• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

C&VG used to be my go to mag..what was yours?

Just got reminded via a tweet from Jaz rignall about an issue of c&vg that I remember buying with my pocket money



As I was living is aus these mags used to arrive about 3 or 4 months later but there was no internet back then so everything was fresh

I used to love reading yobbos mailbag (people used to write in and get abused) and they started laying the grassroots on imports and it was always fun seeing what they could squeeze out of a spectrum computer.

What was you go to mag you used to read before the internet monster came along?
 

DansDans

Member
Here in Australia we had a few good local choices, seeing as though imports were usually 2 or 3 months behind (which wasnt so bad when you consider games were usually released months after their US dates in AU) - but the magazine I obsessed over was HYPER. I was a sub for close to 10 years, but would buy the issues religiously (until I realised it was cheaper to sub!)

I have over 200 issues of the magazine, missing the first 3 plus a few from the mid PS1-N64 era. I stopped buying during the PS360 era when the quality of the writing went downhill and they went very XBOX fanboy. Nowdays I believe they print 4 special issues a year but i havent bought them to see what they are like
 
Electronic Gaming Monthly and Official Playstation Magazine, then after OPM died Game Informer.

I would also buy the occasional issue of PSM and OXM.

Oh yeah and Tips & Tricks.
 

Demigod Mac

Member
0a5d4346f67ffde5878110b551579e97-next_generation_026_-_1997_feb.jpg

Had fantastic in-depth feature articles and interviews with developers.
 
Here in Australia we had a few good local choices, seeing as though imports were usually 2 or 3 months behind (which wasnt so bad when you consider games were usually released months after their US dates in AU) - but the magazine I obsessed over was HYPER. I was a sub for close to 10 years, but would buy the issues religiously (until I realised it was cheaper to sub!)

I have over 200 issues of the magazine, missing the first 3 plus a few from the mid PS1-N64 era. I stopped buying during the PS360 era when the quality of the writing went downhill and they went very XBOX fanboy. Nowdays I believe they print 4 special issues a year but i havent bought them to see what they are like
I miss hyper :(...
 

DansDans

Member
I miss hyper :(...

I miss the quality people they had writing like Stuart Clarke, Eliot Fish and Cam Shea - after Cam though was when it started to go a little funny

When the magazine first came out I didnt like it because it wasnt going to cover Master System games, but young me quickly bought a SNES and well, I never looked back!
 
Last edited:

Nitty_Grimes

Made a crappy phPBB forum once ... once.
I've still got loads of originals of C&VG.

Zzap! 64 / Commodore User

Amiga Format / Amiga Power / Zero

Super Play / Mean Machines

Play / PSM2 (There were so many PS1 era mags, seemed like there used to be a new one every month in the UK)

Edge used to be great but its disappeared up its own arse lately - I want to read about games, not have editorial and guest columns going on about brexit (wouldn't mind if it was brexit affecting gaming, but it isn't, its just cheap digs)
 

Rodolink

Member
EGM and Club Nintendo gave me company through all my young years, I kind of miss them. Dedicated gaming journalism carefully written and selected.
 

Ichabod

Banned
Used to read Game Players a lot in my teenage years. They used a lot of humor in their writing and picture captions. Teenage me thought they were hilarious. I still have old issues put up somewhere...
 

TFGB

Member
My favourite would be Crash. It was exciting to see what amazing artwork by Oli Frey would be adorning the cover that month, let alone all the tidbits inside.

friday-crash-cover-1985.jpg


I think I still have my complete collection of Input magazines in their binders somewhere too.

707f649a6c31b2a23c24bff49177211d.jpg


I’d also get Sinclair User, Sinclair Programs, and Popular Computing Weekly (PCW) as well as C+VG. I was a subber to Official Playstation Magazine for years until the internet made it nigh on defunkt.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Last tie I bought a mag was in the mid 90s!

My bros used to buy Electronic Games and C&VG in the 80s, then for myself it was EGM in the 90s. Bougjt some Gamefan too. One of my bros bought PC Gamer in the 90s too.

One things for sure, the PC centric mags always had 10x better editorial and quantity of text. Video game mags were all about pics.

Find an old issue of Computer World from the 90s and it had probably as much editorial as 3 video game mags combined.
 
Last edited:

farmerboy

Member
Started off with Mean Machines and then Edge. Probably read Edge from issue 2 all the way to last year. Subbed for a great deal of that as well.
Now I sub to the aussie version of Gameinformer.
There was something special about those early years and UK mags.
 
i was a tips and tricks guy and then official playstation magazine. nintendo power was cool but i always thought that magazine was 'off" in some way.
 

