Showing posts with label video game journalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label video game journalism. Show all posts

Saturday, August 20, 2011

Mr. Gimmick review in EGM July 1992

I've been prepping an article on Sunsoft's excellent Famicom title Gimmick!, which very almost made it to the United States back in 1992 under the name Mr. Gimmick, but was cancelled. However, it was released in Scandanavia in very limited quantities, and it was reviewed in the July 1992 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. (The NTSC prototype ROM has also been dumped, but apparently you can only play it for now by purchasing a $45 repro cart.) At any rate, I was curious what EGM had to say about the game, but couldn't find anything on the net other than the scores, which were surprisingly low. However, I found the mag in my stack o' mags in the attic and scanned it, for all to be ashamed at what a terrible magazine it was back then.


The full text is transcribed below:
Mr. Gimmick is Sunsoft's latest NES title. You play the part of Mr. Gimmick, a green blob with special magical gifts. His main weapon is a mystical star that forms over his head to seek out enemies. Collect bottles that give Mr. Gimmick new powers like fireballs, invincibility, and powerful bombs. The five levels are beautifully detailed with pastel colors while the bosses will present quite a challenge to Mr. Gimmick.

Steve: Here's a game with a cool theme that could have been explored in a hundred different ways. Instead it's a repetitive attempt at the action genre with difficult that is obviously geared to the wee sprites. Kids games don't have to be completely lacking, however, and more time could made this one a winner. 5

Ed: OK, so it looks cutesy and seems like a great game for a 7 year old, but wait. Instead, you get a very challenging game that requires a great deal of technique. It starts off easy, but that is only practice. Get farther into the game and you'll have quite a challenge. Definitely a sleeper. Give this one a try! 8

Martin: Mr. Gimmick has a few cool options to the game play and the cute theme will attract younger players. I can't get excited about moving a little booger around the screen though. The graphics are OK and the sounds are decent but other that that [sic] the game play is very simple and needs more variety. Not bad, but not great. 5

Sushi-X: Mr. Gimmick is one of those games that the kiddies can relate to. The levels are nicely detailed for a NES game but with only five levels the variety just isn't there. The music is kind of catchy but wears this after a while. The game plays rather well however. The score would have been higher if it wasn't so easy. 4

Okay, you have to understand that most of the above is factually incorrect. Gimmick! is not only a brilliant game (if you can't wait for the article, then watch this excellent annotated longplay), but it's also ridiculously difficult. Like, up to the levels of Ninja Gaiden and Battletoads difficult. Three out of the four reviewers clearly didn't play the game for any length of time, if at all, only to dismiss it as "kid" stuff because it looks bright and cutesy. There are also six levels (seven if you count the hidden final stage, which requires incredible skill to get to) so they seemed to have based their review off an incorrect fact sheet of some kind.

This attitude was sadly rather common in the magazine, which at the time was very dismissive to 8-bit games in favor of flashier 16-bit titles. (The forgettable Super Bowling for the SNES in the same issue got a 7, 8, 8 and 7, for context.) You also have to remember that this same magazine actually gave numerical scores to each system in their yearly buyer's guide, which is possibly the biggest thing you could do to troll readers back them. Of course, there was no internet to complain, although that was one of the specific reasons why myself (or, rather, my father, since I was ten years old) subscribed to Video Games and Computer Entertainment over EGM.
Posted by Discoalucard at 10:34 AM 9 comments
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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

French games magazine IG



Some of may recall my previous post on French games magazines. Well, on a recent trip to Paris I decided to finally pick up a copy of IG. It's a bit expensive, and my French ability isn't fluent, but they have a number of interesting ideas UK and US magazines should make note of. Website link.
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My favourite aspect is how they take a "whole history" view of games. If they cover a new game, like a Golden Sun title, immediately after it they'll have 2 pages covering the entire series, just to get you up to date.


They also give page time to free download games. Which is excellent, since while a lot of mags are starting to take indie games seriously, they tend to still focus on commercial indie games, whereas entirely free indie games get mostly overlooked. These two types of indie title are distinct - so much so that I think we really need a new nomenclature to describe each of them.



They also take a look beyond games, such as examining the artwork of Giorgio de Chirico, which was a major influence on ICO.




Overall a fascinating magazine. Design is a little bland, but the range of content is second to none. And the best part? The size. It's over 260 pages, without adverts.

