Areala

On 7/5/2025 at 2:09 PM, shenmueman said:

Hey everyone!

I'm new here and an looking for some assistance.  Does anyone happen to know of any magazines that showcase and discuss the all-metal XBOX prototype that Microsoft debuted at the March 2000 Gamers Development Conference (GDC)?  I looked at a few of the big name magazine (EGM, GamePro etc.) issues from around that time period and didn't find anything.  I'm actually working on a video about the prototype itself and wanted to get some primary sources of the time to showcase in the video.  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Best regards

Sorry, been doing some research the past couple days and I think I've got some stuff you could use. Lead time on magazines from the early 2000s was typically 4-6 weeks, and issues were often dated a month later than when they were released. Thus, if something happened in March of a given year, you'd want to start looking at the May issues (which would have probably been released in mid-April) for coverage of that thing happening, and such is the case with the aluminum-block Xbox prototype unveiled at GDC.

NextGen issue 65 from May of 2000 covers the Xbox prototype on pages 7 and 8, including a photograph of the unit itself.

EGM covered the 2000 GDC's Xbox news as well in issue 130. Sadly, it doesn't feature any images of the aluminum monster, but they do showcase a few screenshots from the demo footage, and break down the potential specs of the machine, on page 36 (right across from a lovely photo of Angelina Jolie on page 37, who was in talks to play Lara Croft in the upcoming Tomb Raider film).

GamePro was a little late to the party, covering the GDC reveal in issue 141, which has a June cover date. You can find it on page 32, with a single picture that features the aluminum Xbox prototype, right beside Bill Gates's hand.

Short-lived magazine PC Accelerator even notched up a paragraph of coverage of the Xbox event in their penultimate issue. Look to the News Briefs on page 95. Then you can turn to page 22 and snicker at how badly they all wanted to play Halo before Microsoft bought Bungie and made the game a console-exclusive. But, alas, PCA went defunct with issue 22 so we never got to enjoy their bitter, bitter tears...

Although despite having covered it in the previous issue, they did spare some column inches in issue 22, on page 63, to go a bit more in-depth, along with a shot of one of the demo images.

That should do well to get you started, and once the video is done, make sure you drop a link to it here so we can all watch it!

*huggles*
Areala

A Sega Saturn is many things, but a "poor idea", it is not! The indignancy, sir!

I just picked up a WiiU last year to mess around with. Prior to that, the last Nintendo system I bought was a DS Lite circa 2009. If I wind up with a Switch 2, it'll probably be 10-15 years from now.

*huggles*
Areala

I can't even select the Dark theme any longer, and it's not available in the Admin control panel. My guess is that it's something that got disabled a while back. We used to have a number of them, but upgrades and changes to the forum software over the years broke several of them. I think you'd only have access to it if you set it to 'Dark' years ago and just never switched, because it isn't an active choice.

I don't, but I'd love to find some of the ones from the 90s. I have a couple of the physical issues, along with some Advance Comics and other preview periodicals, but it would be nice having digital versions to reference.

Currently it is impossible to do a search for text within a given issue. Part of what we're working on with the database is an index of items found in each magazine, but we're nowhere close to finishing that up, and due to real life stuff, I haven't had time to work on it for several months.

The Video Game History Foundation might be a help to you though. Their digital magazine library, while not as robust as our scan collection, does offer keyword search functionality for the issues they have on offer.

Also, if you tell us what you're looking for, other forum members might be able to point you in the right direction.

@E-Day or @dablais, I know you aren't in the UK, but are you interested in helping this cache find a home here?

*huggles*
Areala

Sometimes it isn't the coverage of the event, but rather the event itself that is important. In this case, I don't think it's what the reviewers had to write specifically about the game, but rather what the four-way convergence of perfect scores says about the quality of the game (or at least the quality of the hype behind it) which is worthy of attention.

On 2/13/2025 at 4:40 PM, kitsunebi said:

https://soranews24.com/2025/02/12/thousands-of-convenience-stores-in-japan-to-end-sale-of-print-magazines-this-spring/

Japan is going to stop selling magazines at over 10,000 convenience stores this spring.  As the article points out, many places are without a dedicated bookstore, and convenience stores their only source for print media.

It's hard to stress to someone living outside of Japan just how important a part of the distribution chain convenience stores are.  They're a part of people's everyday lives.  It's not just the fresh food and snacks (I'd be willing to bet that more people "eating out" get their lunch at a convenience store than all other restaurants combined.)  You can also buy music, movies, and video games.  You can buy tickets to concerts and sporting events. You can pay for your utility bills there.  You can pay for your amazon or yahoo auction orders there.  And you can buy your comics and magazines there, some of which are released weekly.

Or at least, you can do so for a bit longer, before they end distribution of mags at 40% of all locations of the two biggest chains of convenience stores.  This is going to be a huge financial blow to publishers, and I have to wonder if it will mean the end of all but the most popular titles. Japan is, demographically, one of the oldest (the oldest?) countries on Earth, so I'm, not sure I see everyone's mom and dad (and grandparents) switching to online apps for their magazine reading.

I'm sure somebody somewhere crunched the numbers and was like, "Wait! We can save money by not making as much money if we take out the magazine racks!", but still...

Then again, I'm old enough to remember a magazine aisle in the grocery store (not just the tabloid racks at the checkout), and those went out years ago.

On 2/10/2025 at 1:42 AM, DarkRoberto said:

I am going go with Alien: Resurrection for the PS1 as it was the first game to use modern dual control system that is now standard in all first-lerson shooters. Halo may have popularized it - but Alien invented it

What's hilarious in hindsight is all the reviewers of the time who criticized the control scheme, claiming it was impossible to get used to and made the experience more difficult.

