Joseph4587

I have learned to day that the Game Doctor, Bill Kunkel, passed away today. He as well as Arnie Katz and Joyce Worley are THE biggest reason I fell in love with videogames as a young child. His passion for the industry was as apparent back then as it was today and all video game journalists owe a debt of gratitude to pioneers such as him for laying the groundwork for them to follow. I was lucky enough to meet him on a few occasions and he simply could not have been nicer to me. I will forever cherish those moments.

While I hope in the coming days that those close to him celebrate his life and that he is fondly remembered by his peers in the industry, for just today, I am saddened to hear of his passing and my condolences go out to his family.

For more information, here is the source of the news:

http://www.j2games.com/new/forum/index.php?topic=6356.0

Triverse, thanks for asking. I didnt realize that I am already taking a loss on each issue since I priced the mailing of 1 issue at $5.50 for Priority and I am only charging $2.99...lol. oh well.

For 1 issue = $2.99

For 2 issues = $4.49 (+$1.50)

For 3 issues = $5.99 (+$1.50)

For 4 issues = $7.49 (+$1.50)

...and so on. If you let me know which ones you are interested in, as a valued member of Retromags, I would be willing to discount it for you. Just let me know and I am sure we can work something out.

Thanks.

Joseph

(aka Vince4587)

Retro Gamers .... hmmm .... interesting.

Yes they are. It is easily my favorite current magazine and I enjoy it thoroughly.

To all,

Just wanted to give everyone a heads up that the following Electronic Gaming Monthly and Retro Gamer magazines are now available on E-Bay. All the EGMs are available here, so it is purely for the collectors only.

My E-Bay Auctions

To those that check it out..thank you.

Joseph

(aka Vince4587)

Also, this hasn't been confirmed yet but I may be receiving a donation of the remaining issues after the eBay purchase which includes 6,19,28,35 and 37-48.

Should this donation come through, Retromags® will have the entire Next Generation™ collection from 1995 to 2000!

Well nirv, it is confirmed!! I've mailed the issues out to you today, so you should be receiving them soon. Hopefully, over time, you can get to all of them and finally scratch one great magazine completely off the list.

Keep up the good work.

Joseph (aka vince4587)

The years are from 1981 to 1985....the original run of the magazine.

Thor,

I should be able to get them to you. 211 and 212 are in 320X240 avi files. The rest are on DVD. Just give me a little time and I will be in touch.

Thanks.

Thanks everyone. I will see what I can do. KiwiArcader, I may take you up on that offer to clean up any scans I do, so don't be surprised if I contact you in the next few weeks.

To Nirv / E-Day / Jake

I just wanted to thank you for posting these scans. I always loved this magazine and fondly remember it as being the first games magazine that was designed and written for adult gamers that wanted more than just reviews, previews and pictures splashed everywhere.

Keep up the good work and keep 'em coming.

Joseph (aka Vince4587)

Hi Thor,

I loved that series. Other than episode 223 (Castlevania) and 412 (Tekken), I have a complete run. I am not sure they are in a high enough quality for you, but I would certainly be willing to help out if needed. Some of mine are simply in AVI files that are roughly 150MB each, some are on DVD recorded directly on a special TiVo machine that performed that function. just let me know.

To the active scanning community at large:

With all of the recent spike in activity I have seen, I felt it was appropriate to remind people of an outstanding offer I put out there a while back. In the last few weeks, I have seen updates to several magazines from the 90s (thank you to those people), but it is still important to know that Electronic Games, the granddaddy of ALL U.S. dedicated games magazines is still unfinished. I firmly believe that seeing this series completely scanned is important because of its significance to the game magazine history and the sheer rarity of the issues that date back 25 to 30 years now. There is NO other magazine of this era that better defines the Retromags mission of preserving the past before it is lost forever. I am extremely fortunate enough to own a complete set of magazines (minus a few pages missing in some) and would LOVE nothing more than to know that that they have ALL been scanned and preserved for future generations.

