Areala

I thought postage-stamp size video went the way of the dodo after Myst.

No, I don't understand why you would ever make a miniature version of a console that was so extreme as to affect the size of the screen and the control mechanisms. Part of what made the Game Gear so awesome in the first place was that big color LCD. Shrinking that is like drinking caffeine-free diet Mountain Dew: you could do it, but at that point, aren't you basically drinking 'water'?

*huggles*
Areala

You are correct, @archelon. Game Informer moved to its larger footprint with issue #91 in November of 2000. Their cover price jumped by a dollar to compensate for the cost of printing in that format.

As questions go, that was a pretty easy one. The real head scratchers are the ones where someone is like, "At some point between when I was in 8th grade and my junior year of college, I remember a magazine printed a sidebar about a game. It might have been for the Super Nintendo, Genesis, PlayStation, Saturn, 3DO, DOS, Macintosh, or maybe it never got released. I think it was either an RPG or a Flight Sim, like, you either flew on or over a dinosaur, maybe? Some company I never heard of made it. There was one screenshot that was either in black and white or color. The game title had a B, or maybe a D, or a W in it. It definitely started with 'The' (I think). Can anyone help me?"

*huggles*
Areala

We got the Donkey Kong Country video as part of our regular Nintendo Power subscription, but as far as I can remember, that was the only one we received. Our subscription had lapsed by the time I left for college in 1995, and I don't think my brother renewed it. We never got any of the later video tapes themed around the N64.

*huggles*
Areala

If we all hurl ourselves on top of @kitsunebi, he'll be unable to flee and we can tickle him.

I used to think it was impressive that I'd clocked up a solid 100-ish hours into Morrowind, but the idea of throwing 100 hours into any game now just makes me cringe. I think that's what happens after you hit 40 though. When I was a child or a teenager, I could easily spend 16 hours a day playing something like Dragon Warrior. Now though, I'm lucky if I can sink 2-3 hours into a game before my mind starts berating me over all the stuff I could be doing instead. Even in the midst of a pandemic, I can study my kanji flashcards, after all.

So the key to being able to devote ridiculous amounts of time to something is 'never grow older'.

*huggles*
Areala

2 hours ago, E-Day said:

58. They're all scanned, edited and currently being released now. I just got another box from him today that have several mini guides among a trove of other cool things! 

Daaaayum. Nice!

*huggles*
Areala

20 hours ago, E-Day said:

The Super Street Fighter II guide is scanned and is waiting for release. I'm currently releasing nothing but strategy guides in alphabetical order, so this one will be up in a few weeks at the most. 

How many guides did Civic donate, E-Day?

*huggles*
Areala

The Internet Archive has an entire sub-section called "The Magazine Rack" which hosts nearly 200,000 scanned magazines across a massive variety of categories and languages. Much of what they have there is computer/gaming/tech related, but there are also fashion, cooking, art, news, politics, and other stuff. It's a lot of wade through, but this might be your best bet for starting out.

Google Books also has a fairly large repository of magazines scanned from various library collections across the globe. Some of them are duplicated on Archive.org, but some are not.  

College libraries often have digital archives of newspapers, photographs, video, and other important historical items they're trying to give wider/easier access; Google the name of the college + library and you should be able to find a link that will take you to any online-accessible portions of their collection. Most of this will be relevant to students, alumni, and local history, but it should all be free to browse.

*huggles*
Areala

"May Club" and "Nocturnal Illusion" have been in 'coming soon' status for over a year now. The other four seem to work just fine. "Season of the Sakura" was the first visual novel I ever encountered, so it was fun to play through it again twenty-ish years later. "Runaway City" and "Three Sisters' Story" form the other 2/3rds of the "JAST Trilogy", the first three VNs they published in English, so they're bonafide classics in a sense for that reason, although the stories have gotten quite a bit better over the years.

*huggles*
Areala

The first Tomb Raider is really the only one to prioritize exploration over action. They got progressively more action-oriented as the series went on, although Tomb Raider 2 still has some impressive set-pieces with the Great Wall of China and the mountains of Tibet.

