kitsunebi

ADULTS ONLY
Download the included CD-ROM HERE.

電撃G'sマガジン1999年10月号

63 out of 104 pages had visual elements crossing from one page to the next.  So basically 60% of the mag had to be edited together as joins, then spilt back apart into separate pages.  Pain in the @$$ for me, but good for anyone who likes to read their mags in two-page view mode.
Also, a reminder that "Retromags recommended" Sumatra is one of the WORST choices of CBR reader you could be using (it's not really a CBR reader at all, it's a PDF reader that can open CBRs), so if you're using it, please be aware that some pages will not be displayed as they were intended.

It's late, I've got nothing to say.  Enjoy.

This mag is a bit of a mystery.  It was apparently a "special edition" series focused on video games published under the umbrella of a popular pachinko mag.  It was printed on super thick high quality paper stock - almost like a coffee table art book.  It's labeled Vol.2, so there surely must be at least one more issue, but I've never seen proof of its existence, and the only proof I have that THIS issue exists is that I owned it and scanned it.  The only non-dead links found online mentioning this mag are the sites I myself posted it to. 
Does this mag even really exist?  Or is it just an elaborate figment of my imagination?  Download and find out.

The supplement, a guide for the adults-only tactical RPG Utawarerumono, is included at the end of the archive.
The CD-ROM included with the magazine can be downloaded HERE.

This was originally scanned by marktrade years ago, and due to a combination of the magazine's age and the non-standard settings applied to the scanner used, the original file's pages look VERY dark and VERY brown.  Anyone wanting that "pure" version can find it on the Internet Archive.
Cleaning this up and trying to make it look less than a zillion years old was probably the most complicated editing job I've ever done, as I had to edit the picture and text portions of each page completely separately.  Simply cranking up the white levels would obviously ruin everything by bleaching out text/images, so I had to use different techniques (indeed, I never once even touched the white/black levels) while editing.  But the end result is certainly a lot cleaner than this file has ever looked.  Go on, try to guess which is the original and which is my edit.


 
PLEASE NOTE: This issue is part of the early "WTF are we doing do we even know how to publish magazines" era of Game Player's.  When they first began, Signal Research clumped all of their titles together under a single numbering system.  So although this issue is labeled Vol.1 No.2, it is in fact the very first of their PC game line of mags (though the title would change a couple of times in rapid succession before settling on "Game Player's PC Strategy Guide.")
For the record, Volume 1 of Game Player's went like this:
Vol.1 No.1 The Game Player's Guide to Nintendo (this issue was also sold under the title Game Player's Nintendo Buyer's Guide)
Vol.1 No.2 (this issue) The Game Player's Guide to MS-DOS Computer Games
Vol.1 No.3 Game Player's Nintendo Strategy Guide (this issue was also sold under the title Game Player's Strategy Guide to Nintendo Games)
Vol.1 No.4 Game Player's MS-DOS Strategy Guide (in my scan pile)
After that, the Nintendo and PC titles went their separate ways, but because Signal Research loves confusion SO FREAKING MUCH, the very next issue of the PC mag was labeled Vol.2 No.2.
So here's the PC title in full:
The Game Player's Guide to MS-DOS Computer Games Vol.1 No.2
Game Player's MS-DOS Strategy Guide Vol.1 No.4
Game Player's PC Strategy Guide Vol.2 No.2
...and from this point they continued in order, beginning a new volume at the start of a new year.  But rest assured, THERE IS NO Vol.1 No.1, Vol.1 No.3, or Vol.2 No.1 of the PC title.  And don't expect concrete/accurate cover dates on these early issues - THEY DON'T HAVE ANY.  So we're going with "best guesses."
For the further adventures of Game Player's PC Strategy Guide, follow along as they release the odd issue under the title Game Player's PC Buyer's Guide, and then switch to the title Game Players PC Entertainment, all using the same number system they started back with The Game Player's Guide to Nintendo.  And then of course, they eventually relaunched as PC Gamer.  But that's another story.
 
Preservation is learning, kids.  Sometimes we learn about the stuff written in the magazines.  And sometimes we learn that you can completely sh*t the bed when starting a publishing line of magazines, and yet still have people reading and talking about them 35 years later. 
Game Player's™:  An inspiration for f*ckups everywhere.

