miketheratguy

The awesomeness continues with yet another year 2000 issue of EGM! Thanks guys!

Oh, I see. Your FIRST act as administrator is to abuse your power by editing my perfectly valid post. That's how it works here? Not only squelching a statement just because it's unpopular but actually going so far as to edit it to make me prostrate myself at your feet? Is this level of unbiased moderation the kind of precedent that you want to set here? This is the kind of person you want representing your site? Alright, that's fine. You can edit my posts all you want. But you know what you can't edit? My middle finger! You see this? I'm running right up to my monitor, keyboard in hand so I can continue to type, and thrusting my middle finger RIGHT at you. Really, REALLY HARD!!! Supplication? SUPPLICATE THIS!!!! RRRGH, I AM SO MAD RIGHT NOW!!!

I don't like Areala and I wish to vote against this decision. Areala is the embodiment of beauty and glory, and I will follow her all the days as my new Overlady! All hail Areala!

Ohhhhhhh, yes. Here it is. Here, at long last, it is. Issue 129. April 2000. My single favorite issue of EGM EVER. I'll never forget it. Spring was...springing, I had a great job, and a great girlfriend (who would later turn into a stripper but whatever, at the time everything was good). I lived in an awesome house. Life was pretty sweet. I'd only just played Goldeneye for the first time the year prior and loved it, so I'd been keeping some tabs on the spiritual sequel, Perfect Dark. It was at the Beloit, Wisconsin Wal-Mart where I was grabbing some basic supplies when I happened upon the striking, Joker-colored, 007-style cover of the latest Electronic Gaming Monthly. It promised a huge blowout look at Perfect Dark, and I was intrigued. I had some spare time so I grabbed the magazine off the rack, headed over to the snack bar where I grabbed some popcorn and a cheesy pretzel, and sat down to read. And man, what an awesome article it was. It went into such insane detail - there were in-depth descriptions not only of the game and its overall features, but of the revolutionary single-player combat mode. I'd never heard of anything like it: The game would allow a player to compete against "sims", or "bots", a term I'd never heard before. Not only that, the player could dramatically customize the bots to do all kinds of different things. There was the bot that would vengefully seek out the character who'd last dealt him damage. The bot that would go after whichever character was in the lead. The bot who would run around the level doing nothing but stealing weapons. Each description had a nifty little cartoon representation of the bot in question, demonstrating his particular personality trait. And what's this? Not only can you customize the bots, you can customize the weapon loadouts and combat scenarios too? It blew my mind. It was one of those moments in one's life when the possibilities of gaming were suddenly blown wide open. Things were happening that you'd never thought possible. So many options and avenues were open that, until that very day, had never been available before. The only other time that I can remember going from relatively unfamiliar with a game to achingly excited for it in such a short amount of time was Morrowind, another game that opened my eyes to what kind of things gaming was becoming capable of. I bought Perfect Dark on a pleasant night that summer, and put several hundred hours into it throughout the years. It was basically my entire year of 2000, a year that saw me spend my last good year with the aforementioned girlfriend and my last year in that awesome house. I'll always remember the strange feeling of contentment that I felt when I'd sit out on the front porch and read another Perfect Dark magazine, this one a superbly informative (and entertaining) Versus Books strategy guide. As I sat there on that porch enjoying the shade and warm summer breeze, watching the neighbor's house being built across the street, I found myself consciously aware of how happy I was with my life. It was a great time, this summer of 2000. The summer of Perfect Dark. And it all started with that simple but all too rich memory-making issue of EGM. I've waited years for this day - the day that I could finally add this hallowed issue to my digital collection for further reminiscence and permanent safekeeping. I'm still excited to see what else comes down the pike, and to grab all the other EGMs that make their way through, of course. But this issue - this is the one. No other magazine, with the exception of only a handful of the earliest Nintendo Powers and Game Player's, has ever left its stamp on such a happy and exciting period of my life. Needless to say, thank you.

I have a soft spot in my heart for Ultima: Exodus since it was the first straight-up RPG that I ever played, but Quest of the Avatar is easily the better game. Its morality-based gameplay challenge was really kind of revolutionary for its time.

Faxanadu is fun, but perhaps more of an action game than an RPG. Ultima: Quest of the Avatar was a really compelling, unique RPG. Can't speak for its quality but Faria is one that no one remembers but which I know existed.