Maybe this is the publican that will finally help me understand the wild world of hockey.

2 hours ago, Ferneu said:

Thanks! But I really wish you had left the ads. At least there is an alternate version which seems to have them.

The ads are completely present in Kitsunebi's download. What he's talking about is the change of one specific ad which existed in the original version of the magazine which was scanned, but was different in the version he scanned.

4 hours ago, TresHombres said:

Hey I just wanted to point out that this might be the first  civil discussion that has ever existed in the history of the internet and we should be proud of this fact haha

We're a pretty civil place around here. I think it helps that most people who frequent the forums were alive when these things were being published in the first place, and with age comes back pain wisdom, or so I'm told.

*huggles*
Areala

5 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

Not to be pendantic, but any mag with a  height of 2200px is not 300dpi/ppi.  It may have been scanned at 300ppi, but then it was reduced in size to 2200px high, meaning the image had to be resampled at a lower resolution.  All mags are slightly different sizes, but typically a mag is going to be between 3200-3500 px high if scanned at 300ppi and not reduced afterwards.

Apologies. I was going by the details on the image when I look at its properties in Windows, which said 1661x2200 with horizontal and vertical resolution of 300dpi.

Welcome to Retromags, @seldan700!

The ad you're looking for came from GamePro magazine in 2003. I found the first instance of it in Issue 175, which you can download from the link. It takes up the entire side of page 64, and about 1/4th of page 65, so you would need to do a little digital cut-and-paste to put them together if you wanted the final poster to look exactly like the image you linked. That particular issue was scanned at a resolution of 1661x2200 at 300dpi here, so hopefully that will work well for blowing it up.

If you do make it into a poster, be sure to stop back by and show it off for us!

*huggles*
Areala

55 minutes ago, StrykerOfEnyo said:

ooooh... its Ms. Croft. Someone tell @Areala. She looks so real... I mean, Ms Croft looks real.

That's because that particular incarnation was played by the luscious and lovely Rhona Mitra.

*huggles*
Areala

1 hour ago, Rando1975 said:

Very true. I think they are neat, but I don't have any of the old systems, except for some of the mini/classic versions.

Although I'm curious if these "new" cartridges work on clone systems like the Polymega?   

They should as long as the clone systems have a dedicated cartridge connector. The internals of a Super Nintendo are well-known and documented, so engineering something that reads SNES cart data isn't difficult.

On 9/19/2024 at 5:19 AM, douglie007 said:

Do they have the full game walk through or just hints or cheats?

Hints and cheat codes. Prima guides from that era that cover multiple games are always just hint/cheat books. Guides from that era about one specific game are full walkthrough.

*huggles*
Areala

For scanning magazines, you cannot get any better than debinding the magazine and running it through an actual scanner. Book scanners of the type you're talking about merely take a photo of the pages. This can work (crudely) for books, because they're dealing almost entirely with text as opposed to finely-detailed artwork, and the gutter (the point where the two pages meet in the center) is always composed of white space. With magazines, this is exactly the opposite: magazines are printed full-bleed (ink all the way to the edges of the pages, including the gutter), and feature far more finely-detailed artwork than they do text.

If you want to do it for your own personal collection, a book scanner is a low-cost, minimal-effort solution. If you're wanting to do it for our site, the end result won't be high-quality, and we likely won't use them here. You'll want a good scanner with a document feeder; I'm sure some of the other members can recommend specific brands and models. I'm the only one here living in the stone age, scanning stuff by hand-placing it on the glass, and trust me, you have better things to do with your time.

*huggles*
Areala

These are relatively uncommon. I have several of the other guides in the "Secrets of the Game" series for the Genesis, but not this one. The earlier titles in the series had multiple print runs, but later titles only got single print runs, so they can be pricier.

It'll set you back around $15 - 20 to acquire a copy:

https://www.amazon.com/Sega-Official-Game-Secrets-Games/dp/1559583770/

*huggles*
Areala

8 hours ago, koifish said:

At least there's the port of Phantasy Star 1 from Sega Ages. Captures everything you want and nothing you don't, with convenience options included too.

Oh man, I totally forgot about the Sega Ages port of Phantasy Star! Awesome reminder, @koifish!

42 minutes ago, RetroDefense said:

Phantasy Star deserves this kind of attention.  Would love to see Sega hire M2 and have 'em put something together.

It really sucks that the best we're likely to see from the Phantasy Star IP is the Phantasy Star Collection released on the GBA back in 2005.

*huggles*
Areala

7 hours ago, SynthMilk said:

So the joke is that stereograms are lame and anyone expecting the ad to actually contain a stereogram is equally lame?

Well, I haven't felt this insulted since Atari questioned my ability to "connect the dot."

But @SynthMilk, if you just DO THE MATH you will discover that 64 bits is more bits than 32 bits or 16 bits so can't you just DO THE MATH?!

22 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

This is probably why so many people want to believe in an afterlife where they've got all the time and energy they need and money isn't a concern.  Though I would hope that if life after death DID exist there would be more worthwhile pursuits at hand than finally playing that copy of Grim Fandango you never got around to in life, no matter how amusingly ironic that might be.

"Just diffuse the damn bomb, Manny!"

There are three stages of life we all pass through:

1. Adolescence: You have the energy and the time, but you do not have the money.
2. Adulthood: You have the energy and the money, but you do not have the time.
3. Old age: You have the money and the time, but you do not have the energy.

*huggles*
Areala