So, to that end, to any reputable scanner out there that have had work posted, I am willing to send (free of charge) any issue not done to be scanned provided it can be done in the relatively near future. I would do it myself, but I simply do not have the time or patience to sit there and get them in the quality that the ones before have been done in. Ideally, I would like to work with someone who can make this a scanning priority, but I am realistic and would be flexible for the right person.

This is one way that I can contribute to this awesome site. Please reply if interested so that we can take it offline to discuss the specifics.

Thanks again for all the great releases so far and I hope to hear from you.

Joseph

(AKA Vince4587)

Thank you SOOOO much for working on these scans and sharing them with the rest of us.

I firmly believe that seeing this series completely scanned is important because of its significance to game magazine history and the sheer rarity of the issues that date back 25 to 30 years now. There is NO other magazine of this era that better defines the Retromags mission of preserving the past before it is lost forever is. I am extremely fortunate enough to own a complete set of magazines (minus a few pages missing in some) and would LOVE nothing more than to know that that they have ALL been scanned and preserved for future generations to see the first (and in my opiniopn best) American dedicated games magazine.

So, to that end, to Crookedmouth, Kitsune, Waremonger, and any of the other reputable scanners out there that have had work posted, I am willing to send (free of charge) any issue not done to be scanned provided it can be done in the immediate future (meaning a few weeks) and then sent back to me. I would do it myself, but I simply do not have the time or patience to sit there and get them in the quality that the ones before have been done in. This will be a standing offer that I will keep reminding people of.

This is another way that I can contribute to this awesome site. Please reply if interested so that we can take it offline to discuss the specifics.

Thanks again for all the great releases so far and I hope to hear from you.

Joseph

(AKA Vince4587)

EGM gets my vote, now and until the first 100 issues are done.

Well, 2009 brought a whole slew of projects and resolutions that I want to accomplish. One of them happens to be to contribute in some way to this site and help give back to the hobby that I have loved for so many years. I have ALWAYS been an avid magazine reader and collector. Unfortunately, due to life changes, moving and sheer weight, I have thrown out more magazines in my younger years than I ever care to imagine. However, Electronic Gaming Monthly always held a special place to me and was one of the few that I always kept. After combing through the list of ones that have not been posted, I own the issues listed below (Note: I have checked the WIP, but I heard it is not up to date, so I simply ignored it.)

Issue 004

Issue 005 (also known as the 1990 Buyers Guide)

Issue 006 thru Issue 014

Issue 015 (also known as the 1991 Buyers Guide)

Issue 016 thru Issue 024

Issue 026

Issue 028 thru Issue 032

Issue 043

Issue 054

Issue 089

I, like many others, would love to see them preserved digitally. Unfortunately, I do not have the time or patience to sit there and scan page after page. I would be willing to work with the established powers at be on this site to provide them for scanning if they wish. I only ask that they are kept intact and that I get them back when the scanning is complete.

I also have an almost complete run of Next Generation which, down the road, I would also be willing to contribute for scanning. However, my personal preference is to see EGM 1-100 completed first.

So, if Phillyman or Meppi read this, please PM me as I would like to start an offline dialog to make it happen.

Thanks

Joseph (aka Vince4587)

Wasn't there a magazine that ran in the mid 90's during the 32/64 bit era also called Electronic Games? It only ran for a few issues and was published by the same people as EGM. Pretty cool story BTW.

The short answer is: yes there was. For more info, see below from www.magweasel.com

History

The original Electronic Games fizzled out in 1985, but the three people largely behind it -- Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel, and Katz's wife Joyce Worley -- still wrote about video games long afterwards. Although their most notable work was in VideoGames and Computer Entertainment, they also wrote content for Electronic Gaming Monthly and a wealth of computer magazines.

The idea to resurrect Electronic Games had been in their minds for a while, but it received a jump start when Kunkel ran into EGM publisher Steve Harris during a Consumer Electronics Show. Harris hooked up with Katz soon afterward, and eventually a scheme was set up where the trio would provide editorial content for the magazine while Sendai headquarters in Lombard, IL would handle the book's design. (The Decker Publications name was established simply to differentiate Electronic Games' finances from the rest of Sendai's.)

