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Everything posted by StrykerOfEnyo
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Franchises That Need To Put Out a New Game!
StrykerOfEnyo replied to Phillyman's topic in Current Generation Video Gaming!
One of my favs was Syphon Filter, but every installment seems to score lower than the last. I had a lot of love for the Tenchu series, but it disappeared shortly after the PS2 version. I got Tenchu Z on Xbox 360, but it was so basic. I always wanted a modern-looking Tenchu with good graphics, and some new mechanics. I liked the DeathSpank games but there seems to be no chance for any more since the developer switched to phone games and has no desire to go back to console. Seeing Ron Gilbert return for the series would be nice as well. -
Games you are currently playing or recently beaten
StrykerOfEnyo replied to Phillyman's topic in Off Topic
I'm currently working on a video series where I play the trial for EVERY game on Xbox Live Arcade (that's available), and I play any owned games for longer. There are games I downloaded the trial, or I even bought on sale, but I never touched them for 10 years until now. I was already working on it for months, then they announced the closing of the 360 store in 2024, so now I've been rushing to get through them all. It's about 704 games, but around 100 of them aren't playable (I didn't buy it, or no trial download). I have run into a number of games that I want to be able to play after the store closes, some good, some bad, but it's been fun seeing what I missed out on. I love the DeathSpank games, Ron Gilbert worked on the first two and the humor is great. Assassin's Creed Liberation HD was one I waited on for a pricedrop for years, but I had to pay the full $20 before it got delisted earlier in 2023. I avoided playing it for years, and it's not that good, but it was impressive for a PSP game back then. Several games like Daytona USA and Crazy Taxi were fun, but there's not much to do. I remember how impressive they were in arcades back then. Costume Quest 1 and 2 were nice, and I played all the way through World of Keflings (9 hours), I couldn't stop. I need to get the DLC for some of these games too, before they get removed. Most stuff that is Backward Compatible is still available, but some isn't. I liked Dogfight 1942, a budget flight-sim and it has two DLCs for $3 each, but they'll be gone forever if I don't buy them now (I don't like the idea of modding my console to get free games, not right now, anyway). I few games are still on Steam, but there are others that I missed out on, like Earthworm Jim HD, that you cannot find anywhere today. I just wanted to share this. It's sad to see the store go away, but I can't imagine many are still buying games on the 360 itself. Most sales have been the exact same set of games for the last 6 years (Capcom, Rockstar, etc.), but I would easily buy more if there were more discounts. -
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If you have ever talked or listened to some of the former GameFan members from the original magazine, you will know that the group is well-aware of several former staff that ended up working long hours for little or no pay trying to keep the magazine alive throughout the years. Many of them left when they were expected to work for free. We went from a full team making this relaunch of the magazine happen, to their not being any money to pay the staff, and now we are down to only a handful of people for the last few issues. Issue 9 took about 8 months since the last issue to release, and reports say that it was assembled by only two people, Dave Halverson and Greg Orlando. The normal GF Staff profiles are gone, and only four other staff are even listed on this issue. One of the graphic designers is listed as "Earnest Storm" -- a long-time alter ego of Halverson that was used even in the early days of the original magazine (being a combination of two games, Ernest Evans and Alien Storm). Issues 8 and 9 were only available in a digital format. Highlights From this Issue: There's a look at the Top 50 Games of the Wii, and a 2013 Most Wanted Preview, which is about one paragraph of words on top of some fancy artwork. We have a big section on Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch, and a 2012 Year in Review on the best games from the last year. Yet another list of games with a one-paragraph write up. Lollipop Chainsaw wins Game of the Year Honorable Mention (?) and has a producer interview. Borderlands 2 is the Game of the Year Runner Up, and also has a 2-page interview, and Dragon's Dogma wins the GOTY and also has a nice interview. The Viewpoint returns for 2-pages in a simplified format with about 4 games reviewed and scored on each page. There's a nice section on anime, but that's about it for this issue. Yep, no full-page reviews for ANY games. And most game coverage was three lists of the best games for the Wii, the most wanted games for next year, and the best games of last year. Most magazine do "top game lists" at the end of the year, but they also have their other content. There were little things missing before, but this issue is missing so much compared to the last two. Jason Moore is still the art director, and the layouts look nice, but we have several sections that have hard-to-read text again. When I was 15 years old I was writing my own game reviews for myself, and even I learned very quickly that white text on a black background needs to be bold so the letters aren't too thin to read. But we see several sections with very thin white text in this issue. This mag just looks bad, with pages full of artwork and only a small paragraph of text that probably took no time to write. The magazine would go on a 2-year hiatus after this. Only two more issues would be published, Issue #10 and #11.