Alexios

Cores, shaders and BIOS oh my!
People probably posted all their favorites in that other thread. GAMEFAN was my pick.
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/retro-video-game-magazine-appreciation-thread.1469254/
My country's console centric magazines all sucked, Sony hype machines ignoring other platforms or otherwise being completely unfair. And yet those were the most successful with like TV shows and such, once again advertising Sony stuff. A couple of translations of stuff like SEGA Saturn Magazine and such were decent though. Anyway, I imported when I could. We had some great PC magazines however, lots of in-depth information, good articles. Until they too were killed in favor of shit magazines that came with free game discs. Well, I got stuff like Deus Ex and Warcraft II out of those so I guess they had some value too occasionally. Anyway I was a bit late to that party, got my first PC in around 2000 so yeah.
 
Last edited:
C&VG was definitely my first and most loved gaming mag in the late 80s and early 90s.

Then came Hyper in the mid 90s to early 2000's

Finally, it was Retro Gamer for a few years
 
My favourite would be Crash. It was exciting to see what amazing artwork by Oli Frey would be adorning the cover that month, let alone all the tidbits inside.

friday-crash-cover-1985.jpg


I think I still have my complete collection of Input magazines in their binders somewhere too.

707f649a6c31b2a23c24bff49177211d.jpg


I’d also get Sinclair User, Sinclair Programs, and Popular Computing Weekly (PCW) as well as C+VG. I was a subber to Official Playstation Magazine for years until the internet made it nigh on defunkt.
OH MAN i remember those....you used to get these long code patch books and you would spend 5 hours typing lines of code to get a woman in a bikini come up on your screen....then you turned off your computer and lost it :(
 
I used to buy C&VG and GamesMaster when I was young, but they were both shite. I used to enjoy Official Nintendo Magazine, and then GamesTM (RIP).
 
EGM and Club Nintendo gave me company through all my young years, I kind of miss them. Dedicated gaming journalism carefully written and selected.

I dearly miss EGM, though I miss the original incarnation which died exactly a decade ago now, at the end of 2008.

They brought it back in 2010 and while it started off strong (despite having a mostly all new staff) it started to get pretty SJW around 2012 and overall mediocre after a while, that version too died in 2015.
 
For PC. Computer Games Strategy Plus was unbelievable, so much good content.

For PSX, PSM felt very amateur at the start but it was charming because of that, and eventually turned into a force.

For general, Next Generation was really good, they always had well dine features.

And of course a shout out to PCXL, talk about short and sweet.
 
H

hariseldon

Unconfirmed Member
Personally I used to get ST format (http://www.stformat.com/ if you want to take a look) as my 16-bit machine of choice was the Atari ST. It was brilliant, gaming proving to be a gateway drug to a world of music-making, game programming and all sorts of other shit, the programming eventually becoming my career. So many brilliant writers, and things like getting the Bitmap Brothers to write tutorials was just fucking inspired.

Moving on to the PC it was PC Zone for me. I enjoyed the irreverant tone, and of course the late 90s and early 00s were a fantastic time for games, with the likes of Half-Life, Deus Ex, Quake 1/2, System Shock 2, etc - almost every month there was a game to get really excited about, a game which will likely still be spoken of in hushed tones today (as I speak I guarantee someone has just reinstalled Deus Ex).

These days.. PC Gamer is included as part of my sub to Readly for £7.99/month, along with Retro Gamer, Edge, etc. I read Retro Gamer more, skim PC Gamer, but honestly I've not been able to find a good place to read about games since the demise of RockPaperShotgun (RIP).
 

Rodolink

Member
I dearly miss EGM, though I miss the original incarnation which died exactly a decade ago now, at the end of 2008.

They brought it back in 2010 and while it started off strong (despite having a mostly all new staff) it started to get pretty SJW around 2012 and overall mediocre after a while, that version too died in 2015.

What I liked about the EGM version in my country (México) was their sense of humour. The editors were very good journalists and had a peculiar style, made your reading fun all the way. NOwadays the way game information is subsumed switched to podcasts, websites and YouTube videos. I in that sense still cant get used to it. A magazine is an easy to grab anytime object, you can read a bit, glance at the pictures, flip the pages without loading times, a computer or a mobile phone.
 

