Gaming Magazines
and the discussion thereof
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Which was more boring?
Amiga Format  19%  [ 4 ]
CU Amiga  9%  [ 2 ]
Amiga Shopper  71%  [ 15 ]
Total votes : 21
How did this happen? Was somebody new brought in to run the mag, or did they just start feeling jittery and felt they had to ape their bigger brethren? Whichever, it's a damn shame.
Dudley wrote:
Not only that, Craig was saying (possibly even here) that they've stopped commissioning retro stuff too and are using RG reprints.

I had a chat with the editor about this the other day. Basically, my columns (I was doing three until issue 9) are definitely gone as a regular, and they're now more reliant on "lifts" at the moment. I got the impression that I might get some more columns if they have something on the covermount I can write about, but I suspect they will mostly be point-and-click adventures, so no more going on about Cannon Fodder, Pandora's Box, Civ II, SWOS, Speedball, Settlers and any other classic PC game that took my fancy. I asked whether GoG might be a means of getting more retro into the mag, but I've not had an answer to that yet.

As for the price-rise, bag and other shit, that is, sadly, what the market wants. I personally find it unbelievable that people would rather spend over five quid on a bag full of stuff with "free" junk, rather than four quid on a mag, but the market has proved enough times now that this is actually the case (at least for gaming mags). It's only an extremely vocal minority that reacts against this, and that's a real shame. At least Retro Gamer is free from a covermount at the moment (which I suspect is solely down to the magazine having no direct competition).
Dimrill wrote:
Cripes Edge is a bit chunky this month. Seems to be at least 25% thicker than normal. Pity those pages are all industry guff about what Studio X has for lunch.


Yes. Yes. Yes, what a load of boring shite.

Why do I subscribe still?
I've just cancelled my sub to NGamer - I just don't read it anymore, so there's no real point in subscribing. If Retro Gamer does go down the "stick a couple of quid on the price and sell it in a bag of shite" route I'll cancel that too, so fingers crossed they steer clear of that.
Craig, is Archer ever going to write for Retro Gamer again?
I subscribe to EDGE and Retro Gamer. I prefer EDGE. I can understand it seems a bit wanky and all that but I get my value for money with it. I like it more than GamesTM.

Retro Gamer's writing seems on the whole terrible with the occasional good article.
I cancelled my EDGE subscription last night.

Gonna spend my money on a White Dwarf Juxtapoz sub instead. Hopefully should spur me on to paint and draw more, rather than sitting on the bog groaning at wanky reviews.
Zardoz wrote:
rather than groaning on the bog shitting out wanky reviews.


How I read it FeeX.
Isn't that Jonarob?

:luv:
Dimrill wrote:
Craig, is Archer ever going to write for Retro Gamer again?

I've no idea. The only reasons he stopped is down to a lack of time, despite what some rumour-mongering idiots claimed. I know he's been busy moving house recently, and so perhaps he'll start again this year. (I've been bugging him about a couple of interviews myself, but although he's expressed interest, it's been about six months since the initial emails.)

Nirejhenge wrote:
Retro Gamer's writing seems on the whole terrible with the occasional good article.

Bit harsh.
CraigGrannell wrote:
(I've been bugging him about a couple of interviews myself, but although he's expressed interest, it's been about six months since the initial emails.)

Looking forward to that Dropzone article if it ever happens Craig :)

Nirejhenge wrote:
Retro Gamer's writing seems on the whole terrible with the occasional good article.

Ouch... :o
Ouch indeed. I still really enjoy it.
MikeB wrote:
Looking forward to that Dropzone article if it ever happens Craig :)

That one seems to have gone to the back burner of the back burner. Not a huge amount of interest from RG, although it was probably scuppered when I did the Defender piece. Frankly, I'd love to get the inside story on the arcade version, but there you go.
Nirejhenge wrote:
Retro Gamer's writing seems on the whole terrible with the occasional good article.