Hey DOOMGUY2000.  I already uploaded this to the Internet Archive weeks ago.  Nya nya nya nya nyaaaa naaaaa!!  Too slow!
😂 (He'll still upload it again. He can't help it, some people are just simple.)
As for the rest of you, here's the latest issue of Computer Gaming World 2.0, complete with its Microsoft-purchased generic new title and Microsoft-purchased advertising section designed to look like articles (but thankfully (legally) labeled "special advertising section.")  Skip that part unless you're a complete tool like DOOMGUY2000

As seen on the cover, Necky the Fox is so horny for the upcoming release of the Super Famicom he's done something downright desperate.  Let's hope no one was hurt.
Meanwhile, the editors of Famitsu are so horny for anything that moves that they used the flimsy excuse of having a chick pose like the underwater enemies in Super Darius just so they could print some pics of her in a swimsuit.
Somebody get these guys a Pulitzer.

ADULTS ONLY
The CD-ROM included with this issue can be downloaded HERE.

As always, Famimaga is printed Japanese-style and read from right to left, so you'd better switch to Japanese/manga mode if you want the facing pages displayed in the right order.
This issue has a Q&A with Shigeru Miyamoto about the just-released The Legend of Zelda.

That's him on the left.  "Miyahon" is a joke, or at least what passes for one in Japanese.  You see, his name is written 宮本 in kanji, and the second kanji (by itself) can be read as "hon," meaning "book."  It's a real knee-slapper if you happen to be Japanese, I bet.
The other interviewee is "Ten Ten," the co-designer of Zelda, Takashi Tezuka, but I don't know his nickname is also a hilarious play on the kanji in his name or not, because I still haven't recovered from the wackiness overload of "Miyahon" to be able to try to figure it out.
Miyahon.  Video gaming's gain was standup comedy's loss, I'm sure.
Still, the man is a legend.  I'm sure there's a nugget or two of invaluable wisdom to be gleaned from the interview.
 

The CD-ROM included with this issue can be downloaded HERE.

This file is ALREADY available at my Internet Archive account, so there's no need to upload it there again.

So big it's bursting out.

 
Actually, I was talking about the mag itself.  A whopping 338 pages.  
Of
SERIOUS.
GAMING.
JOURNALISM.
 
Like this girl's 3 sizes.  Absolutely vital info needed to better understand the completely unrelated article about games these pics accompany.

Hey...  It says she's from the very same prefecture I live in...🤔
 

I only read Famitsu for the hard-hitting gaming journalism.

These issues are full of games I own but have never played.  It's been twenty years since I last bought a game, but from around 1997-2004 or so, I was a game buying machine.  Unfortunately I was also a not-nearly-enough-free-time machine, so most of those purchases went unplayed.  And now that I'm a never-ever-play-games-at-all machine, they will likely forever remain so. 😮‍💨

On the one hand, that Lara Croft toy...😬
On the other hand, it isn't THAT far off from the first game's CG model. 🫤
Luckily more attractive Lara toys would be made later on. 😉

So many spreads.  And foldouts.  Whoever invented foldout pages needs a slap.
This file has been edited and formatted to be viewed as a CBR using a dedicated CBR reader.  If you're using a PDF reader, such as Sumatra, it may not display correctly.

I won't be uploading them here since the scans at RM are perfectly fine, but if anyone's interested, you can also download my scans of issues 2 and 3 here, which are of comparable quality to this one:
Games for Windows Issue 02
Games for Windows Issue 03
Again, the scans already here are good, but you may find certain aspects of mine preferable (or not).  They're higher resolution and in my opinion images joined across facing pages have been edited together more carefully.  But if such things aren't important to you, there's no real need to replace your existing copies.  I'm simply scanning the entire series (apart from #5 and #6, which I don't own), so they should all have a uniform quality.
 
 
*and apologies for any drama queen posturing in any previous posts concerning this issue which were made while in the delirium of a COVID infection.

This issue is a perfect example of why I think CBR is a better format than PDF for magazine scans (there's not even an argument of which is better for comics - CBR readers were created in the first place because PDF is such a godawful format for comics.)  When we have facing pages forming images/text that can't be properly read unless both pages are viewed at the same time, such as the maps for The Legend of Zelda found in this issue, it makes sense that those pages be left as a single jpg.  Whether the CBR reader is set to view single pages or two pages at a time, when it gets to a two-page join that has been saved as a single image, it will display ONLY that two page join.  PDF viewers aren't able to make the distinction between pages of different sizes, and leaving the pages joined would cause the PDF reader to display the joined pages as one page with the following page set as the facing page, thus displaying 3 pages side by side and throwing off the facing pages for the rest of the mag thereafter.   If two 2-page joins immediately followed one another, a CBR reader would display them one at a time, while a PDF reader would put them side by side, trying to squeeze 4 pages on screen at once.
Stupid PDF reader displaying 4 pages in "two-page mode":