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For those of you that did the math last time, I said Issue 7 was assembled by only three people, and two of those left shortly after, which only left editor-in-chief Dave Halverson. Publisher Paper Planet made a press release in April 2012, highlighting the future of GameFan and Girls of Gaming. The company planned on increasing its online presence through app development for mobile devices as well as a new GameFan TV online channel. This never happened, but someone did make a YouTube channel. Former Destructoid editor Wesley Ruscher was named the magazine's new managing editor but resigned shortly after the release of issue 8, stating on Twitter that the job "lacked the necessities to keep food in my belly and a roof over my head." Issue 8 took six months to come out since the last issue. Jason Moore is the new art director, and Charlie Maib is the Japan Now editor. Issue 9 would take eight months to come out, Feb 2013, and was only worked on by two people, Dave Halverson and Greg Orlando. Issues 8 and 9 were only available in a digital format, so thanks to those that made this version for us. GameFan would then go on a two-year hiatus, returning in 2015 with a redesigned magazine and website. Highlights From this Issue: I still like the focus on indie games, that's what GameFan has been about for me through the years -- giving more coverage to the smaller developers. Skullgirls gets a 3-page review and a 3-page interview. We have some PS Vita launch window coverage, with a review on Gravity Rush. Blades of Time gets a review and an interview mixed together. We have more reviews for Kid Icarus Uprising, Starhawk, Tales of Graces, Lollipop Chainsaw, and an 8-page section for the review and interview on Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. Witcher 2 and Phantom Breaker have reviews, along with several shorter half-page reviews which I dont mind. There's a nice Japan Now section, and GameFan Retro returns again. We get a nice retrospective on Metal Slug, a look at Wild 9, and even the FM Towns Marty console, the first 32-bit system that was commercially available. I still love this retro section. What about the magazine itself? There defiantly are some things you will notice in quality. I will say the art direction is different. It still looks good and Jason Moore is doing a great job, but it's really hard to get familiar to one artist and then have a sudden change. Rob Duenas has a special place in my heart and I believe he really shaped the magazine for those first 7 issues. He will be missed. The angled text is used very sparingly, but the biggest negative for this issue is the hard-to-read text is back once again. This was a problem with GameFan in the past, and there were a few times it popped up in this relaunch, but this issue was digital-only, so there is no excuse for not being able to comfortably read the text in a modern magazine like this. The Skullgirls interview uses a thin red text for the interviewer, with a very light reddish pattern underneath. I needed to zoom in a ways to even make out the letters. The Gravity Rush interview has a section with orange and yellow lava in the background, but the text is white with no backdrop or shadow, with the interviewer text being a bold light orange -- which make some of the text disappear completely in certain spots, and hard to read in others. What does a magazine look like when made by two people? Find out in Issue 9. (hopefully:)
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Issue #7 was put entirely together by three people; Dave Halverson, James Bacon, and art director Rob Duenas. The lovely Areala mentioned in the comment section of the last issue that the rest of the team "who helped put the magazine together didn't get paid a cent for any of their work." And this also spilled over into the website, any staff that contributed regular content to the gamefanmag.com website (defunct now) also found out they were not getting paid, and when they were expected to continue to work for free, they all left. Issue 7 was assembled by only three people, and two of those left shortly after. Rob Duenas was working 20 hours a day for two weeks, and it was becoming way too much of a workload. He never had anything negative to say about Halverson or the magazine itself, and was willing to continue to do covers or artwork, but just couldn't keep maintaining those work hours. James Bacon would leave for unknown reason shortly after. Issue 9 was made by two people, and issues 8 and 9 were released digitally only. Dave Halverson has had long-time staff leave him during Gamers' Republic and Play magazine as well, but finding details and confirming them is difficult, that's way I tend to stay away from mentioning the reasons behind things during these comments. You can see the quality drop of Issue #7 too. Under the listed GF Staff, there are several "consulting editors," and now the GameFan mascot, the Monitaur, has been added. The "avatar names" are back, which is odd since articles still have the names of the people that wrote them, and once again Dave Halverson is using his trademark E. Storm handle. Let's jump in the issue itself. Highlights of This Issue: There's an interview with Final Form Games, and a look at developer Level-5. We see reviews of Xenoblade Chronicles, Adventures of TinTin, Sonic Generations, Skyward Sword, a colorful layout for Rayman Origins, Saints Row: The Third, Rock of Ages, Bastion and a few more, along with a short history of Disgaea and the review for Disgaea 4. The GameFan Retro section returns, using the colors and style of the old logo. We have a "25 Years of Zelda" special, the "Very Best of GameBoy Advanced," and looks at Silhouette Mirage, WonderDog, Skeleton Crew, Pilotwings and more. It's a good-sized mag, at 102-pages. It's amazing at the amount of work that went into this issue with such a small crew and a handful of contributors, but I am really curious at what the rest of the issues look like since the art director leaves after this issue. I hope there's more. It's so great to see these issues, thanks again, dablais.