I love the overall arc of A Song of Ice and Fire / Game of Thrones, the writing and character development are actually really good. For a little while there the story was pretty straight without a whole lot of high fantasy, which is something that I very much enjoyed (not that I dislike high fantasy, but in this case I was far more interested in the straightforward political intrigue between the various medieval houses). Then, perhaps predictably, things just starting going too far. The fantasy elements became more integral to the plot (I think we're going to see that with the next book / tv season more than ever before), the number of supporting characters became ridiculous, and the author became overly fixated on certain things: namely, sex and descriptions of food. I don't regret getting into Game of Thrones (I began with the show, not the books) but I'm kind of shocked by how unenthusiastic I am about the new season that's going to begin in a couple of days. The last couple of books were relatively boring and difficult to get through (book four in particular) and I'm of the opinion that the last season of the show (covering the aforementioned couple of books, no coincidence there) was easily the worst. Taken as a whole the book and tv series are both still great, but they've moved so far beyond what got me interested in either one to begin with. I'm no prude - I LOVES me some naked women - but I easily tire of sex-driven narratives (to say nothing of absolutely arbitrary sex that's there for no reason other than irrelevant titillation, something that critics of the show have coined as "sexposition"). I love a small handful of the main characters that are still around but the overwhelming majority of characters that interested me the most are dead and gone. I have little to no interest in getting to know anybody new because the more intricate storyline that tied everybody together has crumbled so that the simpler story of "who's going to stop the great evil from the north and is this chick ever going to get her shit together" that was percolating in the background could be allowed to shift to the forefront. And now that the show has not only caught up to but passed the point of being up to date with the books, many changes - small and large, tolerable and terrible - are popping up all over the place. Some people are just as excited about the next season and book, and more to them. To me the greatness that began GRRM's magnum opus has really started to slip away, and I'm simply not very intrigued to see what happens next. The hook has dulled with time and I've slipped right off. ...Er, uh.. so yeah, the story has indeed become a fairly unlikable slog. I think that's the point that I was going for somewhere in there.

Ah, underage sexuality. When it's depicted in photographs or film, witnessing it is a crime so heinous that you'll shoot to the top of both the FBI and prison inmate murder lists. When it's depicted in the pages of a book, writing it is an act of artistry so bold that you'll be considered a daring literary visionary and likely shoot to the top of the bestseller list.

Good on you guys for Dracula. I forgot about that one. Frankenstein is also excellent. Two great examples of classic horror. Shit, I forgot A Clockwork Orange as well. And SCREW impossibly confusing Asian names, even if I want to live in Japan forever! I'll take a job as a mime or something so I don't have to try to pronounce anything. Really? I could have sworn that the book revealed his first name at some point. Oh well, I saw the movie a million times before I read the book so I can admit to likely having subconsciously carried that detail over. I DO however distinctly remember that he got the name "Rambo" from an apple, which I found interesting. What a shame that the ending of the book was ruined for you in that way. And by the author no less. And at the beginning of the damn book! The ending was arguably the best part. Shame that that was taken from you (though, to be fair, I couldn't enjoy it free of spoilage either, since they discuss it in some of the extra content on one of the First Blood dvds. At least it makes more sense there than on page five).

Exactly! It's not enough that so many names start to sound similar to a non-native speaker, but they've got a bunch of political and courtesy titles too! It's like "wait, so Xiahou Dun and Xiahou Yuan fought with Xuande, who is actually Liu Bei? But then where does that leave Boyan, who is actually Lu Xun, and Xu Rong of Xuantu Commandery?" I swear to god I'm not making any of this shit up!