*huggles*
Areala

Oh Lara, my Lara!

I hope you had a fun time with it. The original Tomb Raider is one of my favorite games of all time. I bought the first, like, five games on GOG when they were on sale a couple of years ago, and they've given me tons of enjoyment.

*huggles*
Areala

15 hours ago, kitsunebi said:

Btw, I just want to thank @Areala for sharing her opinion.  I was unsure if it was the right thing to do, starting a new topic that wouldn't attract people looking for download links, since as I said, I'd rather not start new threads of me talking to myself.  But now I know that someone actually read this post!  And even replied!  Thank you!  I didn't know such things could even be hoped for in a forum.

You can count on me! @kitsunebi-san, ganbatte!

*huggles*
Areala

I'm sorry, that Famicom Wars commercial actually made me laugh out loud. ^_^

I needed that today.

*huggles*
Areala

It's always fascinating to see what types of games other countries and cultures prefer. While I'm unfamiliar with most of the Japanese games, I can say that while I understand the love for Dragon Quest III, and can totally see it bagging the top spot on a 'games released in 1988' list, I think much of that love comes from it being more accessible than Dragon Quest II (which was hard as hell, and twice as unforgiving as the original). The twist at the end, where you discover you've been playing a prequel to the original Dragon Quest all this time, was nicely done as well.

I'd have a very difficult time ranking them in any specific order, but my own personal best list of games from '88 would include:

The Guardian Legend - What do you get when you mix a vertically-scrolling corridor shooter with a top-down action/adventure game? This title, right here, which still deserves a sequel but will never get one, because nobody has any idea who owns the rights to it thirty years later.

Mega Man 2 - Like Kitunebi, this is my favorite Mega Man game. It definitely has the best soundtrack of all the 8-bit titles.

Splatterhouse - Yeah, the US arcade release happened in 1989, but if Kitsu can roll with Japanese release dates, then so can I. This gave me nightmares as a kid, but helped usher in my enjoyment of the horror genre. To this day, I can still remember images from dreams I had after playing this game.

Battle Chess - I didn't own a PC back when this came out, but several friends did, and it was always a blast to load up and play at their houses. As one of the only girls in my grade school chess club, just knowing this existed provided me with some essential street cred when dealing with other nerds.

Super Mario Bros. 2 & 3 - Pretty much for the same reasons. Even if Mario 2 isn't a "real" Mario game, it's still fun as hell with tons of variety thanks to the four playable characters, and I loved not having a timer for once, which lets you play around and explore to your heart's content instead of concentrating solely on reaching the end of the stage.

Phantasy Star - Such a complete departure from the standard swords & sorcery fare of most RPGs. I loved that this one gave you multiple party members and was set in a high-tech, science-fantasy setting instead of the normal medieval-esque times you usually saw. Plus, the first RPG I ever played where the protagonist was canonically female instead of it just being an option you could pick, like in the various Gold Box games from SSI. Somewhere my brother probably still has the graph paper maps we made of all the dungeons.

Contra - More two-player run-and-gun action. We actually never owned this game ourselves, but a family friend had it and you could blast through it in about 20 minutes with the 30-life code, which we generally did at least once when we were over there.

Blaster Master - We picked this one up at a neighborhood rummage sale for a few bucks. While it's no Ninja Gaiden, it's still one of the most difficult games I think I've ever played on the NES. Of course, what's difficult to one gamer is a piece of cake to another, and I'll never forget watching as a family friend literally demolished this game while playing it blindfolded. That's a feat I'll never bother to attempt, and I'd never believe it if I hadn't been sitting there in the room watching it with my own eyes, but holy crap, was that ever humbling. Probably why I enjoy watching speedruns so much today.

