Gaming magazines - Do you still buy them and, if so, which ones?

Does anyone remember those weird yet neat tech demos which used to be sometimes included on the cover discs?

This was a personal favourite...

I also was rather fond of one called Slipstream but i've not been able to find it since.

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The last gaming magazine I collected was ONM, which I did because several of the staff of CUBE Magazine graduated to it.

The last gaming magazine I enjoyed was CUBE Magazine.

Bluesky

Not anymore.

I loved Nintendo Official Magazine, and then Official Nintendo Magazine when the staff changed. I began reading them as a kid whenever I could get an issue, which wasn't too often, and then at some point I got them every month when I got steady pocket-money. Read it religiously. I did like NOM a little more than ONM - found it funnier and more authentic - but one thing I liked more about ONM were the covers. They were cleaner and more stylish - at least, early on in their run.

For most of my adolescence I didn't have internet access at home. Wasn't too aware of the gaming sources elsewhere, so ONM was my main source of gaming news. I did also like it a lot. I wanted to be a game reviewer/journalist, and preferably for ONM. But then I lost interest in gaming reviewing and found that I didn't really have the knack for it anyway. At some point I stopped buying the magazine regularly but I still got it every now and then. I probably still would (very) occasionally buy it if it was still around. Just for old time's sake. I'd definitely still check out the website if it was still around.

I sometimes got Ngamer, Cubed and GamesMaster and I must have bought Edge at least once. Ngamer I picked up not too long before it stopped circulating, which was a bit of a shame because I liked it a lot.

Moggy wrote:I can remember one of the official magazines trying to run a Reader Girlfriends section once. Was it Official PS2 Magazine?

It was, briefly. They tried to become a lads mag for about 6 months in 2003, culminating in reviewing a naked girlfriend (covered by a copy of OPS2) on the back page, awarding her a 7/10 and said she'd be shagable after about 3 pints or something. They also gave away a blow-up Lara Croft with blowjob mouth and reviewed some porn DVDs with an erection meter that never went past half mast, such was the apparent mediocrity of the porn. Anyway, the following month the whole lot was binned and the magazine completely redesigned I think it was the following month after that. I don't know if they received so many complaints or Sony had words.

I've forgotten her name, but they did have the resident OPS2 model for a couple of years.

Basically when Sam Richards left in 2003 the magazine went to new levels of gooseberry fool for about 3 years before they brought back the Official PlayStation Magazine name as a seperate magazine in 2006.

Gemini73

Aside from one issue of Edge last year to read on the beach, no I haven't bought magazines for years, gaming or otherwise.

I used to buy Nintendo Official Magazine a lot back in the N64 era and looking back it was terrible. If I recall it constantly referred to rival systems as the Greystation and Sadturn or Dreampants. The reviews were just comments on screenshots with a summary at the end and anything half decent gained a score of 90%. Rubbish.

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PuppetBoy wrote:I used to buy Nintendo Official Magazine a lot back in the N64 era and looking back it was terrible. If I recall it constantly referred to rival systems as the Greystation and Sadturn or Dreampants. The reviews were just comments on screenshots with a summary at the end and anything half decent gained a score of 90%. Rubbish.

"Greystation Poo" was one of theirs, too. And if I remember right, they were about to start calling the Xbox "Kecksbox", because "kecks" means underwear.

I'm not normally one for silly jokes like that but I really enjoyed Nintendo Official Magazine. It did seem to be targeted at younger kids, and I wasn't exactly a spring chicken even then, but I still used to love the sheer exuberance of the mag. It made gaming seem fun when most mags at that time were super-serious about frame-rates and stuff. Nothing wrong with that, but I preferred the sheer joy of gaming that NOM presented

. I still have my copies of NOM and the later ONM in a cupboard.

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jawafour wrote:It made gaming seem fun when most mags at that time were super-serious about frame-rates and stuff.

"Volumetric fog" was a common phrase in use then. CUBE Magazine coined the phrase "volumetric farts" to piss off the Xbox writers in their office, or so I'm told.

...

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I used to like the mag's style of writing... when they suggested to readers that they should "slam the game pak into ya console!", rather than something like "plug in the game cartridge (yawn)" it helped to ramp up reader enthusiasm :toot:

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strawberry floating NOM. So bad it was good. :lol:

Xbox World prior to Future buying it did something similar. Became a bland knock off of PSW for a few years (even shared the same mag and DVD template) and then gradually got better and better when the 360 came out and more personality was added to it. Reminded me of N64 in places. Thought it was the best 360 mag available for a good 3 years or so. The game was a load of rubbish, but Xbox World 360 had a brilliant Duke Nukem cover that stands out in my mind.

I don’t recall there being one decent Xbox 1 magazine at all actually. The only good thing about OXM compared to OPS2 was that the demos didn’t time out. Their Shenmue 2 demo was bloody massive.

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Only the odd issue of Playstation magazine here and there for the occasional long journey and/or holiday.

For the latter, it's just my way of keeping in touch with my inner locust.

KK wrote:Xbox World prior to Future buying it did something similar...

Nice shout, KK. Xbox World was awesome - one of my fave gaming mags - back in its original Computec Media days. When Future bought them out the mag took a massive nosedive in quality and I stopped buying it... but, yeah, it eventually became pretty good again in it's Xbox World 360 guise.

PSNext was ahead of its time. I think it lasted all of 3 issues before Future just scrapped it in 2003. It launched at the same time OPS2 changed direction and felt like the type of magazine OPS2 was supposed to evole into but obviously never did, as it was also a bit of a lifestyle/wider culture mag similar to Official Dreamcast. It was also I think the first PS2 magazine to have a proper website.

Not anymore, but when I was growing up, without the internet as it is now, they were my work. N64 Magazine will always be my all time favourite but I also had a soft spot for DC:UK, for the Dreamcast’s short life.

I used to get the official Dreamcast magazine, it was on one of their demo discs that i discovered the brilliance of Skies of Arcadia.

Corazon de Leon

smurphy wrote:64 Magazine

It was like the Tesco Value equivalent of N64 Mag, but I still liked it in its own way.

They used to have shitey puns in their review round up section where they'd put down the top 5 reviewed puzzle games as "Cryptic Crosswords," and the bottom 5 under "Crap-tic Crosswords." It's awful, piss tier journalism but I absolutely loved it as an 8 year old. NOM was just embarrassing.

It's also the magazine that convinced me I wanted Earthworm Jim 3D over Ocarina of Time for Christmas 1998...thank strawberry float EWJ got delayed. :fp:

I was an avid reader of N64, then NGC(which first advertised GamesRadar to me back in...2003 :dread:

), but as a younger kid-to-teenager was never able to trouble their ITB or skill club competitions. Nowadays I may pick up the odd retro-gamer magazine but as others have said, print media for gaming is mostly dead beyond Edge and the odd enthusiast magazine.

I read NOM a lot until it switched to ONM, which I actually had every issue of, both of these were great magazines to read in my opinion.

Now if I buy a gaming magazine its just the odd issue of Edge.

Did anyone ever solve his maze (NGC Mag)?

http://www.gamebanter.co.uk/solve-my-maze/

Gaming magazines - Do you still buy them and, if so, which ones?

Which games magazines do you buy?

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