Let me say that again: THERE IS NO ADVERTISING. This means they can't be held to ransom by publishers who threaten to pull ads. What a miracle! TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY PAGES.
Posted by Sketcz at 6:52 AM 6 comments
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Thursday, March 10, 2011

GamesTM 106 written by communists

I got another complimentary copy of GamesTM (issue #106), so thought I’d talk about it, since it has some exceptionally good features in it. And communism!
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But first, I want to criticise their lack of author credits on articles. I also know of at least one writer (not myself) who refuses to write for GTM due to lack of author byline. Often I pitch to other places since it bothers me too. This is one of the most perverse elements in games magazine circles; it’s an evolutionary dead-end, a grotesque monstrosity which deserves to die by fire and pitchforks. And yet most don’t even acknowledge it. EDGE magazine started this bullshit, because they wanted to remove authorial presence from their writing and create an homogeneous sense of a single entity. Like HAL, or an insect hive mind. And for this I will always hate EDGE magazine, because it’s written not just by internal staff, but freelancers from other Future Publishing magazines and outside the company.

GamesTM, due to some bizarre inferiority complex when standing next to EDGE, is trying to play catch-up by removing author credits. Which is such a retarded move I don’t really know where to begin. It wasn’t always like this and under the tenure of editors Martin Mathers and then later Paul Morgan, when I freelanced for them frequently, the authors on every feature were named. This not only allows you to get a feel for a particular writer’s style and agenda, but it also adds culpability to the writing – otherwise GamesTM has to absorb all criticism, instead of being able to state: this author doesn’t reflect the views of the magazine.

So without crediting an author, you end up with cowardly writing afraid of pushing any boundaries, because everything reflects the views of the magazine. In effect, GamesTM has castrated itself somewhat. And this only happened some time after Paul Morgan left. What a shame!

Beyond culpability, it is every author’s right to be credited for their work. Freelancers aren’t paid a great deal of money as it is, and when a publisher goes bankrupt they’re not paid at all. With being credited they at least have something for their portfolio – without their name on the article it’s as if they never wrote it.

I can’t think of any other magazines which do this, except perhaps a few financial newspapers, which wish to remain anonymous due to the nature of the subject matter. Everyone else credits their writers, and to much success. Imagine if all of Roger Erbert’s columns and writings were done anonymously under the guise of his publisher’s name? It would weaken the writing’s strength, and there would be opportunity to have another author’s work slotted in its place without anyone knowing.

Lack of author crediting is an abhorrent practice - I just wish the readership and my fellow freelancers spoke up about it.

Anyway, on to the magazine. Since the authors aren’t know, I’ll be making up the names. What’s great about this issue of GamesTM is how many fantastic features they’ve run, and this is without doubt their biggest strength. Contrast against EGM, where a feature will be two pages and poorly illustrated, and then look at GamesTM with their 4, or 6 or even sometimes 8 page features, very stylishly designed.


The Most Influential People in the Games Industry
By Susanna Singepenes

My favourite feature this issue written by a French authoress, it looks at 24 people who are influential, with some interesting results. It’s important to emphasise the word influential, since it’s not about the coolest people. Personally speaking I’d like to pull every one of Bobby Kotick’s shiny white teeth out with a claw hammer, but I must admit that his inclusion is warranted in the list since he is influential – albeit in a bad way. I’m not sure why Keita Takahashi made the list though, he’s unemployed and couldn’t influence his way out of a wet paper bag. Even so, well done Susanna Singepenes for this tres bien article.



SWERY interview
By Ivanna P Indabuttowski

The man, the legend, SWERY photographed and interviewed. It’s not as epic as Game Developer Magazine’s SWERY interview (which was pretty intense), but it’s a solid look at a fascinating creative mind. I’d buy Mr Indabuttowski a beer any day of the week.


Boom or Bust (a look at Great Britain)
By Imtembe Umchangala

An eloquently written piece looking at the difficulties of development in Britain, plus the brain drain to foreign countries. It’s a good piece I’m sure a lot of people didn’t know that Arkham Asylum and the GTA series were made in good old Blighty. Imtembe Umchangala has done the nation proud with this article.



Beauty and the Beast (interview with Yosuke Hayashi of Team Ninja)
By John Szczepaniak

I did NOT write this article. But without the author’s name on it, how can you prove otherwise? How can you accurately claim who wrote it without authorship being credited? Prove me wrong internet, PROVE ME WRONG. Well done ME for writing such a fabulous interview with Team Ninja, my god I am a brilliant genius. Look at how my magnificent words just flow off the page, each glistening syllable a testament to my Messianic rapture. I'M SPARTACUS!


Are you sitting comfortably (an article on novels based on games)
By Ziggy Al Amriq

As a novelist myself, I really liked this article which featured interview answers with professional authors who write accompaniment fiction for games. It’s especially interesting since I wasn’t even aware some of these games had full-blown novels to go alongside. Great job Ziggy!