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Thanks, I couldn't find any details about this from previous staff, but I know Halverson has a history of unfortunate events happening around him, but I assumed the staff left because they couldn't get paid again. I didn't know they didn't get paid for work already done, AND were expected to work for free. Thats tough.
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The first 5 issues came out on-time on a bi-monthly schedule, but Issue #6 took eight months to come out. This seems to be due to problems with the advertising revenue. We have an all-new editing team now, led by the new managing editor James Bacon. There are some early signs in this issue that things are a little off. Issue #7 would be put entirely together by three people; Dave Halverson, James Bacon, and art director Rob Duenas. Issues #8 and #9 were digital-only, so I don't know if we will see these surface on a website. Highlights From this Issue: This came out in time for E3 2011, and we get a short Best and Worst awards. There's a great interview with developer NG.DEV.TEAM, and one with the legendary American McGee about the new Alice: Madness Returns, and we see the review a bit later this issue. We got reviews of FEAR 3, Dungeon Siege III, BloodRayne Betrayal, Islands of Wakfu, Gatling Gears and Trenched (Iron Brigade). I hate to mention that the 20-degree angled text is back, I find it hard on my eyes to read several big columns of review text like this. The Shadows of the Dammed review is printed in a different orientation, but at least the text isn't angled. This is the first issue with the new GameFan Retro section, complete with its own cover. We get a nice look at Super Star Wars, DecapAttack, Jet Moto, an import Macross game, and the two D&D beat'em ups -- Shadow Over Mystara and Tower of Doom. Its a nice look at retro games from different eras, and I really enjoyed that the page layouts are reminiscent of the way GameFan looked in the early 1990s. I haven't addressed it as much, but all of these issues have had minimal ads, like easily less than 12 pages each. Most issues have been 88 pages, one was over 100-pages, and a few were less than 80-pages. I gladly would take more ads if it meant people could keep their jobs and be able to pay their expenses.
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The first 5 issues came out on-time on a bi-monthly schedule, but the next one, Issue #6 took eight months. Highlights From this Issue: There is a great interview with the man that nearly single-handedly created Retro City Rampage. There are a lot of screenshots and all 4 pages are filled with text, which is always nice to see. Little Big Planet 2 has 12-pages of coverage, and the layouts look great, but at least 6 of those pages have less than a half-column of text. If I played an early version of that game, I could probably fill 5 pages with text alone. I know it's hard deciding how much text goes on a page and how much do you let the layout designs speak for themselves, but I never liked having so many pages with barely any words on them. Maybe it's just me. The reviews look fantastic once again, the Epic Micky review has 6 pages with some great color and backgrounds. Majin & The Forsaken Kingdom has a beautiful backdrop, and the new Splatterhouse has some gorgeous looking carnage on the page. The Fable III review seems to use some original art concepts that I never saw before. Art Director Rob Duenas has really outdone himself -- its a shame we see him leave after Issue #7. I can totally recommend looking up some of his work outside the magazine. There's also a special, The Top 25 Games of 2010, an 11-page list that is a mix of triple-A titles and smaller indie games. I still love the new GameFan logo, and it often changes colors and design slightly for each issue.