Layout

The original idea behind the new Electronic Games, as outlined by Arnie Katz in his first editorial, was to provide comprehensive game coverage to a more adult audience than Sendai's other magazines at the time. In practice, this meant that Electronic Games looked quite a bit like VG&CE and the old EG -- large, text-heavy preview features, a great deal of industry-insider interviews (even putting Sega head Tom Kalenske on the cover at one point), and coverage on non-traditional topics like fanzines. Reviews were also text-heavy and similar in style to VG&CE, with only small screenshots accompanying each game.

The magazine is notable for being the fourth title with a Game Doctor column (the others being VG&CE, EGM, and the first Electronic Games), as well as introducing The Kunkel Report, a monthly commentary on the industry that is still updated online at Digital Press.

Although each issue of EG was well written, the design was frequently haphazard (the magazine changed art directors several times), and the title had trouble finding a very large, steady audience. This situation continued until 1995, when the EG deal ended and the magazine was renamed Fusion and brought entirely in-house, although Katz and Worley remained on as contributing editors.

I hope that helps.

- JOSEPH (aka Vince4587)

For me, there is no way to decide because I grew up in the advent of the hobby during the late 70s / early 80s. I had the most time to dedciate to the Atari 2600, so that holds an incredible amount of fond memories. Skipping over my C64 teens and got into my early 20s when still had some free time, the Super Nintendo was my go to system (though I played plenty of NES and Genesis). Now in my late 30s, I find I have much less time to play, but still get a great deal of pleasure playing both new games and retro consoles as well.

What I am trying to get at is that each system had a few games to ABSOLUTELY love, so choosing one over the other is making it seem as though the others were less enjoyable and that was NEVER the case.

Theres my 2 cents,

JOSEPH (aka Vince4587)

Hello Everyone,

I have been a memeber of this site for quite a while, but finally decided to participate and share one of my gaming magazine memories and remind some of us here why do this. For those of you old enough to remember the original golden age of video games in the late 70s / early 80s, the first magazine dedicated to video games was called Electronic Games, which was managed and written by 3 main people: Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel and Joyce Worley. Some of my most vivid early gaming memories involved going to the local candy store on the week I knew it would come out and literally grabbed it right from the box as soon as it arrived. I would rush home and read each issue from cover to cover and then read it again. I especially liked the CES issues where all the new games would be previewed. They always made the trade shows look like the absolute coolest place to be if you were a gamer, Well, fast forward to 1994 (I am 23 at this point). I was working for Funcoland in NY and I thought I had the dream job since I could now go to the CES show in Chicago. Well, I went with my copy of Electronic Games #1 in tow (which I had purchased a few years earlier for $100, an unheard of amount at the time since there was no market for old game magazines in the late 80s), hoping to meet Katz, Kunkel, and Worley. I brought it to Chicago, but while I knew they were there covering it, I never saw them. Anyway, as I was getting ready to leave the hotel I was staying in, I stepped out of the elevator and lo and behold, they were right in front of me waiting to check out. I was floored. They were at the same hotel in Chicago I was at and didnt even know it (go figure). I introduced myself and asked Arnie if he was who I thought he was and he said yes. A few minutes later, I got to meet Bill and Joyce and proceeded to talk to them all for about 5 minutes about the show and gaming in general in what could best be described as a very surreal moment for me. We discussed Mortal Kombat II, the X-Band and Nintendo's upcoming games. They were genuinely happy and surprised when I showed them a copy of the magazine and asked them to sign it. They said they hadn’t seen it in years. After they signed it, they had to go, so I thanked them for being such important parts my gaming life growing up and what a pleasure it was to meet them. - THE END -

So, to all those people who spend the hours that could easily be dedicated to other pursuits, toiling away bringing back fond memories of our gaming past, I say thank you. You are appreciated.

- JOSEPH (aka Vince4587)

I have just left a review as vince4587 but I am not sure if it posted with the others. I hope it helps as I really feel this site should get more attention. Let me know if I successfully completed the task to get a 1 month membership. Thanks and good luck.