Bionic Commando - At first, I hated this game because it was a platformer without a jumping mechanic. This made little sense to me, and the controls for the arm felt confusing and awkward. Add to that what felt like an enormous difficulty spike once you got past the first Neutral Zone, and I was mainly reduced to watching friends play this. Then, for whatever reason, one day I picked it up again, and suddenly everything just clicked. I tore through the game in one single, epic play session, feeling like I was one with the arm. I don't think killing Hitler has ever been so fun as it was that Summer afternoon.

*huggles*
Areala

I know there are a ton of music streaming sites and apps available out there, but I just found out about this one and thought it would be fun to share:

http://radio.garden

When I'm indexing, I like to have some music playing in the background, and sometimes I don't want to go through the trouble of making up a playlist of stuff that is already on my PC. Radio Garden is like TuneIn mixed with Google Earth: you turn the globe, pick a spot, and you can find a bunch of streaming options from that particular city, state, or country. Just look for the green dots. This is a fun way to listen to radio broadcasts from different countries, in different languages, and see what other places like to listen to.

This station in Japan which streams nothing but selections from retro game soundtracks is currently my jam, but there are tons of options out there. French rap? Russian Top 40? Ugandan news? BBC World Service? Thai Jazz? Chinese Underground? US Air Traffic Controller feeds? It's all there, all for the sampling, and all for free. You don't even need to sign up for an account, it just runs in your browser. Anyway, explore, have fun, and stay sane in these trying times!

*huggles*
Areala

So the pathway to success is paved with tentacles in Japan? Hmmm...maybe I too should start pitching eroge content in the hopes of creating the next MCU out of all the thrusting and grunting? 

*huggles*
Areala

1 hour ago, kitsunebi said:

I grew up playing graphic adventures on the PC, so I never really got into Japanese-style adventure games, which are all first-person menu-driven affairs which for some reason are almost always some form of murder mystery story.  The games usually revolve around picking the right dialog choice to progress the story, and everything must often be done in a strictly linear order, which just isn't meaty enough gameplay for my taste in adventure games.  Still, they're quite popular (in Japan), and one of the longer-lasting series is that of Detective Saburo Jinguji, a series of around 45 games across various consoles and mobile devices which began in 1987 on the Famicom and continues to this day, the newest game having been released for the PS4 in 2019.  This guide covers a 2005 Game Boy Advance entry in the series.

https://archive.org/details/tanteijinguujisaburoushiroikagenoshojoofficialinvestigationfile

 

I've actually played some of these! They localized some of them for the Nintendo DS about ten years ago as "Jake Hunter". And, yeah, murder mysteries.

*huggles*
Areala

18 hours ago, bubblun said:

I recently bought a Neo Geo CDZ and currently building up my library. Difficult to find any vintage American game magazines that covered the games in the 90s.

Your best bet for US coverage on a system like that would be the magazines being published at the time which had an "International Outlook" kind of section like EGM, or else something like Diehard Gamefan, which covered a lot of import titles and consoles that the bigger publications ignored or overlooked. We don't archive Gamefan here, alas, but flipping through some of the '95-97 era EGMs might yield some results. "Next Generation" might be another good place to look, since it seemed they had a pretty good handle on the off-beat stuff too. 

*huggles*
Areala

2 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

You don't want this.  Really.  But here it is, anyway.  A 1989 strategy guide for Taiheiyou no Arashi, a Pacific War wargame released on Japanese computers in 1987.  It took me several tries to upload this, because every time I opened the file, it put me to sleep.  But maybe you like this sort of thing.  Heck, somebody does, because this series has been running for over 30 years - you can get the latest installment for the PS4, if you're so inclined.  So here's a heaping helping of hard cold data for you to strategize over.  But don't say I didn't warn y

https://archive.org/details/taiheiyounoarashicompleteguidebook

Two things. First, I think it's hilarious that the red planes (which, I presume, represent the opposing force to the gold planes) are simply the same sprite, just flipped upside down and re-coloured. Second, I never cease to be amazed at the Japanese fascination with simulating the War in the Pacific. It's one of the largest naval defeats their country ever suffered, but Japanese developers then make games like 1943, which are all about US war planes blowing up Zero fighters and sinking Japanese carriers and fighting the Battle of Midway. What's going on from a cultural perspective that keeps Japanese gamers buying these simulations? It can't all be "we're doing it for the larger international market", can it?