It is rather variable. Depends very much on the author of the piece in question. And the feature.

For example, the Back to the Eighties/Nineties pages are almost always inaccurate and poorly written garbage. The format Retrospection vary between really informative occasionally, and more frequently uninformative and full of holes. Where I do spot errors in features, and I do often and I'm hardly trainspottery, it makes me doubt the accuracy of the articles on games, developers, formats etc I do not know about. If that makes sense.

The 'good' writers and articles really are worth reading though. It's a great magazine - when it's at it's best.
One thing I do like about RG is that just like the magazines of old, I can have a fair idea of who has written a piece before I see the name rather than the bland "Edge" style.

I can't say I like every writers work, but there's enough there I do like to mean purchasing a subscription was always a no-brainer back from Issue 1, and I even re-subbed after the collapse/revival. Never missed an issue, and never had one I was disappointed in.
Sheepeh wrote:
One thing I do like about RG is that just like the magazines of old, I can have a fair idea of who has written a piece before I see the name rather than the bland "Edge" style.

While it's obviously not to everyone's tastes, that's the very idea of those Edge reviews. It's the Edge house style. back in the day, when I read the mag all the time, I had a hard time telling the difference between a Ste Curran review and a Mark Walbank review.

Conversely, I loved being able to tell the difference between a Zy Nicholson or a Tony Mott, in Super Play. I have time for each as long as it's done well, though my limited recent experience with Edge suggests the current writers are in thrall to the house style, rather than merely adhering to it.
throughsilver wrote:
While it's obviously not to everyone's tastes, that's the very idea of those Edge reviews. It's the Edge house style.

The whole 'Edge Borg' thing pisses me off (as it does with other magazines that do this). Hell, I even had a moan at Darran at one point, due to RG lacking credits (despite realising that most of the uncredited stuff was clearly written by him and Stu). With Edge, though, its 'authoritative' approach crumbles when some poor bastard freelancer fucks things up, like when Wario Ware got a dismissive 7—something the magazine's been trying to make up for since in various ways.
Craig, how do you get your en dash without fucking around with the character map or learning the ascii code?
On a Mac, an em dash is Command+Shift+- and an en dash is Option+Shift+-. On Windows, I've no idea.
Well, that's no good.
hold down Alt and type 0151 on the numeric keypad
I'll see if that works—oh, it does!
Anonymous X wrote:
Nirejhenge wrote:
I've just read issue 34 of Amiga Power. It's very good.
Tis indeed. Missed it first time round, so nice to read it (or what they have available) on the AMR site. Speaking of which, that site made me feel less pained recently when I had to recycle loads of my old APs - not because of space issues, but because they were all mouldy-ied up.



34 is one of those somewhere lost in my parent's house (and since they just moved, now forever), along with 49, 50,52 & 64 :(
Just realised 0151 is an em dash. 0150 is the en dash:

– en dash
— em dash
- hyphen

-edit- the en dash and hyphen look different in the text box, but look the same when posted. Hmmm.
They look fine on my Mac.
Actually, if I enlarge the text they look fine.
Pre dick table.
Forgive my ignorance, but what's the point of the different dashes? All the same, innit?
DavPaz wrote:
Forgive my ignorance, but what's the point of the different dashes? All the same, innit?


Oh young padawan, teach you I must.
Hero of Excellence wrote:
Nirejhenge wrote:
Retro Gamer's writing seems on the whole terrible with the occasional good article.

It is rather variable. Depends very much on the author of the piece in question. And the feature.

For example, the Back to the Eighties/Nineties pages are almost always inaccurate and poorly written garbage. The format Retrospection vary between really informative occasionally, and more frequently uninformative and full of holes. Where I do spot errors in features, and I do often and I'm hardly trainspottery, it makes me doubt the accuracy of the articles on games, developers, formats etc I do not know about. If that makes sense.

The 'good' writers and articles really are worth reading though. It's a great magazine - when it's at it's best.