I hate to sound uneducated (well I guess I don't really care one way or the other, since I know that I don't sound unintelligent) but I actually haven't read much "great literature". I'm much more a fan of nonfiction and leave the fictitious stuff for the movies. It's simply a matter of patience: Namely, I have very little of it. Nonfiction tends to keep me gripped much more easily because it's all about presenting me with a topic that I'm interested in. Just sheer, direct knowledge. Fiction, on the other hand, takes its time to develop characters or set the scene and as much as I (legitimately) appreciate that, I tend to just want to get to the point. So, forgive my choices for being relatively pedestrian but, again, it's not that I'm an uneducated cretin - it's that I simply don't often have the patience to dedicate hours to sitting down and immersing myself in a story. With that out of the way, on we go. 1: A SIMPLE PLAN. This book is one of those rare instances of a fictional story that truly gripped me. It's a story about three middle-aged friends in a snowy rural town in Ohio: A quiet, intelligent, hardworking family man, his slow and unpopular brother, and the brother's blue collar beer buddy. The men are driving down a country road together when a fox that darts across the road causes them to lose control and slam into a snowbank. After their dog jumps out of the truck to chase the fox into the nearby woods, the men begrudgingly leave the vehicle and start trudging through the snow to follow him. Once inside the forest, the men are startled to find a downed private airplane that had apparently crashed with no survivors. Inside the wreckage is a bag with over $4 million dollars in cash. After some debate about what to do, the men settle on a plan: The family man will hide the money in his house, and then they'll silently watch - and wait. If after several months the plane hasn't been found and the money hasn't been claimed, the three will split it evenly between them. No one mentions any of this to anybody. Just watch and wait. What follows is a masterfully written story about consequence. The decision to keep the money sets into motion a chain of events that take the men down a spiral of ever-worsening complications. The tiniest, most innocuous choices begin to dig a hole that only grows deeper and deeper with each attempt to climb out. Every attempt to clear the skies ahead plunges the situation further into darkness. This is a story about the snowballing effect of evil; how easy it is for the best of intentions to turn into the most unnecessary of tragedies. It's riveting. Equally riveting (in fact a bit better, in my opinion) is the 1998 film of the same name. Adapted for the screen by the author, Scott Smith, the film has universally great performances from Bill Paxton, Bent Briscoe and an Oscar-nominated Billy Bob Thornton. It's also got subtle, tight, mesmerizing direction from Sam Raimi. Whether you read the book or watch the movie, you owe it to yourself to check it out. FIRST BLOOD: Everyone knows Rambo, but not everyone knows that the first movie to introduce him - First Blood - was a more somber and suspenseful film about a troubled Vietnam vet, unlike the action superhero that the following movies made him out to be. I liked First Blood, so I decided that I'd check out the book to see if I enjoyed it as well. This is one of those situations where, despite seeing the movie first, I enthusiastically proclaim the book to be far better. First Blood is the story of John Rambo, a man who's returned from the Vietnam war to a world that has no use for him. His fellow soldiers and best friends are all dead, and he has nowhere to go. He's just drifting, trying to find a place to have a hot meal and be left alone. But when he passes through a tight-knit forested Kentucky town and stops to grab something to eat, he raises the ire of the town's police chief. Arrested for vagrancy and panicking from flashbacks triggered by the jail and its officers, John assaults the officers and escapes into the mountainous wilderness surrounding the town. This begins a cat and mouse game of escalating determination as the police chief, himself a veteran of the Korean war, matches wits with John by launching a manhunt that won't end until one of them is dead. The book is amazing. Taut, gripping, suspenseful, all the good stuff. It uses an ingenious alternating viewpoint structure that gives both the protagonist and antagonist equal room to develop. One chapter will be told exclusively from Rambo's point of view, the next will be told exclusively from chief Teasle's point of view, and back and forth and back and forth until the story reaches its conclusion. Through this method you (and the two men) realize that they're more alike than they initially assumed, and as the story progresses they come to both hate and respect each other with equal measure. Unlike the film there are moments throughout the book where Teasle is humanized as a person worthy of our sympathy, whose desperate need to stop Rambo at all costs is completely founded, while also a person whose personal quest for revenge might be getting out of control. Rambo, meanwhile, is a man capable of heroic deeds but also a man whose dangerous mental illness and merciless military training makes him a more than capable killer. As the two repeatedly cycle between closing the distance and losing each other in the lush mountain wilderness we're allowed to hear all of their thoughts and choose for ourselves who the good guy really is. It's awesome, awesome stuff. TREASURE ISLAND. There's not much to say about this one, other than how fun it is. Pretty much every exciting and / or amusing pirate stereotype came from this one, and it's easy to see why. The setting and atmosphere are absolutely rich and one easily gets sucked into its world while reading it. I hate to use cliche words like "timeless" and "classic" but that's pretty much what this is. It's just a fun, fun adventure yarn with compelling characters, an interesting plot, and a great sense of setting. Track down the 1994 film starring Charlton Heston and an outstanding young Christian Bale, if you can. 2. I've been fortunate not to have read many books that I really didn't like (again, much of this has to do with the fact that I prefer nonfiction). So hmm, worst book. Idunno. That's a tough one. Actually, probably Johnny Tremain. Y'know, because every school kid loves reading about an apprenticing blacksmith in the days of the Boston Tea Party, right? Good god, what a boring fucking book. You nailed it, we had to read this drying paint for class in like 5th grade. I have to defer to Bart Simpson when I admit that the part where Johnny the idiot melts his damn hand off in a smithing accident is, without question, the only interesting part of the book (and the only one that I can possibly remember). 3. I'd love to have the patience to sit down and read Lord of the Rings. I'm well-acquainted with the story from constant childhood exposure to the cartoons, adult exposure to the movies, and my own Cliff's Notes studies on Wikipedia and the appendices. But I've never actually sat down and read the books cover to cover myself. Again, it's that patience thing. I got as far as downloading the audiobooks so that's something, right? ..RIGHT? Oh, and A Romance of Three Kingdoms. Great story, but tough to read a 1,400 page novel when there's so much political intrigue between people with almost interchangeably similar names. Whether that's racist is for the courts to decide. Whether it's true is undeniable fact.

