Hoagie

Great, thanks ! BTW, there is a cover in the database for the August 1996 issue, so you can create issues up to this point (I don't know when this magazine ceased to exist).

Thanks ! Small mistake : the file is name "Game Player's Issue 11 Volume 3 Number 5...". It should be "Volume 2 Number 5".

Awesome, thanks a lot ! The release date can't be January 1990, as it is supposed to be displayed until the 2th of January (and "Volume 2 Number 5" means it's the 5th issue of their second year). Game Player's PC Buyers/Strategy Guide were published once every 2 months, so I would say November 1989 for this one.

You should try to contact the website OldGamesItalia They have a section with old Italian magazines, maybe they can help you.

The best website for "revistas" in Spanish language (among other things) is Retroinvaders.

Thank youuuuuuu ! With the 1992 awards, awesome.

Hard to tell, but I can list 3 for sure : 1) Tilt (France) : best French computer and video game in its time, hands down. No competitors. Too bad they started to appeal to younger audience in 1991 and make their quality drop until their demise in 1994. 2) Joystick (France) : because of their humor (sometimes no far from Zero / PC Zone), their layout and their tone, and lots of good articles. The generation of PC gamers who grew up with Quake, Half-Life and Age of Empires will probably consider their golden age started in 1996, with the stupid videos on their CD-ROMs and the penguins, but as an older gamer whose interest in PC gaming faded in 1996, I'll stick to the 1990-1995 era. 3) Computer Gaming World (USA) : discovered around 2011 or 2012 with the CGW Museum, and one of my biggest shocks since I'm involved in a retrogaming website and dig computer game history. Not only it's extremely serious (something you couldn't expect from French mags), but it gave me a whole new vision of computer games and helped me understand why the US computer gaming market was like it was. It also taught me a lesson : you can't seriously understand the video game culture and history of a country if you haven't taken some time reading old magazines and books of this country. Unvaluable. After that, it depends on countries : France : Génération 4 was OK, but certainly not as good as the two aforementioned magazines USA : PC Entertainment / PC Gamer and Strategy Games contained some good stuff, from what I read. Germany : I'm not very good at German, so I can't really appreciate the texts, but I enjoy PC Joker : good layout, not very generous on the ratings (something common in Germany), and the interview of a game developer in each issue. PowerPlay is historically important and contains some very interesting reports and interviews, but I'm not fond of the teenage-y tone of the reviews. PC Player and PC Games looked good too. UK : too many mags of various quality to mention, but I appreciated Zzap!64 and Crash, ACE, The One (until 1991, I think), PC Format (much better than PC Review), some stuff in Amiga Power, and (not always) the trashy humor of Zero and PC Zone. CVG was good until 1987, I guess; after that, it was dreadful. Some great stuff in Egde, but tries too hard to be edgy to my taste. Spain : maybe not as good or reliable than other mags abroad, MicroMania is still an institution, and it was a pleasure to browse through these issues, especially because I understand Spanish better than German. Australia, Italy, Greece : nothing really impressing. Japan : hem, someday. Hopefully.

OK, I saw only computer formats on the Mobygames page of the best adventure game : it's because you gave links to the NES versions, not the "combined view". I didn't even suspect that Fantasy Zone was released on NES.

Awesome, this is the kind of stuff I like to read. Lots of things to learn here: - Unlike the Western magazines, the Japanese mix computers and consoles in their awards, but the computers are in minority - mainly for adventure games. And they don't hesitate to drop a category if no game deserves an award. - It seems they were the first to give casual games their own award - if "casual" is the good translation. It would be interesting to compare with the awards of a few other years to see what they put exactly in this category. - I would be curious to see which games won the Best Puzzle Game award the years before, because this kind of game started to get big in the west with Shanghai and Tetris. Maybe the Japanese didn't like what the Western developers did with their ancestral game of Mahjongg. - Mahjongg had its own category. - Character design was taken so seriously in Japan it had its own award too. - I almost burst into laughter when I saw the Best Game Design award was given to a teenage idol dating game (take that, Shigeru Miyamoto ), but then I read the Hardcore Gaming 101 article, and understood the game certainly got this award because it asked the player to call phone numbers (in the real life) to get recorded messages of the idol. It was more than a decade before the games asking you to browse websites designed specifically for the game, like Missing / In Memoriam. And if the phone numbers were overpriced, it may have been a precursor of freemium too.

It's logical than all these lists chock-full of RPGs pay a tribute to Wizardry, because it's the RPG that started it all in Japan. It was the major influence of The Black Onyx, and - not always directly - all the JRPG to come, from Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy. The name is so revered that when Sir-Tech closed down, the Japanese got the license and developed their own Wizardry franchise - it even had its own anime ! http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/wizardry-series-introduction/ And that's certainly why Robert Woodhead pursued a new career in anime in Japan, as you discovered a few pages earlier.

Yes, knowing the composition of the computer market and how it evolved over the years would give a better understanding, but it should be less than surprising than 1. the Japanese protected their market and slowed down the arrival of western computers, 2. as a consequence, lots of western games didn't come out there, or with some delay. But this doesn't bother me, au contraire. What I love when I browse old mags from another country is discovering a new vision of this universe, local publishers and local games unknown out of their own country. With Japan, I know there's a whole world of detective games, hentai RPGs, baseball games and horse riding management software waiting for me. The problem is that these magazines aren't available online and that I don't read Japanese - and I suppose it would take years to hardly understand a paragraph. And if the discovery of Japanese computer games contradicts the narrative of legions of Nintendo fanboys trying to convince us that Mario and Zelda are perfectly representative of the spirit of Japanese video games, it's even better.