Fair point, although Edge and probably most of the Future mags have much more financial clout and probably more than two in-house editorial staff members to put it all together each month - bless 'em.

As a freelancer it annoys me when mistakes creep in, either first or second hand. The Accolade feature this month has a fairly glaring error (pictorial rather than textual) - which wasn't of my making I might add - although no-one seems to have picked up on it. I'm standing by the rest of it though ;)

I'm surprised about the Back to the 80's features - I assumed they were put together with info taken from old magazine scans so should remain fairly accurate...
DavPaz wrote:
hold down Alt and type 0151 on the numeric keypad

Just feel the user-friendliness! Man, some of the Mac keyboard shortcuts are odd, but as a writer I think I'd have to kill myself if I had to hit five keys to get a sodding en-dash. Surely there's an easier method? (And, no, letting shit like Word attempt to get the dashes right—which it never does—doesn't count.)
MikeB wrote:
As a freelancer it annoys me when mistakes creep in, either first or second hand.

Retro Gamer's kind of odd when it comes to production, and it appears to be a balancing act between design, layout and subbing. For some reason, one of them must always irk. Lately, the design has improved, the subbing has gotten way better (in that mistakes aren't randomly being added to my articles), but the layout sent me into Hulk SMASH mode for a short while when I saw the Battlezone feature and the totally insane choice of screen grabs.

Oh well. It's still the mag I enjoy reading the most and, importantly, writing for the most, despite its rates being the lowest I currently get paid, and I'll continue writing for it as long as it's around and Darran wants me to.
CraigGrannell wrote:
MikeB wrote:
As a freelancer it annoys me when mistakes creep in, either first or second hand.

Retro Gamer's kind of odd when it comes to production, and it appears to be a balancing act between design, layout and subbing. For some reason, one of them must always irk. Lately, the design has improved, the subbing has gotten way better (in that mistakes aren't randomly being added to my articles), but the layout sent me into Hulk SMASH mode for a short while when I saw the Battlezone feature and the totally insane choice of screen grabs.

Oh well. It's still the mag I enjoy reading the most and, importantly, writing for the most, despite its rates being the lowest I currently get paid, and I'll continue writing for it as long as it's around and Darran wants me to.


That isometric article wasn't the cleverest thing, either.
CraigGrannell wrote:
Retro Gamer's kind of odd when it comes to production, and it appears to be a balancing act between design, layout and subbing. For some reason, one of them must always irk. Lately, the design has improved, the subbing has gotten way better (in that mistakes aren't randomly being added to my articles), but the layout sent me into Hulk SMASH mode for a short while when I saw the Battlezone feature and the totally insane choice of screen grabs.

Maybe the designer was going for a bit of visual variety, though I'm surprised he didn't do something similar to the Stellar 7 piece a while back - I was rather pleased with that. I guess it's subjective - personally I love the fact that there's loads of cab pic goodness in there even if a couple of grabs seem slightly out of place. Nice cover too ;)

Sheepeh wrote:
That isometric article wasn't the cleverest thing, either.

Heh... well its looks good, layout-wise, but I'll admit that I still haven't gotten round to making myself read much of the text properly...
MikeB wrote:
Maybe the designer was going for a bit of visual variety

Nuts to that. I sent more than 20 shots from the arcade game, from a selection of dozens. I carefully whittled them down, ensuring the mag had available exciting shots with multiple opponents (not that easy to grab in Battlezone, frankly), and what was used? A shot of the title screen, which was actually flipped horizontally (I'm not kidding—look at p53), and two practically identical shots of the basic tank. The lead-in shots weren't of the arcade game, despite that being what the entire article was about, bar the conversions box. Add to that the fact that the Bradley Trainer shot was shoved into 'conversion capers', while the Bradley box had a shot of the original arcade cab under it. This was a serious random-o-plonk, and really a bit rubbish for a cover feature.