*huggles*
Areala

On 1/23/2020 at 5:08 PM, kitsunebi77 said:

(a typical review of Game of Thrones here would be "too much nonsensical talking, not enough dragons, I have no idea who the good guys are.")

This was basically my take on the show/books as well. People told me, "THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT, AREALA! THERE AREN'T ANY GOOD GUYS JUST LIKE THERE AREN'T ANY GOOD GUYS IN REAL LIFE! SORRY YOU HAVE TO BE SPOON-FED YOUR FANTASY LIKE A CHILD NOW THAT THE ADULTS IN THE ROOM ARE FINALLY IN CHARGE!"

Strangely enough, nobody talks in Caps Lock about GoT any longer now that Season 8 has come and gone. Your move, internet. 

*huggles*
Areala

You can have my Visual Novels when you pry them from my cold, dead hardware.

And by 'hardware' I definitely mean 'my video game consoles' and not, you know, anything actually relating to my personal body. No cyborgs, amirite?

*huggles*
Areala

This is one of the reasons my main focus over the last several years has been towards the 'cataloging' aspect, instead of the scanning aspect. You'll find my contributions here have been almost entirely focused on indexing the various magazines we've managed to get into our database. It's essentially a "thankless task", because there's no real credit for it the way there is for scanning the magazines and adding in cover pics, but at the bare minimum, I like the idea that someone can search the site for a game title, and get some hits back about where it appeared, in which magazine, and in what capacity.

It's something that, working alone, I'll never be able to even think about completing. But every magazine that I do index for the site is just one more drop in the bucket of information that likely exists nowhere else online. Will the world come to an end if no one can find out that an ad for "Deathtrap Dungeon" is featured in issue 39 of PC Gamer, or that there's a four-page strategy guide for "Time Crisis" in the first issue of Official US PlayStation Magazine? No...but that doesn't mean that somebody, somewhere, isn't out there thinking, "What magazine did I read that editorial about Tomb Raider fanfiction in back in 1999?" and if I can provide that answer (hint: PC Games, April 1999, the only game magazine I'm aware of where I'm actually featured as a topic of conversation!) then the work was worth it.

*huggles*
Areala

10 hours ago, kitsunebi77 said:

Kudos to the second game's guide for acknowledging the only reason anyone ever actually bought these games by filling half of the book with photographs of the stars wearing bikinis and flirting with the camera.

Well, now I have to download it...

*huggles*
Areala

That's a nice set of goodies, Marsil! Do you have a link to your auction, or a price you're looking to get?

*huggles*
Areala

No worries, Blake! Welcome to the website (and what a killer introduction, I might add)!

I fixed the issue with the image on your first post, so that should be good now. New members can't edit their own posts until they've made a total of five or so different posts, so if you need anything prior to hitting that benchmark, just let a moderator know and we'll take care of it. Otherwise, join in the conversation! We've got a ton of different topics, especially in Gaming Discussion, where a new member can hit that benchmark to full membership just by answering some of the questions posted.

*huggles*
Areala

I've checked and I don't have this issue in my collection. Computer Player seems to be a bit more on the rare side, as we don't even have a full cover gallery for it yet. TIE Fighter was released in the US in July of 1994, so if it did receive a cover story and interview feature, my money is on either issue 2 or 3. Computer Player's premiere issue is dated June 1994, but that issue's cover feature is The 11th Hour. Issue #2, however, would have been dated July of 1994, and the timing would have been perfect.

Computer Gaming World had their TIE Fighter cover feature in the Feb. '94 issue, but since Computer Player wasn't around at that time, that doesn't really help narrow it down. Likewise, our database of Computer Game Review is woefully incomplete as well, with an incomplete cover gallery. I'll keep my eyes open and maybe in the meantime someone else will have something to add.

*huggles*
Areala