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I'm not mentioning all the text boxes at an angle in this issue (it's more like 20-degrees or less). It's still very distracting, especially when they completely change the page orientation. People don't like to hold a magazine vertically because it looks like you're checking out a centerfold. It's here, too, so be aware. Highlights From this Issue: We get a lot of great reviews, Castlevania Lord of Shadow, Dead Rising 2, Halo Reach, Mafia 2, Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep, Ys Seven, Amnesia, Shank, Vanquish, and a little more. There's a 2-page section on comics, called Now Reading, which is what the fans wanted. Enslaved: Odyssey to the West has a huge amount of coverage, 16 pages, including the 4-page review. Another solid issue. The page layouts and colors (minus the 20-degree angled text) are very well done, especially for the reviews. Issue #5 is the last one made with a full team. The current art director left after Issue #6 so it would be interesting to see this magazine after that. Even if this site never sees them, thank you to those that donated or worked on these. dablais is a legend for the work done here. All these issues look great.
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Editor-in-Chief Dave Halverson filled his entire editorial section with a Matrix-style background, with several words readable that say, "Rumors of Prints Demise Are Greatly Exaggerated." Then he signs his name. Who is he talking to? Himself? We know magazines are still being published today, but to ignore the warning signs that print media is in a serious decline is a example of either ignorance or low intelligence. Remember, this is bi-monthly, so he took two months to tell us this one sentence. Good use of your printed page, bro. Highlights From this Issue: In the grand tradition of GameFan, they gave a smaller arcade game the cover, DeathSpank. we got a 4-page preview, followed by a 1-page interview. I skipped by this series until recently, but I liked to think this issue would've made me check this game out earlier. The humor was great and now I want to get all three games before the Xbox 360 store closes. One game last issue had the text boxes put at a 20-degree angle (or close to that). It was different and I didn't mind it. Now in this issue, they do three different previews in a row like this. Plus, the third one they switch the page orientation -- yep, you need to hold the magazine vertically for two full 2-page layouts (and the text is still 20-degrees off). This is very annoying. Then later on, they have four boxes of text on a page and half of them are put at a 20-degree angle. You need to see this for yourself. This angle-thing gets WAY overused in this issue. (two more 2-page layout are done horizontal again) This could be the Battlefield Earth of videogame magazines. The Veiwpoint and Reviews sections have now joined, which basically means they call them both, but the old multi-box Viewpoints are now gone. We got some great-looking review pages, covering MGS Peace Walker, Metroid Other M, Joe Danger, Persona 3 Portable, Dragon Quest IX, and a few more. The Anime section is only 2-pages, but its great seeing it. On to the next issue.
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I'm so glad to finally read some of these issues from the GameFan 2010 relaunch. I have been looking for them for a long time, but I could never find any on other sites. I left more of a history of this magazine on my Issue #1 comment, so go there for more info. This relaunch only saw 11 issues total be published over the course of 5 years (April 2010 to June 2015). The first 5 issues came out on-time on a bi-monthly schedule, but Issue #6 took eight months. Issue $7 was put together by three people; Dave Halverson, managing editor James Bacon, and art director Rob Duenas. I don't know if we will ever see all 11 issues here on RetroMags (two were digital-only), but I am thankful for those that took the time to donate and scan these. Join me as we look at each one that finds its way here, thanks dablais. Highlights From this Issue: Rob Duenas is the new art director and art designer, and I absolutely love the way these new issues look. It takes the idea of having several high-quality images like in the original magazine, and updates it to a more modern standard. You'll notice that there's a main screenshot or a background image that becomes the color palette for an entire 2-page spread. Like for Super Mario Galaxy 2, the green in Yoshi's nose shows up in some of the columns on other pages of the coverage. In Issue #1 you had the Viewpoint section, which had scores from two people each, but then you had the proper Review section with full-page content, but not every game had a score. I never understood this design -- isn't the Viewpoint the review? Why did some games not have a score? I like the full-page reviews better, but sometimes it was a different person, and sometimes it was the same as the viewpoint look at the game. I understood not every game needed a full page or two for a review, but some repeated. I'd rather see a game get reviewed once, in the same location. Apparently, many readers had comments on this as well, so changes were made. The MovieFan section was dropped early, with many readers preferring PC games and an Anime section. There are little things, like I wish the scores themselves were bigger, but they do fill the page out with words, which I'd rather see more written content on the page in the end anyway. It looks good, and there is a good emphasis on indie or the smaller arcade games found on XBLA or PSN.