I kind of wish they'd just send over PDF proofs or something—at least then I could have said "er, guys, you might want to rethink the grabs on this one", rather than ending up getting all annoyed about it later. (And poor Darran subsequently got inundated with production notes for my feature in #61, to ensure all the images for that piece end up in the right place.) Still, at least the cover for #59 was fucking ace—very nicely put together.

Quote:
Sheepeh wrote:
That isometric article wasn't the cleverest thing, either.

Heh... well its looks good, layout-wise, but I'll admit that I still haven't gotten round to making myself read much of the text properly...

I recall that the isometric text was used in the Marble Madness piece, but only for the standfirst, where it worked OK. I understand what they were trying to do with the feature in #59, but the end result is ghastly—probably the worst piece of design I've ever seen in Retro Gamer mk II, and certainly at odds with the general trend of the mag's design over the past six months (compare things like the letters pages, bargain hunt, and the two-page spreads on games, such as Why You Must Play, with the mag a couple of years back—most pages look a lot nicer now). Having a nice graphical idea is fine, but not if the end result is all but unreadable.

EDIT: And speaking of Battlezone, iPhone owners really need to watch out for Vector Tanks, coming to the App Store soon.
CraigGrannell wrote:
This was a serious random-o-plonk, and really a bit rubbish for a cover feature.

I kind of wish they'd just send over PDF proofs or something—at least then I could have said "er, guys, you might want to rethink the grabs on this one", rather than ending up getting all annoyed about it later. (And poor Darran subsequently got inundated with production notes for my feature in #61, to ensure all the images for that piece end up in the right place.)

Rampage had a similar thing going on - I supplied 20+ arcade screengrabs, mostly captioned, and I think only one got used... The Accolade piece was a bit of a plonk-a-thon too - screenshots repeated, no sign of some games I really wanted pictured out of dozens submitted (no Law of the West or Card Sharks), over-large blow-ups etc. Annoying, but I suppose it's pointless getting worked up about it. I think if you get too close too these things you end up picking up faults and omissions that no-one else is likely that bothered about. Also, seem's like Darran's not that keen on sending out 'working PDFs' judging by the responses I've gotten to asking in the past.

CraigGrannell wrote:
Add to that the fact that the Bradley Trainer shot was shoved into 'conversion capers', while the Bradley box had a shot of the original arcade cab under it

Ahhh.. so that's what that was!
Interesting piece in this month's Games TIM(!) about The Pickfordses's efforts to get a new Naked War made on the Ninty WiiWare, and Nintendo's stupid stupids refusing to license it because they don't work in an office.
Dimrill wrote:
Interesting piece in this month's Games TIM(!) about The Pickfordses's efforts to get a new Naked War made on the Ninty WiiWare, and Nintendo's stupid stupids refusing to license it because they don't work in an office.


Oh I was going to mention that, saw it when I finished my poo and Ive yet to have another so its having to wait.
Yeah, I just had a chewbacca howler while reading it.
Cor, the cover to this month's Retro Gamer is a right corker. I wonder how much extra it cost for the production thereof.
has anyone mentioned the golden era of games jornalism article in the current gamestm about amiga power and the like?
Edge is a mixed bag this month. Nice big preview of the sequel to Lost Winds. Nice preview of Borderlands. However, half the magazine is dedicated yet again to industry rubbish about job roles and getting a job in these roles and university course rubbish pamphlets. Massive pictures of gurning programmers, with Edge staff knelt out of shot gobbling their cocks. Very annoying.
They have got to be taking the piss:
Loook at mah belleh!
PC Gamer continues to get thinner while costing the same, and has had ANOTHER redesign.

The best part is now undoubtedly them playing through games and describing their adventures, as the previews and reviews are now tiny little sections.
I noticed that Edge now has a "Continue" and "Quit" subsection in the news bits. Almost like AP's "Consigned to Heaven" and "Condemned to Hell" bit. Except with less personality.
Oh, and there's a four page feature on EDF.
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