Old Magazine Chat

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Buskalilly wrote:

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Could it be that the real difference between N64/ NGC and NGamer is that you weren't 12 any more?

I don’t think so, I think N64/NGC/NGamer went through peaks and throughs right the way throughout it’s run. N64 Magazine and NGC Magazine are mostly worthwhile re-reading, they're usually fun to revisit.

I thought NGamer specifically was excellent in it’s first year-and-a-half (when I was seventeen/eighteen years old), but I thought it was badly affected by staff turnover. With a smaller budget too, that resulted in some properly weird editorial decisions, lots of rubbish Early Learning Centre-esque art design and an inorganic-feeling sense of ‘humour’ in its Ghost of Charlton Heston days. Even in 2008/2009 I felt that NGamer Magazine was poor - it had lost its enthusiasm by the time that the publisher was ordering them to feature a LEGO or Rabbids game on the cover every two months.

I didn't get NGamer at the time but I wonder if that Early Learning Centre aesthetic tied in with the Wii itself leaning away from the "mature" offerings that were on 360/PS3.



The cleaner look of NGamer certainly does a better job of hiding the anarchy within, N64 in particular almost wore it as a badge of honour.

NGC's "The world's biggest Gamecube magazine" line is an all-timer, considering they made it as wide as it was long.

Nintendo Gamer was even more "clean", it even looked a bit like Edge or something, but it still had laughs. The Iwata Asks were great.

The thing I remember disliking with each new redesign was it felt like they were trying to create recurring, defined comedy segments, with it always feeling like the previous iteration had more spontaneity.

masofdas wrote:

AC certainly worth its 90 score even after importing it as these mags told me it wasn't coming to the UK.

Yup - mee too I didn't buy mags on the regular, so suddenly seeing it in the shops after spending shedloads on one of those Datel sneak-o-discs and a copy on eBay was a bit a shock.

gjones wrote:

NGC's "The world's biggest Gamecube magazine" line is an all-timer, considering they made it as wide as it was long.

Good memories of the time that somebody wrote into the Letters Page complaining that their magazine subscription wouldn’t fit into a standard letter box, and the response was basically ‘err…aye, we’ll need to sort that out’.

Buskalilly wrote:

The thing I remember disliking with each new redesign was it felt like they were trying to create recurring, defined comedy segments, with it always feeling like the previous iteration had more spontaneity.

Someone used the phrase “enforced fun” in NGamer Magazine once. I can’t remember if it was an editorial commentary or in a preview or review, or even if it was one of the old NGamer Forum comments that would be copy and pasted in the magazine’s letters section each month. But that’s really how NGamer came across at times, as very inorganic and try-hard with their attempts at comedy. If NGamer Magazine were still around I’m sure they’d still be dragging the arse out of Cammie Dunaway’s E3 2008 appearance and dedicating two pages to shite Twitter parody accounts they've found.

Jimbob wrote:

masofdas wrote:

AC certainly worth its 90 score even after importing it as these mags told me it wasn't coming to the UK.

Yup - mee too I didn't buy mags on the regular, so suddenly seeing it in the shops after spending shedloads on one of those Datel sneak-o-discs and a copy on eBay was a bit a shock.

I'm very nostalgic for most things from the early 2000s, but I definitely don't miss having to wait two years for a PAL version of a game just so they can add Macedonian language options to it.

The Cappuccino Kid wrote:

Someone used the phrase “enforced fun” in NGamer Magazine once. I can’t remember if it was an editorial commentary or in a preview or review, or even if it was one of the old NGamer Forum comments that would be copy and pasted in the magazine’s letters section each month. But that’s really how NGamer came across at times, as very inorganic and try-hard with their attempts at comedy. If NGamer Magazine were still around I’m sure they’d still be dragging the arse out of Cammie Dunaway’s E3 2008 appearance and dedicating two pages to shite Twitter parody accounts they've found.

I genuinely did find it all very funny, whereas if I go back and read the NOM UKs I was reading a few years earlier, I cringe unbearably.

I also think GNamer and the brief Matthew Castle-ran stint of ONM brought through some really brilliant and talented writers. Joe Skrebels, kate Gray, Gave Murphy . . . folks who have massively influenced my sense of humour and writing style.

And having heard those folks and others talk about it in the years since, I think everyone was forcing it a bit, but if you had bought into the idea, it worked. A few years earlier, perhaps including N64, games mags were wrapped up in "Lads Mags" culture, so there was some freedom but at the expense of giving us only a very narrow, straight young male sense of humour.

I don’t really remember much of that stint or that time in UK games magazine journalism. I never bought any of the Xbox or PlayStation magazines, and I dropped off of buying Nintendo and multiformat magazines regularly after Nintendo Gamer finished in 2012. You make it sound like I missed out. I bought a few NOM UKs before that was shut down though, but I honestly can’t remember it’s humour being any sort of standout feature about it, good or bad.

It’s the games-related writings of folk like Martin Kitts, Mark Green, Jes Bickham and Tim Weaver from the N64 Magazine/NGC days that left the biggest impression on me. You’re not wrong about the magazines massively influencing senses of humour and writing styles.