I was thinking more of annual lists of games of the year, chosen by either the readers or the critics, but the top sellers are interesting as well. With two management games (including one at #1), three RPGs and a soft spot for naked girls, this top looks like a German top sales list. I was surprised for Dungeon Master II, but yes, it was out in Japan more than one year before it was released in the USA and Europe. It's pretty weird for an American game. Either Alone in the Dark was released quite late, or it sold for more than one year.

Seeing how many German computer and gaming magazines Kultboy listed over the years, there is no doubt the number of Japanese gaming magazines must be huge. Listing them must an herculean task, especially with all the weird name changes and special issues. The 1987 Famicom top 10 games is very interesting, it shows another side of console gaming, with completely unknown games out of Japan. Quite different from what we usually read in Occidental books or websites. Are there similar top 10 in local computer gaming magazines ? It's much less documented that the Japanese console market...

Another cover of "PC Games" (with the space, post-1996) missing here : http://redeye.co30.com/upreview.html

Well, it's the big day: here is our section about old computers and computer gaming magazines: 134 magazines from 10 countries, almost 9700 issues, more than 50000 referenced articles, pages with personalities, awards, links to archive websites, and the ability to see which magazines were available during a specific month! https://www.abandonware-france.org/bibliotheque/magazines/ Hope you'll like it! Of course, any suggestion and comment is welcome.

It looks like of the missing issues is on sale here : https://www.closets-total.top/game-players-pc-strategy-guide-1989-volume-2-number-4-sim-city-prophecy-p-3495.html

Mmm, Belgium, interesting ! What were the computer and consoles magazines of this era in your country ? I'm making a list of old computer games-related magazines around the world, and I have nothing from Belgium yet.

I know how you feel. With the mags sharing the same names (I know four "PC Player" and four "PC Games", maybe more to come), those who reinitialize their numbering sometimes and those who don't even have numbering, it can be a source of trouble. At least, the id in the database is unique. Three things : - About the mess with "PCGames" / "PC Games" : be careful with "Computer Games Strategy Plus", the "Computer Games" was added to mean they dropped boardgames, but it was still called "Strategy Plus" inside, and later it became "Computer Games" (with "Strategy Plus" written with a smaller font on the cover). And worse, its nationality changed : it was originally British and became 100% American later ! - There are two covers of PC Games that don't show up in the magazine section. - Don't forget your remaining "Game Players PC Entertainment".

In France, we use the word "franponais" ("français" + "japonais") to make fun of the use of the French words in signs and shop names in Japan. It looks like some French words have been assembled randomly - with typos, usually - to look "chic". http://lefranponais.fr http://www.topito.com/top-10-des-exemples-de-franponais-petit-francais-revisite-par-nos-amis-nippons

I did a search with "Topscore dutch" or "Topscore dutch magazine" with Duckduckgo, and the results (with or without pics) were quite explicit. After a small research, I discovered that topscore.nl (yes, the extension for Netherlands) was a long-running pr0n online store, thus the confusion. The problem was that I forgot/didn't know that in Netherlands the sale of pr0n stuff with animals was legal, and the cache of search engines stored these images pretty well. Damn, I love animals, but not THAT much.

I understood the coverage of "adult" (a very misleading word) games was marginal, I was just troubled by the contrast between the quite explicit game pics and the innocent-looking-yet-completely-irrelevant covers. But after all, French mags were saucy more than once when it came to erotic games. I'm perfectly aware of the difference of the computer markets between USA and Europe. However, I don't have a clue about the demographics of this computer market in Japan. I know some of the computers out there (PC-88, PC-98, FM Towns), but don't know how many units they sold, how it evolved, how it was perceived, what kind of games were common or popular on each platform... With so few vintage Japanese gaming magazines on the web and my brain struggling to memorize hiragana/katakana, I guess it will take time to learn.

Having read lots of vintage game magazines from several countries, I noticed that sometimes they quote foreign magazines, but rarely do full press reviews to help their readers discover the gaming press around the world. The exception was Tilt, in its time the best French computer game magazine. They run this kind of press review twice in their history (I made links to the scans at Abandonware Magazines, the images were too big). The first time, it was in their issue 22 (6/1985). They have a look at the major magazines of this era - but nothing from Japan. One of the few magazines I didn't know was Topscore, from the Netherlands. I tried to search info about this magazine (or some scans with the image search), and what I found was, er, not what I expected. Take a chance if you want, but for %*µ's sake, activate SafeSearch beforehand. I warned you. Presse sans frontières (part 1/2) Presse sans frontières (part 2/2) The second time, it was in their issue 87 (2/1991). It's a whole eight-page article, giving lots of info, places where these magazines can be found, their price, how to subscribe, the specificities of each country... And this time, Japan is not forgotten. Presse mondiale (part 1/4) Presse mondiale (part 2/4) Presse mondiale (part 3/4) Presse mondiale (part 4/4) Too bad other magazines didn't run this kind of article, there's valuable info inside.

I saw the cheesy covers on the Twitter account, and the "Comp" in the title suggested it was a computer game magazine, but I wouldn't have guessed it covered adult games. It looks like it's impossible to guess if a Japanese game magazine is for adults or not just with the cover. Unless there is Mario or Pikachu on it. Well, I suppose. Hopefully. Comptiq still exists today, but its Wikipedia page does not mention any penchant for adult games. Maybe it's so common it's not worth mentioning.

With the label suggesting to boot from Windows and use a DiscWizard CD-ROM, it's certainly not a 10 Mb disk !

I don't know if you noticed, but there are three more PC Strategy Guide scanned by marktrade at Internet Archive : https://archive.org/details/GPGMSDOSCGVol1No2 https://archive.org/details/GPPCSGVol2No2 https://archive.org/details/GPPCSGVol3No2 As well as more obscure magazines like PC Ace, PC Simulations...