Breakage

Member
Edge
I also used to buy PSM2, GamesMaster and the Official PlayStation magazine (for the playable demos), but Edge was my number one. I've still got all my old Edge magazines - can't say the same for the others.
 
Last edited:

petran79

Banned
Some local magazines in my language called USER and PIXEL. Very informative and had computer game walkthroughs too. Stopped in the early to mid90s. Only running magazine is one called PC Master, but all the old staff left and is hardly worth reading anymore
 

BigBooper

Member
Pcgamer back in the 90s was fantastic for demo discs. I would occasionally get a Computer Gaming World also, but didn't love them.
 

dan76

Member
C&VG and Zzap64 in the 80's when I was at school. I got out of gaming for a few years but jumped back in with the snes so I still have a few issues of C&VG which had some good guides for capcom fighters - Vampire Saviour springs to mind. I also collected Super Play for the first 10 or so issues.

Edge was ok when it started but it was way to po faced even back then. It's unreadable crap now.
 

Optimus Lime

(L3) + (R3) | Spartan rage activated
Compute's Gazette was the first computer magazine that I remember. I used to love the type-ins, and I remember being six years old and working with my Grandpa to type in hundreds of lines of code into a Vic-20 to play 'Frantic Fisherman'.

ZZap! 64 was MY magazine, though. It's still a masterpiece. Probably the funniest, wittiest, most acerbic computer publication of all time. Snotty twerps like Klepek would not have lasted thirty seconds around something like ZZap - it was part gaming enthusiast screed, and part punk rock art object. Hand painted art by Oliver Frey, and the launching pad for some of the best games writers in history - Julian Rignall, Gary Penn, Gordon Houghton...

C+VG was fantastic, too - but as it was multiplatform, at the time, it covered things that I wasn't necessarily interested in.

In the 90s, I loved PC Format, ACE, and in Australia, HYPER. Later on, I was a fan of PC Powerplay, which shared staff with HYPER.

These days, I detest gaming journalism, and despair at the way that it has morphed slowly - in some circles - into a poor imitation of academic publishing, led by the usual, unqualified suspects who fancy themselves as serious scholars and thought leaders, rather than the consumer reviewers that they actually are.

But for a while there, hoo boy. ZZap was incredible. It's all on archive.org, and if you've never read it, I highly recommend you skim through a few issues.
 

Leonidas

Member
Next-Gen(Next Generation) was my favorite magazine before getting internet access, after internet I got ODCM and OXM for the demo discs.
 

Bogroll

Likes moldy games
Your Sinclair and Sinclair User were my first one's then CVG and then Mean Machines, PC Gamer and Edge. Still got some off them
 
Last edited:

Mochilador

Member
How is/was the gaming culture in Brazil? Is it like the rest of South America where pirated games are being sold on the streets and legit copies are only for the super wealthy?
Yep, just like that. To give you an idea, I never saw "legit" Playstation games on stores, only bootlegs.
And the fact that the discs were black was considered a myth because nobody ever saw one.
The 16 bit era also had its share of piracy but in my opinion the 32 bit era wins.
But this culture changed with the Xbox 360. Video games became more mainstream and accessible. It still had piracy but not at the same level as before.
Same with the current generation, much more accessible.
 
Last edited:

Fuz

Banned
Zzap! then TGM. Same staff, it was informative and funny. Then it went to shit when they changed chief editor. Luckily, we were already in the internet era.

Never liked any other publications.
 

RAIDEN1

Member
Its a shame the C&VG site had to shut down, it was good, though I never brought the magazines....probably one issue maybe when Streetfighter 2 was the rage.....but for me my go-to magazines were Edge and Gamesmaster....both of which are still going, surprisingly in the world of all things digital..
 

mcz117chief

Member
Yep, just like that. To give you an idea, I never saw "legit" Playstation games on stores, only bootlegs.
And the fact that the discs were black was considered a myth because nobody ever saw one.
The 16 bit era also had its share of piracy but in my opinion the 32 bit era wins.
But this culture changed with the Xbox 360. Video games became more mainstream and accessible. It still had piracy but not at the same level as before.
Same with the current generation, much more accessible.
It is very interesting that you still had legit video game magazines but only able to buy illegal copies :D I remember when I was in Turkey about 17 years ago. They had whole buildings on the main street selling pirated video games. Not even portable stands or anything, but a huge two floor warehouse store filled with illegal copies of movies, music and videogames and again, on the main street. It was surreal.
 
Top Bottom