~

There was two magazines I bought every month without fail for over fifteen years – the first was obviously N64 Magazine and it’s various redesigns, but the second was a pro wrestling magazine called Power Slam. Power Slam ended about ten years ago for much the same reasons as every magazine eventually does, but a couple of years ago a spiritual successor called Inside The Ropes was launched. It uses Power Slam’s features, writers and designs, displaying it’s clear retro influence. Yet I was surprised to see it display it’s retro influence in another way, through their monthly feature about an old wrestling game and with this clear nod to N64 Magazine:



It was fun to see these two worlds collide, so to speak.

Oh that's brilliant! That's absolutely brilliant, I practically clapped my hands with joy when I first saw that page. Beautiful stuff, thanks for sharing.

I don’t think it was discussed on here or on the forum’s Discord channel, but in case you missed it The Guardian recently published their list of the top fifteen Greatest UK Video Game Magazines of All Time.

https://www.theguardian.com/games/article/2024/may/10/the-15-ish-greatest-uk-video-game-magazines-of-all-time 

What’s your thoughts?

There’s a fair few listed that were before my time, and one I’ve never heard of (Maximum? Was that not the one with Michelle Marsh's camel toe?). Regardless, without N64 Magazine listing at all it’s simply not a list I can possibly agree with. Same goes for NGamer, an ‘honourable mention’ isn’t enough.

Edge at #1 is much too high for my liking too. I’ve said plenty of times that there were loads of other magazines that deserved and warranted the longevity that Edge Magazine has for some reason been afforded. I don’t think I’d have Edge on my own list in all honesty.

It’s smart to see Arcade in seventh though, that was such a brilliant magazine that I and others really underappreciated at the time. I definitely recommend you have a butchers at that on Out of Print Archive.

I put very little stock in the top 10s/15s/whatever of people I don't know.  They're largely going to be based on the era the journalist in question remembers most fondly, right?  Which means nothing to me if it's not my era.  That's almost certainly why Super Play makes the list and its successors don't.

What that list did make me realise is how much of a one-magazine Max I was back in those days.  The only magazine I've read off that list was CVG, and I didn't think too much of that: not at the time (I was too young for its target audience) nor now (it was very "lads mag" in tone).  It was the N64 family and the odd issue of ONM/NOM until Nintendo Gamer died, then ONM, then nothing.

Edge's longevity is impressive if nothing else.

I did check that list but it's Keith Stuart and he is probably 15 years older than me (he wrote for DC-UK) so this was always going to be aimed at the late 80s/early 90s crowd.

No N64 Magazine means it's a terrible list, by default. I echo the sentiments toward Edge - never been a fan. I understand why it has been around so long, sitting somewhere between an industry version of Pitchfork and a coffee table piece, it was always too cold and snooty for my tastes. Ever since they started handing out 10/10s to shite like Little Big Planet and Dreams, it lost its place for me, as this authority on games.

I guess YouTube has replaced the charm of a magazine like N64/NGC/NGamer whereby you grew to appreciate the different writers and their styles, but YouTube, and Internet writing in general, just lacks the curated feel of a physical mag. If a YouTube channel put out a two hour video once a month, that included previews, reviews, tips, letters and new directory additions, it might capture the same feel, but it's a big ask. A definitive verdict on a game was something I appreciated more when it was on the page, and having a directory to hand was always my favourite feature. It still baffles me that there is no Nintendo magazine in the era of Switch - there's an Amiga magazine for Pete's sake.

I branched out a little more than you guys - I read ONM and NGamer side by side, I like a nice Edge or Retro Gamer deep dive when they have one. I even briefly followed Matthew and Joe over to Official Xbox, just to have a gaming mag when the Nintendo ones were all gone.

That one, longer gaming video was what Cool Ghosts tried to do, but they only made three or four episodes over like 7 years. I wish someone else would do it. I guess I get that vibe from listening to The Computer Game Show as my news and reviews, and Back Page as my features section.

Again, N64 has to be in there really doesn't it? It started a weird sub-culture of its own - I wouldn't have bothered with Arcade and whatever that first one is. I've been watching a YouTube series that goes over random older magazines, so I can see the ones that I missed out on as a kid - actually a lot of the others in that list are legit for the emphasis they made. But... uh... it doesn't matter does it

Magazine-wise I think I branched out a lot pre-teens. Whether it was N64 Magazine, NOM, Gamesmaster, C&VG, Official PlayStation Magazine, PlayStation Max, Arcade or whatever, I must have got a new magazine or two every weekend. I learnt the lesson to simply save my pocket money and buy new games instead of new magazines or, better still, rent something inexpensively from the Blockbuster down the street. 

NGC and Nintendo Gamer aside, there’s been no games magazine I’ve bought regularly since 2001ish. Like gjones it baffles me that there's no Nintendo magazines out just now.

There were Switch Player and Ninty Fresh, right? But Switch Player fundamentally misunderstood the appeal of a print mag, flooding the page with reviews that were antiquated by the time it came out and low-quality writing. I'm still gutted that Ninty Fresh, which started with a proper bit of the old NGamer spark in its prose, trended to the Switch Player mean quite quickly.

Neither were on newsagent shelves, natch.