being commented on in such a way without explanation or retort.

A joystick round up and Edge rivaling amount of pictures of programmers (except old unemployed ones) tipped the balance a little too much for me. But what do I expect?

x infinity. Good god. pictures of them too! PICTURES!

I used to post on the boards, too. Then I got told what an utter stupid cunt I was by "Opa Opa" when Darren asked for a lend of some original GTA release material. What Chinny said, too.

Shit, although not a massive surprise with all the editor changes (about 1 per year), I did enjoy reading it but
I would never consider it worth paying £6 a month for ( I'm as poor as a church mouse)

I'll have to let my friend know who does subscribe.

I wandered into HMV for the first time in years, and could barely find the PC games section it was that small, pc gaming seems to be dead.

Six quid a month?! Bloody hell. That said, Total PC Gaming also closed three months ago and that was a cheaper variety, wasn't it?

pc mags? still exist?

anyway, not posting on rg forums anymore as well, understand them printing some forum threads this way, think it looks good at imagine internally (WE INVOLVE USERS) and better than the static content they had before (printing ebay prices of consoles)

I don't even flick through gaming mags at the newsagents anymore.

It's all here on the information super highway.

What? This month?

Getting it now then!

Boxed retail, maybe, but Steam et al are huge now, and the MMOs continue to print money.

Hang on a minute - There's no Last Ninja article in the latest edition at all.

Bastards.

This month in Retro Gamer: fucking Rainbow Islands again. Plus a compilation is chosen as a must-play game.

Number 30 in our very own top 50. http://uptojump.co.uk/?p=1123

We should reference our top 50 more since it is one of the biggest collaborative things we've done. That chart also says an awful lot about the gameplaying habits of the forum.