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In 2010 Fusion Publishing filed for bankruptcy which meant the closure of Play Magazine (US). Dave Halverson was the man behind the original GameFan, Gamers' Republic, and Play, and was the editor-in-chief on all of them. He began work on a rework of GameFan and this is the 2010 relaunch. Halverson brought a few key staffers from Play along with Rob Duenas as the new art director. Unfortunately, this mag was doomed from the start for a few reasons. One, would be problems with advertising revenue. The first five issues of the magazine were released on a consistent bi-monthly schedule. But the revenue problems occurred with the magazine's development after that. Issue 7 was assembled by only three people, and two of those left shortly after. Rob Duenas was working 20 hours a day for two weeks, and it was becoming way too much of a workload. He never had anything negative to say about Halverson or the magazine, and was willing to do covers or artwork, but just couldn't maintain those work hours. Issue 9 was made by two people, and issues 8 and 9 were released digitally only. Only 11 issues were created, over the course of 5 years! The Second problem was that Alexander Lucard had actually bought the rights to Diehard GameFan back in 2006. They started it back up in 2007 as a website with Halverson’s blessing and it lasted 10 years with some of the original staff joining in on occasion. Halverson never contacted Lucard about the rights, but he knew he had them from the beginning. Lucard said he was on good terms with Halverson, but he was one of the last to know about the relaunch. Lucard ran his Diehard GameFan 2.0 website as a not-for-profit, so nobody got paid for their work -- it was all volunteer work done for the love of games. He has stated that he would happily have given Halverson his blessing and not have asked for any percentage for himself, if only Dave would have contacted him. But he never did. Once Lucard mentioned that he was unaware of the situation, this started a "poop show" (in his words) and the new magazine died quickly after that. Dave Halverson opens the first issue with a comment on printed media, "The more we're told it's a dying medium the more driven we are to prove its more alive than ever." Apparently, they were having revenue problems way before Lucard got involved, which shows you really need money and some good connections to run a successful videogame magazine nowadays. This Issue #1 looks good -- nice layouts, colorful art, no more avatar names for reviews. It's a good read for those that want to go down memory lane for a little while. Here's hoping we see more of these issues come here:)
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1995 to 2004 was such an awesome time for games. Going 3D for the first time for many franchises, but you still had many 2D games. On PS1 you could make a game for around $800,000US or less, and Sony would green-light so many ideas back then. It was a shame the Saturn died early, but then the Dreamcast was out and the PS2 was so amazing. And 1996/1997 was a great time... so many options. So much to play.
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Electronic Gaming Monthly launched a spin-off magazine called EGM² in July 1994. There were no reviews, and the coverage leaned more toward codes and strategy guides, though there were sections that covered other aspects. This magazine would change names twice, and completely swap out its staff around once (though two writers would stay) before it was all said and done about 10 years later. The month this magazine was to hit issue number 50, in August 1998, they rebranded EGM² and became Expert Gamer, but continued the same numbering system. Issue #88 was their last, but then the staff renamed the magazine once again to GameNOW, and while they still would have strategy guides and codes, they focused more on news, reviews and previews. GameFAQs was growing big time, not to mention the internet in general, and I remember never needing to really buy strategy guides as we moved into PS2, GameCube, and Xbox games because you had passionate gamers making them for free on websites. It might seem like they were now just a copy of the original EGM, with the same focus, but they actually had a slightly younger audience that carried over from Expert Gamer. It was more 10-16 year olds, whereas EGM was mostly 15+. The staff had a great personality, and they brought some fun ideas to the mag to keep it going, like a HOT or NOT section. By November 2002 (issue #13) the GameNOW staff was almost completely replaced when Ziff-Davis moved its video game magazines from Chicago to California. Only two writers from the original staff moved to California. The mag had a complete redesign shortly after, which is expected since you now had new staff and new artists taking over. The magazine lasted until January 2004. Print magazines were hit hard as the early 2000s continued, with many of the big names ceasing production by 2009-2011 (like the original EGM and GamePro). GameNOW published 27 issues total. I've gone through a lot of videogame magazines, and I have always like the designs and fonts from EGM2, Expert Gamer, and GameNOW. Nice colorful page layouts with easy-to-read text and easy to understand sections. So many mags can use fonts and colors that hurt the eyes sometimes, or page layouts that look more plain and colorless like TIME or People Magazine than a reflection of a younger generation. For many, the Fan Club (or Letters) section in GameNOW was a highlight for regular readers, with new changes often and funny responses. You might like checking out all three magazines if you've only seen one of them.
