| Product: |
Retro Gamer |
| Date: |
11/06/07 (105 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: some interesting articles
Disadvantages: Lack of humour
You may be wondering what a Retro Gamer magazine can do. After all, what are they going to do, review old games? But it is so much more, and is now one of my many monthly gaming magazines. It all started last August when I noticed it, right next to the EDGE magazine, both mentioning on the front cover, Monkey Island, one of the few games I actually play that is old. Apart from Monkey Island and Sonic, my retro gaming life has been short, and yet I always find something to interest me, such as games I have heard of, or old games that are making a Retro comeback. God knows how they do it, but even for this 16 year old, it is a bloody good magazine.
~Articles~
Every month the magazine has a similar format, simple, laid out and easy to read.
First, the reviews. They review the odd compilation that is out for the consoles which seem to be decent reviews and pretty decent for both detail and length-wise, saying (as expected) exactly what people want to know when buying a game. However, quite quickly it is noticeable that they involve no humour which is a huge letdown. Granted, this magazine really is not aimed at 16 year olds like me, talking about games before my time, but all people enjoy a sense of humour and it really is noticeable and automatically loses this magazine a star. The reviews are an interesting read, but for me, I like to laugh, and that really does not happen.
Next, they review old games. You may wonder what the point of such a thing is, reviewing a game that has been reviewed dozens of times before, but they are decent enough, but lack the humour once more. They also do comment on how the game holds up, which is expected, and it is really helpful to find out. Many games will have been good at the time (and the writers, with an obvious interest in retro games will not be bothered by graphics), but it is great to realise how they have held up over the past few years.
What has given this game a new lease of life is the Virtual Console on the Wii since they get the chance to look over all the virtual console releases. Again, these reviews are only short but these games were basic and not much needs to be said about them. Only their price, graphics and how they play with the remotes and how the games have stood the test of time. Great, but once more, no bloody humour again.
I will admit though that I don’t buy the magazine for old reviews. There is far more to the magazine that that, reading old reviews of games, 90% of which I have not even heard about.
Gaming illuminate is a great example, a large two issue article on the illegal gaming underground. Not even knowing this existed it was an extremely interesting read that there were people hiding underground since people were after them just because they owned an extremely rare and unreleased sonic game. Then there were beta-versions of Sonic the Hedgehog 2, a GameCube that was cartridge based, SEGA Saturn’s that manufacturers used to design for the Saturn, and unreleased games such as an unreleased Advanced Wars game and someone even found the prototype that SONY made for the Nintendo SNES that as a DC add-on (that interestingly became the Playstation after Nintendo backed down). The articles are quite serious, and in depth but very interesting. It does seem to lack humour though which is quite annoying though expected for a magazine that really isn’t aimed at people my age.
There are other articles such as ‘retroinspection’, a retro look at certain things such as the Wonder Swan handheld console, or in this case, the SEGA Saturn. Again, there article takes quite a serious tone as this magazine does lack the usual humour I find in my Playstation magazine, though it is ok since the magazine is interesting enough anyway, telling you interesting things. For example I was very interested to read how the SEGA Saturn flopped, which was really the thing that started the slow death of SEGA, or maybe that the console was predominantly for 2D and it was 3D that failed it.
There are more articles with a ‘making of’ making it into the magazine. The interest in this normally depends on whether you like or have heard of the game, though if you have it is extremely interesting. The ‘Making of The Secret of Monkey Island’ was extremely interesting with interviews by both Dave Grossman and Ron Gilbert who were large parts of the making of the game. With a lot of interest over later games, it definitely made for an interesting read and there are a lot of interviews with people who are famous throughout the gaming world. This, depending on their sense of humour, can actually be one of the amusing parts of the magazine. There are quite a few of these in each issue.
A great let down is the letters. They normally praise the magazine, ask a question and maybe point out a mistake. This is a great shame since it is relatively boring to read through it every month. A lot of magazines choose humorous letters or something interesting but I find them rather dull.
Near the back of every magazine is information on every retro console dating way back. This is interesting and is a page filler but only worth reading once. The other is about good deals on eBay and good retro sites. The good retro sites are good and have led me to some great sites full of great information.
With a Back to the Future-like sign, Back to the Eighties is in each month of this magazine and something I find the dullest probably because there are no games that I play which were made in the eighties so I have not heard of anything in it. Each issue it goes up a month, telling the readers what was going on in, say, February 1983 ranging from games (mainly) to music. After reading it though, I can imagine that older games would find it interesting, with talk about the Spectrum and Mattel, consoles I know very little about though would be interesting to people who grew up around the times of the consoles, but may have been too young to know what was going on in the games industry at the time. It slightly interested me to the amount of rivalry at the time, and how fast things changed to when I got into games, the days of Nintendo and SEGA.
~Information~
Publisher: Future Publishing
Pages: 114
Price: £4.99
Issued: Monthly
Subscription: £15 for 6 issues (half price)
~Overall~
A very interesting read overall that is worth getting at least once whatever your age, unless you are too young to remember the glory days of the Mega Drive. Many gamers say that tae best games were in the past, simpler, not violent and original and this magazine certainly brings back memories of sitting down playing Sonic. Sometimes when I buy this I have a quick look through and at first there may seem little I am interested in but as I do look in further detail there are those games that I have heard of, those games that I have played and those that I have always wanted to. I think that the magazine could have a bit more humour and maybe mix it up a little. For example encouraging a few more Mega Drive games, since I find in some issues there seems to be a majority in one generation. If this was evened out it could attract a few more readers.
The downside is that unless you subscribe you are going to find this hard to find since I have only found it in WHSmith. It’s worth a trip out though to try for an issue. Be sure not to mix it up with the other Retro Magazine which is a little thicker and WHSmith exclusive.
Summary: A great and different gaming magazine that's worth a look at.
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