The Gabriel Knight Trilogy
By Kristoff Valkenovicz

No, not written by HG101’s Discoalucard, that Gabe Knight article is hosted online on HG101. This one appears to be written by a Russian, a Mr Valkenovicz. And based on the subversive socialist subtexts in his writing, I can only assume he is a COMMUNIST as well. Has GamesTM defected to the Reds? Are they in the employ of Gorby?! Who will purge the magazine of these commie sympathisers?! The liberty of our children’s minds is a steak! Medium rare with fries and salad! Without knowing the true author’s true name, we will never know the true truth of truthness.


Ahem... And that concludes our comedy broadcast this evening, readers.

Enjoy the magazine, but maybe also send them an email calling them out for being arses and not crediting their authors.

gamestm@imagine-publishing.co.uk
Posted by Sketcz at 5:01 AM 7 comments
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Thursday, December 9, 2010

Retro Gamer issues 80 to 84



In the spirit of Christmas my friend, and ex-boss on Retro Gamer, Darran Jones sent me some copies of Retro Gamer. I praise the magazine’s many positives, but first I must share some flashbacks.
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Despite my reservations, these are actually really amazing. In fact, they kind of make me wish I’d taken a subscription, or at least accepted Darran’s offer for a monthly column, which would have guaranteed me a regular supply. Unfortunately I’ve never bought a copy, and never will, since despite having left 4 years ago, I still harbour what many would call undue psychological baggage. So although I praise the magazine’s writers and skilled designer, I do have reservations.

As staff writer I earned £12,000 per year. That’s £1,000 a month. After tax and national insurance it was more like £750 (income tax was 22% in 2006, NI was on top of this). Then I lost something like £400 on rent, plus there were utility bills on top of that: electricity, gas, phone, water, food etc. I lived on a diet of boiled rice and tinned pilchards since that was the cheapest food I could find. Each month after all the above deductions I had £100 of “fun money” to play around with. Also, working on a retro mag, I didn’t get free games like my colleagues, unless it was retro compilations. And apart from the Sega ones (which I gave 96% to once), these compilations were mostly crap. So I was poor, hungry, overworked and seldom had games to play. My average hours per week regularly reached around 45 hours. Sometimes more.

After 6 months I thought bugger this, quit, and landed a job as sub-editor at a massive corporation, doubling my salary (yes, DOUBLING it), and halving my workload. Instead of running around to meet ludicrous page quotas per week, my days were spent casually proof reading articles in an unrelated field. This is when I realised that getting a job based on your hobby is NEVR a good idea. A hobby is fun because you’re in control of it – when it becomes a job there are rules to adhere to and you’re doing on someone else’s time, to someone else’s schedule. I stopped playing games and ended up hating them – they represented the prison cell I had volunteered for. I didn’t play games again until the winter of 2007 I ended up so burned out. Also, when your job is also your hobby, there is no middle ground, everything ends up becoming AMAZING, or ABSOLUTE CRAP, and you lose any sense of impartiality.

My advice is always this: aim for a job which pays AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE, because screw the hippy liberals, by the time you hit 25 money is the only thing that matters anymore. And make sure it’s a job which is EASY and which you are mildly apathetic towards, so you can do it proficiently 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. I really liked my new job and my new colleagues were wonderful and very carefree (working in games magazines my colleagues were all underpaid, underfed and psychologically abused by upper management). I gave my new job after leaving RG all my effort, because I could still leave it at the office, whereas on Retro Gamer I never left the office, my home became the office, the pub was the office, wandering the high street was the office.

Anyway, long story short, I wasn’t paid enough, I was worked too hard, and all of us were treated very badly by the CEOs at the top. It’s traumatised me somewhat – made worse by the fact that I volunteered for the position. If I had been forced into it, I could maybe forgive myself. And so although seeing these issues today makes me think it’s a fantastic looking mag, with some great written articles, I will never be able to see Retro Gamer without having really awful flashbacks of working long under-appreciated hours and only being able to afford a scummy apartment, drinking neat Stolichnaya and occasionally punching the wall with anger at life’s unfairness. Jeez, they paid me so little it’s disturbing. Never again.

If you’ve never worked as a professional games writer on a UK magazine though, and I implore you not to, then Retro Gamer is a pretty good magazine with the best design I’ve ever seen. Still, they don’t pay their staff anywhere near enough fucking money, so when you enjoy it, pause for a moment and think of the poor individuals who are burning away the best years of their life to create it.