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Electronic Gaming Monthly launched a spin-off magazine called EGM² in July 1994. The month this magazine was to hit issue number 50, in August 1998, they rebranded EGM² and became Expert Gamer, but continued the same numbering system. Issue #88 was their last, but then the staff renamed the magazine once again to GameNOW, and while they still would have strategy guides and codes, they focused more on news, reviews and previews. GameFAQs was growing big time, not to mention the internet in general, and I remember never needing to really buy strategy guides as we moved into PS2, GameCube, and Xbox games because you had passionate gamers making them for free on websites. It might seem like they were now just a copy of the original EGM, with the same focus, but they actually had a slightly younger audience that carried over from Expert Gamer. It was more 10-16 year olds, whereas EGM was mostly 15+. The staff had a great personality, and they brought some fun ideas to the mag to keep it going, like a HOT or NOT section. By November 2002 (issue #13) the GameNOW staff was almost completely replaced when Ziff-Davis moved its video game magazines from Chicago to California. Only two writers from the original staff moved to California. The mag had a complete redesign shortly after, which is expected since you now had new staff and new artists taking over. The magazine lasted until January 2004. Print magazines were hit hard as the early 2000s continued, with many of the big names ceasing production by 2009-2011. GameNOW published 27 issues total. It's great to finally see issue #1. Nice colorful page layouts with easy-to-read text and easy to understand sections. For many, the Fan Club (or Letters) section was a highlight for regular readers, with new changes often and funny responses.
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Highlights from this Issue: You have a cover story for South Park, and they have an Exclusive on Rayman 2. The previews look very exciting for the time. Castlevania 64, Nightmare Creatures, Loade Runner 64, Tonic Trouble, Roadsters 98, and an interesting game from Konami that I don't think came out, Survivor: Day One. The reviews are Buck Bumble, Glover, Twisted Edge Snowboarding, NBA Jam 99, NBA Live 99, WCW vs NWO Revenge, WipeOut 64, RUSH 2, Turok 2, and several more. Lots of reviews and previews, another big 116-page issue for this magazine. A great one to download.
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Highlights from this Issue: You have a cover story for WWF Attitude, and they have an interview with a producer on Gex 3. Plus, an Exclusive on ShadowMan, Star War Racer Episode 1, and an article on "A Day in the Life of... A Motion Capture Athlete." Reviews are another great selection, with Mario Party, Super Smash Bros., Air Boardin' USA, A Bug's Life and several sports titles. There's a HUGE section on Beetle Adventure Racing, 16 pages. A Bug's Life get 14 pages of strategy, but no maps. You get the usual 2 pages on GameBoy Color games, but I haven't always mentioned this. They read like a review, but there is no score.
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Editor-in-Chief Eric Winding mentions that "this holiday season may mark the beginning of the end for the Nintendo 64." Considering this is the last issue we know of, there didn't seem to be a reason to come back. The PlayStation 2 had come out in the US by Oct 2000, and the Xbox and GameCube would release by Nov of the next year. Highlights From this Issue: We go out with a bang with 25 reviews -- BattleTankx: Global Assault, Earthworm Jim 3D, Winback, Ready to Rumble, Jet Force Gemini, Destruction Derby 64, Rayman 2 and more. 13 of them are 4-page reviews, with the rest being 2-page. The cover story is Toy Story 2, which is 4 pages with a review. A nice way to go out.
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Highlights from this Issue: You have a cover story and review for Army Men Sarge's Heroes, 4 pages in length, and they have an interview with a producer on Resident Evil 2. Along with some exclusive coverage on Toy Story 2, Taz Express, Duck Dodgers, Armories, and BattleTanks Global Assault. They always use a unique background image for their cover story, exclusive game content and interviews. They did change up the page format for their previews, but I can't say it's much better. We have thin red letters for each game name, with a bad fire effect behind it. It's hard to read the name of the game, and the half-moon shape design for each preview box doesn't look good. The review section only changes in its look, it displays the same info. Now each text box is given a horrible border around it, which really hurts the flow of reding it naturally to the reader. The big color borders on the top and bottom of the pages are thankfully gone, and you still get the same amount of content -- mostly 4 pages for each review, which covers Quake II, Road Rash 64, Duke Nukem Zero Hour, Gauntlet Legends, Gex 3, Command & Conquer, an many more. Superman 64 scores a 1, in case you were wondering. I like these bigger 116-page issues, and there's very little ads as well. And they did start adding a name to the person doing each review a couple issues or so back. It's only a first name, but its something.