Also, pages like the Goonies maps, which were printed sideways in the mag, can be rotated into landscape orientation and the CBR reader knows to treat them the same as a two-page join - displaying them one at a time regardless of whether you're reading in one or two-page mode.  PDF readers would take two of those rotated images and display them side by side if you were viewing in two-page mode.
Another plus of a CBR reader is that pages of different sizes don't cause problems.  You can set the CBR reader to display all pages at any pixel height you like, it will shrink or enlarge the images to match your desired size, giving images of different sizes a uniform appearance.  PDF readers don't do this, so if you had an image followed by another image twice the height of the first, they would be displayed side by side at two completely different sizes (this is the root of the rule that mag pages be saved at a uniform height, even though it isn't actually necessary for CBR readers.)
Whenever I upload a mag to the Internet Archive, I include a note reminding people that the mag was edited and intended to be read as a CBR.  The preview reader they have is based on the compressed PDF they auto-generate, and it quite often displays things incorrectly (just as any PDF reader would.)
 
But hey, maybe you prefer PDFs.  In which case... YOU'RE OVERRULED!  This ain't the place to complain, get out of here, ya lousy bum!! 😜
 
P.S. As usual kids, you've got to set your CBR reader to Japanese/manga mode if you don't want all the facing pages to be in the wrong order.

This is the last monthly issue of Famimaga before switching to a semi-monthly (every two weeks) publishing schedule.  Actually, the last monthly issue was probably the previous issue, since although this issue is simply "April 1986," the next issue will be the "April 18th 1986" issue.  So you can tell things are really heating up on the Nintendo Famicom front in Japan.  This same month, both Marukatsu Famicom and Famicom Hisshoubon would also launch, and a couple of months later, Famitsu's first issue will arrive late to the party as well.
In addition to a complete strategy guide to Super Mario Bros., this issue also takes a look at the recently released The Legend of Zelda, as well as the Famicom port of Portopia, an important and extremely successful early Japanese menu-based graphic adventure game designed by Yuji Horii, someone who would soon blow up the Japanese gaming world with a little game appearing in a tiny preview at the back of this issue: Dragon Quest.

Japan doesn't bother releasing most Western games.  But when they do, it's interesting to see how they market them.  Case in point, Spyro the Dragon.  I like Spyro.  I find it a very relaxing game to play.  Just run around looking for hidden gems or whatever (forgive me, it's been 20 years since I played it) without too much danger or difficulty.  Which is appropriate, as it's essentially a kids' game.  So how does Japan market it?  As seen in this issue's ad, Spyro zooms by, blowing up Japanese school girls' skirts.  Because someone looked at the game and thought "what this childrens' game's ad campaign needs is a little bit of sex."  Of course, the Japanese release of Spyro was a mess since they mucked with the camera while trying to cater to the common (at that time) Japanese complaint that 3D cameras made people get motion sickness (I call bullshit, but whatever.  Japan eventually realized that 3D was here to stay, so this isn't a complaint heard anymore.)    So, the Japanese version probably deserved to fail as it did.  But you can also take a gander at the Japanese logo for Spyro if you want to see where the American developers got the idea to name Spyro 2's villain, since the stylized katakana for Spyro looks a lot like alphabet characters spelling "Ripto."

The supplement is included at the end of the file.  Seems pointless to release it separately, so I won't.😛

There was a brief time period in the late 90s where I got back into buying toys (as opposed to when I was a kid).  I remember being excited by the G.I.JOEs featured in this issue.  The  JOE toyline had gone down the crapper and disappeared a few years earlier (one of their final waves of figures was a true jump-the-shark crossover with Street Fighter), but it was the older figures from the 80s I collected as a kid that interested me.  And this new line of Toys R Us exclusives were all repaints of the old 80s characters and vehicles using the original molds.  Pretty cool, I thought, and I bought them all.  Unfortunately, the production quality wasn't quite up to snuff and they didn't look as good as the prototypes.  The Cobra Rage in particular was a total disaster - it's pictured in this issue in a respectable dark blue and black color scheme, but the actual product that shipped was molded in aqua blue and light gray plastic.  It was so ugly I actually repainted the entire thing before assembling it, like it was a model or something.  I've never gone to such lengths before or since, but I suppose it's nice to have a one-of-a-kind collectible that looks nice (probably with zero resell value, but I swore off eBay for good decades ago, anyway.)

First news about the Xbox reveal (still over a year away from launching.)  I imagine the editors of this magazine were some of the only people in Japan looking forward to it.  They might have been the only people in Japan to BUY it as well.  OK, that's an exaggeration.  Play Online only has 4 editors, and I believe there were around 7 or 8 Xboxes sold in Japan.