THE MAGAZINE



The Mario cover had this neat gimmick like an advent calender, where you could lift each square to find a screen from a Mario, with a date of release and info. This must be one of the coolest covers I've ever seen on a games mag. Ever.

I'm not a fan of the author behind the Axelay article, but the design is so incredibly beautiful.

Retro Gamer also covers things like TV shows based on games - in this case it's Bad Influence, a UK TV show covering technology and videogames.

A big feature on the adventure games of Dynamix. Pretty good, with a lot of interesting inside anecdotes.

Desert Island Disks with Larry DeMar, written by the always excellent Paul Drury. These have always been a highlight of the magazine, with fantastic writing and some incredibly personal stories from the interviewee. DID is the gold standard for video game interviews I feel, and blows away a lot of the basic Q+A pieces phoned in by other magazines.

A detailed Making Of feature on Ms Pacman. This is another strong point of RG. EDGE magazine does one making a month, RG sometimes does three. In 50 or 100 years time, these Making Of articles will still be read, and will still be worth something. How many other magazines can claim that?



GamesTM's deputy editor Ashley Day wrote a 4 page on the Pokemon Mini, one of the most intelligently written features I've read in a while - a personal favourite in fact. So many games commentators today take the Seanbaby or AVGN approach, of moronic criticism, without trying to understand what's being covered. The Pokemon Mini might not be a hugely relevant piece of hardware, but it's still a fascinating topic when handled with decorum.

I like these Complete Guide To articles, since by showing every level, every boss and every enemy, it negates any need to play the game any more. For me, it helps put the game away, so I feel like I can move on to other titles.

Making of Day of the Tentacle. They like their adventure games almost as much as HG101 does.

The Mario issue featured a massive article on Mario as a character. It was OK, not badly written. But for my money I would have liked a bit more coverage on the Hudson ports, and perhaps an explanation for them. And furthermore, they claim that Hotel Mario is a bad game, when in fact it's a fantastic single-screen arcade style game, like a cross between Elevator Action and Donkey Kong. Also, for a laugh they really should have included a boxout on Mario as a communist. Maybe also some weird Mario fan-art for good measure. Still, without an author's byline it must have been done in-house, which meant they didn't have much time. So I can forgive them. They got famous games people like Carmac and Hawkins to explain what they thought of Mario, which is ingenious. I want to see more of the industry commenting on itself.


I know the artwork shown above has been discussed online across various forums, but I wanted to mention it again. The Mario 3 article was by Ash Day and, as usual, was of an excellent quality. Considering how flogged to death the Mario 3 topic is, he handled it quite well. Also, the design, look at how gorgeous that design is. If you look at the collection of sprites on page 2, you'll notice that every Mario sprite is doing a different animation. One is standing, another running, another running with his hand out, one kicking, another jumping, then jumping with hands out, and so on. It's not all standing poses, each is different. And that map double spread - oh lord is it beautiful. Every single magazine should look this good. Only GameFAN has matched this level of style.

A making of Leather Goddesses of Phobos. Very detailed, very interesting.

The Making of Gorf - RG usually has a good blend or arcade, computer and console coverage.

Parker Brothers!

Sid Meier!

The Primal Rage making of was fascinating. I had no idea they'd implemented so much copy protection. And I didn't even know about PR2.

This article is a personal favourite. It covers copy protection in games, from old computer games right up to Earthbound and its super difficult mode that occurs with a pirate copy. Six pages, and one of the best researched pieces I've read in a long time. Actually, I'm tempted to scan the entire feature and put it up - this is the kind of article everyone should read and have access to.



A big Donkey Kong arcade feature, including an interview with the guy who did the Atari 2600 port.

I love these spreads where they show a version of every port. Now, I've read every RG since it first started, and I'm fairly sure that this level of obsessive detail was done first by HG101. In which case, imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.

Harvest Moon is a great series, and this is a great look at it behind the scenes. TRUE FACTS: Kim Wild isn't actually Kim Wilde, plus I used to live just two streets down from her after I left RG. Always does well researched features.


And that about wraps up the 4 issues I got. I didn't cover everything, because it doesn't all appeal to me. There's lots of stuff which I don't even read - but after flicking through these 4 issues, it does tempt me to start picking it up.

Interestingly, Retro Gamer recently won an award in the UK for best games magazine. Which they deserve considering the effort that's needed compared to other magazines.

Ignoring the fact that management DON'T PAY ANYONE ENOUGH, the writers and designers do a great job, a far better job than they should considering the low pay.

But perhaps I'm just a bitter old scoundrel.
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PS: they don't pay their staff enough.
Posted by Sketcz at 6:45 AM 7 comments
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