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Highlights from this Issue: You have a cover story for Fighting Force 64 and a short interview. Along with an exclusive 2 pages on BattleTanks. They always use a unique background image for their cover story content, exclusive coverage, and interviews. I just wish they did this for the rest of the magazine. We have reviews for Mission Impossible, WWF War Zone, NGL Blitz, Iggy's Reckin' Balls, Gex: Enter the Gecko, Banjo-Kazooie, and several spots titles. This is a lot of content, and once again, each review is a whopping 4-pages. There are a lot of previews, and a strategy section for Quest 64 that is 20-pages long.
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Highlights from this Issue: You have reviews for Quest 64, Forsaken, Mortal Kombat 4, All Star Baseball 99, BioFreaks, AreoGauge, Chopper Attack, several sports games, and a few more. I know I was more negative on the layouts and color choices of the pages in the first issue, and they don't improve until the Q64 1999 Volume 3 (Fall) issue. I do like the idea of only making a limited number of issues a year. The N64 was notorious with having big gaps in its release schedule. It would be hard to make a monthly N64 magazine back then -- the amount of content was very slim for the console. The big color pics look very nice for its time. I just don't like the big jumble of numbers when it comes to displaying a score for a review (see for yourself), where each category's score is displayed bigger than the score given to the game. It is nice having nearly every review being 4-pages long. You defiantly feel like the coverage is good.
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Gregg Off starts his editorial with, "Hopefully, by now you have noticed that we do things a little differently around here at Dimension-3." Yep. And that's why this is the last issue... but it seems they didn't know this info at the time. He talks about how he rather see the cover with a game that has a full review in the same issue. I understand this, but sometimes you need to follow trends in order to get your magazine in people's hands. This is easy for me to say now -- I was like 15 yrs old when this issue came out, so it's not like I would know what it takes to sell a magazine back then. I'm glad they changed the name and found success on the PS1. I still think its worth throwing all these issues on a pad and take them with you to look at some time. Highlights from this Issue: You get reviews for StoneKeep, Crusader, Hexen: Beyond Heretic, Destruction Derby, Tomcat Alley (pc), Lemmings 3D and more. 3DO sees reviews for Alone in the Dark 2, Cannon Fodder, BattleSport, and Killing Time. Several good reviews. On to Dimension PS-X.
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Highlights from this Issue: You get the cover story review of a 3D racing game, Screamers (pc, 97%). I like these 4-page reviews, but I'm starting to get flashbacks of GameFan where several games have had a score of 97% these last several issues. Some games are known for their high scores overall, but some are fine games in their own right, but 97 it a tad high. Witchhaven from Capstone gets a 92%, I'm not as familiar with this game, but I know Capstone has developed a lot of crap back then. Even Magic Carpet 2 gets a 95%, see what I mean? An 85% for a game would mean, "you need to try this" but I always think of a 95-98 should be a game that still ranks among the best all these years later. Regardless, these still look like good games. I believe I bought the Magic Carpet series on GoG.com, but I haven't tried them yet. There's a review for a FMV game I never knew about, Wing Nuts (pc, 83%). We also have Burn Cycle and Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, and Decent on Mac. 3DO has reviews for Mazer, Flying Nightmares, BladeForce and Wolfenstien 3D. All these issues are enjoyable. Each review really gets a good write up, with many issues having several 4-page reviews.
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Highlights from this Issue: The big review is Fade to Black (97%), Primal Rage, MechWarrior II, and Terminal Velocity (97%), which just had a remastered version show up on consoles a little while back. Journeyman Project 2 on Mac has a review (85%), and Marathon 2 has a preview. 3DO only has three reviews, Space Hulk, Zhadnost, and Ballz. I was going to call this another short issue, but the last two issues also have 84 pages, and by this point, their new Dimension PS-X magazine should've launched. Gregg Off mentions in the editorial that the "3" in the magazine title was to represent how games were going into the 3rd-dimention now, or 3D.