GRcade Retro Gaming Chat 2.0
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KK
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Lotus
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I've got fond memories of Anna Kournikova's Smash Court Tennis on the Playstation. Had a lot of fun with that, although I'm not sure how much of my good memory of it was because of the quality of the game, or my teenage crush on Anna Kournikova 
It's funny though how tennis games - and perhaps snowboarding games too - were once quite popular and there were several options available, and now there seems to be a dearth of them, especially with regards to snowboarding. Seems like a no-brainer that a game could fill the gap left by Cool Boarders, SSX, or 1080.
Extreme sports is a whole other thing too, which you could argue snowboarding fits into, but I feel like the early snowboarding games were before the rush of extreme sports that came from Tony Hawk's success - BMX, surfing, rollerblading, skateboarding - there used to be loads. Barely get anything now, save for the recent remakes of TH.
It's funny though how tennis games - and perhaps snowboarding games too - were once quite popular and there were several options available, and now there seems to be a dearth of them, especially with regards to snowboarding. Seems like a no-brainer that a game could fill the gap left by Cool Boarders, SSX, or 1080.
Extreme sports is a whole other thing too, which you could argue snowboarding fits into, but I feel like the early snowboarding games were before the rush of extreme sports that came from Tony Hawk's success - BMX, surfing, rollerblading, skateboarding - there used to be loads. Barely get anything now, save for the recent remakes of TH.
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KK
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Someone has uploaded issue 63 of P2 Magazine from 2005 on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/p-2-issue-63/mode/2up and I was just clicking through it. Christ, what absolute rubbish. 
Page after page of women just randomly and often awkwardly holding gooseberry fool via the medium of photoshop, a woman in a nurse's outfit that may or may not be a CGI zombie, a woman randomly pointing at the reader, groups of women hanging about as if they're on a street corner, and a proclamation on the front cover that they're the "UK's angriest PlayStation magazine" as if that's supposed to be some sort of ringing endorsement.
Looking back, from around 2003-2005 I don't think there was one genuinely great PlayStation or Xbox magazine between the lot of 'em. In fact they're all so bad at this point in time it makes me look back rather fondly on the unwavering and resolute blandness of Official Xbox, that I think managed to produce less than a handful of original features in its entire 61 issue run, had a redesign that was the equivalent of rearranging a couple of deck chairs ('I've changed the font, and what do you think of this shade of green...'; 'yeah, that'll do. Pub?'), and didn't get a sense of humour until Gary Cutlack (UK Resistance) turned up at some point in '05. Bloody good demo disc though. There's almost 2 hours of Shenmue 2 on at least one of those discs!
Page after page of women just randomly and often awkwardly holding gooseberry fool via the medium of photoshop, a woman in a nurse's outfit that may or may not be a CGI zombie, a woman randomly pointing at the reader, groups of women hanging about as if they're on a street corner, and a proclamation on the front cover that they're the "UK's angriest PlayStation magazine" as if that's supposed to be some sort of ringing endorsement.
Looking back, from around 2003-2005 I don't think there was one genuinely great PlayStation or Xbox magazine between the lot of 'em. In fact they're all so bad at this point in time it makes me look back rather fondly on the unwavering and resolute blandness of Official Xbox, that I think managed to produce less than a handful of original features in its entire 61 issue run, had a redesign that was the equivalent of rearranging a couple of deck chairs ('I've changed the font, and what do you think of this shade of green...'; 'yeah, that'll do. Pub?'), and didn't get a sense of humour until Gary Cutlack (UK Resistance) turned up at some point in '05. Bloody good demo disc though. There's almost 2 hours of Shenmue 2 on at least one of those discs!
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kerr9000
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KK wrote:Someone has uploaded issue 63 of P2 Magazine from 2005 on Archive.org: https://archive.org/details/p-2-issue-63/mode/2up and I was just clicking through it. Christ, what absolute rubbish.
I think there was a time when magazines thought that all of there readers wanted them to be edge lords and this was why we ended up with magazines that were kind of cruddy and pandering to a certain mindset, and this is going from someone who can find the odd edgy thing funny and doesn't mind the odd pair of boobs in there magazine.
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Cumberdanes
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KK
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Looking at magazinesfromthepast.fandom.com it was killed off 4 issues later, possibly around the time the publisher went into liquidation. I like how the opening editor's letter states...
That's tragic, that is. Their big idea, their attempt at a new approach to videogames journalism, was to churn out... the same old crap practically everyone else was at this time, which itself was a regurgitation of 1997-1999.
According to the above website, incredibly it ran from the launch of PS2 in 2000 until around about December 2005, and was produced by Paragon Publishing and Highbury. Looking at the design of the front cover of issue 1...
...I'm presuming it was absolutely nothing like it ended up. I bet it was mostly white, had a much cleaner layout, and was at least attempting to be semi-intelligent. At some point, whatever the question was, someone obviously decided the answer must be TITS. OPS2, PSW, C&VG, Xbox Gamer...they pretty much all went to gooseberry fool at around about that same 03/04 period, leaving basically EDGE, GamesTM and a narrowed out NGC if you wanted something actually stimulating to read.
We promised you something different, and here it is: the new look, reinvigorated P2! Why did we go to all this time (and nervous- breakdown-inducing effort) to redesign a magazine that was perfectly good in the first place, you ask? Well frankly, we wanted to try something new. Look at the videogame magazines in your average newsagent, and one thing becomes immediately obvious - they're all the same! Their designs are the same, their content is the same (first looks, previews, reviews, guides, yawn...) and they ALL - besides the odd exclusive here and there - cover exactly the same games! We felt it was time for something new, something refreshing. From now on, P2 will be spearheading a new approach to videogames journalism. If it's exciting, interesting, innovative, sexy or controversial, then you'll find it here. If you want run-of- the-mill tedium and uniformity, then stick with the competition...
That's tragic, that is. Their big idea, their attempt at a new approach to videogames journalism, was to churn out... the same old crap practically everyone else was at this time, which itself was a regurgitation of 1997-1999.
Cumberdanes wrote:I don't remember that mag at all, when is it from? It's a PS2 mag but there's an advert for a 360 mag in there.
According to the above website, incredibly it ran from the launch of PS2 in 2000 until around about December 2005, and was produced by Paragon Publishing and Highbury. Looking at the design of the front cover of issue 1...
...I'm presuming it was absolutely nothing like it ended up. I bet it was mostly white, had a much cleaner layout, and was at least attempting to be semi-intelligent. At some point, whatever the question was, someone obviously decided the answer must be TITS. OPS2, PSW, C&VG, Xbox Gamer...they pretty much all went to gooseberry fool at around about that same 03/04 period, leaving basically EDGE, GamesTM and a narrowed out NGC if you wanted something actually stimulating to read.
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kerr9000
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I grabbed this little lot today for £6.50 nothing massively impactful but decent enough stuff for the price.
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Choclet-Milk
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twitter.com/A3rgan/status/1539964670039076865
Given that the sun is determined to kill me, I thought I'd at least try and get something out of it, so I'm trying it on my SNES and the controller port plate from my GC. Will post results later this evening!
we have to lose that sax solo