I've got a bit of OCD regarding this stuff. I hate when magazines have alternate covers because (A) I'm going to want them all and ( I inevitably wind up with the worst one. So while uploads of multiple covers isn't something that I expect from this site, if they're made available you can bet that I'm going to download them and patch them into the pdfs that I make.

That doesn't matter, nor does her sexual preference. I'll win her over with my wily charms and mutual appreciation for isolation. It's meant to be, she just doesn't know it yet. And yeah, I mean, who WOULDN'T want to spy on the girls' locker room? Anyone who says otherwise is a filthy liar!

One of the absolute ass-ugliest issues of any magazine, ever. Still, it's EGM so it's awesome regardless. And yes, you should buy a Dreamcast. Why didn't more of you buy a Dreamcast? That console was ahead of its time and a bunch of you let it die. Assholes!!! Seriously though, very cool to get yet another EGM so quickly. TOLUST is right, you guys are on fire. And we're in the year 2000 now!!! Only a few issues away from my favorite EGM of ALL TIME. I can't wait! Thank you guys!

I didn't want to be influenced by anyone else's answer so I only caught this after I made my own post. It seems that you and I are superhero soul mates, and it's probably best that we marry immediately. For the good of the world, of course.

Invisibility. I feel that pretty much any other superpower is trumped by this. Superhuman speed? You don't need it if you're invisible because you can simply stroll onto any kind of transportation whenever you want. Superhuman strength? What need is there for fighting when you can just walk away and / or beat the guy up (or just shoot him or something) after disappearing from sight? If you want to be a supervillain you can easily steal whatever you want, spy on people for secrets, pretty much do whatever you want. And, as an introverted loner with anxiety issues, invisibility would be invaluable because sometimes I just want to be left the hell alone. Plus I could look at naked girls in the locker room.

I bought Playboy: The Mansion and enjoyed it in every way that was intended.

I definitely don't but I'm kind of struck by how much of The Incredibles I see in him.

Lol I hope I didn't overhype it but yeah, I have to be honest, I absolutely adore those things. I'm amused and flattered by the fact that my interests had a direct effect on someone else's enjoyment thanks to this site. That's pretty cool. And I'm very jealous that you got to eat a Mr. Big bar!

So "Games TM" is the name of an actual publication, and these are collections of the small retro section of the magazine? I'll have to track down some issues of Games TM then, because these really are very good retro gaming content.

One of the most elusive issues of EGM. Thanks!

Easily one of my favorite issues of the magazine. I have some great memories of this one. I have great memories of this time in the magazine's run in general. Thank you!

That does help, but it actually still doesn't include the one that I have. What is this?

I'm so confused. There's RetroGamer, Retro, and apparently the other Retro. I can't keep the damn things straight. There's one that I really like - one of the Retros, which I was only ever able to find at Barnes and Noble at like 20 bucks a pop. It was in the form of nice thick volumes that were apparently imported from the UK. There seemed to only be a handful of them, as the first one that I got a few years ago was volume 4 and only recently did I run across a volume 8.

Yes! Another millennial-era classic! Some of the most lonesome gaps in the collection are being filled. Great cover too - I'm not really one for Pokemon but I enjoy the gold and silver checkerboard effect. Add in Shenmue and Playstation 2 launch talk and this one's a time capsule. Thanks!