miketheratguy

Yoshi going for a highly illegal interception.

This cover proves to me that should I ever be starving to death under a bridge somewhere I can always get a job drawing magazine covers with my ass.

The more they can force us to rely on their servers for everything the less control or rights we have as consumers. They eliminated instruction manuals, they're on the way to eliminating cases and physical media, and service models with increasingly onerous contracts have all but destroyed our actual ownership of the games we play. I miss sticking a cartridge into a NES, pressing the power button, and instantly getting the title screen of a finished game that is mine to do what I want with for the rest of my life.

Same here! I was one of the cartridge contest kids. I waited very, VERY impatiently for my fresh new copy of Dragon Warrior to arrive. Had a calendar that I marked off with red "X"s each day and everything. When the day arrived I was pissed that the game didn't show up exactly when I decided it was supposed to. In fact it took an extra couple of weeks. But man oh man, when that manila envelope showed up in the mailbox after school one day...you probably couldn't have found a happier kid on that whole block. It's weird to me that Dragon Warrior wasn't a huge hit in the US. It was an absolutely amazing game to me. I guess I probably felt that way because I was already familiar with RPGs, having fallen in love with Ultima the year before, but I still found it odd that the genre didn't really pick up until the first few major US Final Fantasy releases. Other people's loss I guess, I think that DW3 is still one of the greatest games ever made.

Oh man, the golden age of the first Nintendo Power covers. SUPER MARIO BROS. 2!!! CASTLEVANIA 2!!! ZELDA 2!!! TRAck...Tr.........Track and Field 2...

This is one of the five most downloaded magazines on this entire site??? That's pretty random. I can only assume that it's because of the download error that some people were having a couple years back.

I love this issue so much. It was always one of my favorites, not just for the beautiful atmosphere of the cover but also because Castlevania II was one of my most beloved games during childhood. I never hated it like so many other people did, I adored it and considered this magazine to be a true companion piece. Little did I know that this magazine is probably the only reason why I DIDN'T hate the game, lol.

Still have my original copy of this. It came in pretty handy back in the day and makes for some nostalgic memories now. I remember the days when I actually thought that this game was one of the most amazing things ever.

I remember this being a massive tome, like pretty much all Brady strategy guides for Rockstar games are. Weird considering that this game was like 75 percent "follow that person" missions.

144 MB through Firefox, for whatever it's worth.

Ah yes. The first "what the?" cover of PSM. In their first year we got Final Fantasy, Castlevania, Mortal Kombat, Tomb Raider, Tekken, Resident Evil, Crash Bandicoot, Dead or Alive, Mega Man, and....Blasto.

Definitely one of the best and most realistic depictions of Lara.

I second both of these comments. The early days of PSM were a blast, filled with lid and memory stickers as well as a very homey, personable indie atmosphere. And who can knock Campbell's work? My favorite illustrator of the ladies by far.

Weird that they made a pamphlet for this game. It was actually pretty fun though.

This one really is a beautiful cover. It's not just that Morrigan is hot, it's that the artwork - the style, the detail, the use of color - is really rich and evocative. It sets a distinct spooky Halloween mood.

Very cool, I was wanting this issue for ages. That cover was always so compelling to me. Thanks!

Many people still feel the same to this day. For me the epic highlight was the game immediately before it, Shut Your Mouth, primarily because of the introduction of the game's sprawling nonlinear "season" mode. That mode is actually directly responsible for my involvement with THQ: They eventually phased the mode out in favor of the MUCH more linear "Road to Wrestlemania" mode by about SVR07 or so, five years later. That game started a downward trend for the next few years which, combined with the contemporaneous decline of wrestling in general, had me more or less giving up on the entire series. But then they announced "Universe" mode for SVR11, which was the closest thing to a return to my beloved Season mode, and I embraced the series all over again. I was so excited about it that I joined the THQ WWE forums and constantly talked up both modes, begging for a merge of the two. While this never happened it was my enthusiasm that led me to being noticed by the higher-ups and given the various moderating and playtest opportunities by the company. For these reasons and more SYM (the fourth game in the Smackdown series) will always be my close personal favorite, though HCTP (and SVR06, which you mentioned) are right up there as well. I'd say that those plus SVR11 and 2K14 are my top five.

LOL I actually did a double-click on this cover because I find the artwork so grotesque. I guess I'm fine with the character being made of plastic that measures 40DD - 16 - 55 but the FACE on that thing, good lord. I'd forgive readers for mistaking this for an RE4 cover story.

Very cool to have a digital copy of this. I bought two physical copies, one to keep in the wrapping and one to read.

Oh it was less about the game itself than a combination of things that happened simultaneously. The game WWE 2K14 was released as a love letter to the second golden age of wrestling, the late 80s and early 90s. That's when I was a big fan. 2K14 was also the last game overseen by THQ as they would file bankruptcy within the year. 2K games took over after that. Between 2K15 being criticized as a much worse game that was really stripped down, the game's renewed focus on modern wrestlers, and my continued disinterest in modern wrestling as a whole, I figured that it was time for me to quit. 2K14 had basically been tailor made for old-school fans like me, and was a strong entry overall as well as being the one that THQ asked me out to playtest as sort of a capper on my involvement with them before they folded. Everything just sort of combined to make WWE 2K14 a proper goodbye. As to why I didn't buy the specific game that was accompanied by the strategy guide, it was actually just because that was a weird action-oriented spinoff wrestling game that I wasn't really interested in ("WWE All-Stars").

I own this one, only saw it once and snatched it immediately as I had MAJOR Mortal Kombat fever between 1994 and 1996. It's a very thorough and well-illustrated guide. It's also an interesting product of the time - namely that very specific window that defines "mid 90s". You could tell that the authors were in love with the exploding Gen X and burgeoning internet cultures, what with their liberal use of digital art and an incredibly weird "glossary" of hip arcade slang that no one has ever heard in their life. I remember something like "Side False Johnson". You know, as in "Yo man, that was a really unfair move. Don't be a Side False Johnson"! What!?