Just to get it out of the way, yes we skipped EGM 1-8. As I said in the original post on this blog, I will only be commentating issues I actually physically own, and I do not yet possess the first 8 issues. So think of those as a fun Easter egg we will return to at a later date.
Also note that you can click every magazine picture in this blog to get a larger, readable version.
I'm really not a fan of this cover. The blown-up screen shot is not that interesting to begin with, and looks highly pixelated at its large size. The row of squished-together smaller screenshots running along the bottom looks even worse. There is way too much text on the cover, maybe trying to make up for what they knew was as poor image choice. At this point Atari is still hanging on in the system list above the title.
Interesting that a magazine 90% dedicated to console gaming uses "insert coin" as the title for its Letter From the Editor column. I like how the U.S. National Video Game Team is listed under Strategy Consultants - I wonder how long that will last. There's the Ed Semrad we all know and love listed as a Game Reviewer, but also an Edward J. Semrad listed as Associate Editor. Evil twin?
The letter pages start out in the front of the magazine, answered by anonymous "ed." The letter page placement would jump around the magazine throughout the years, going from the front, to the back, then to the front again. The "Letter of the Month" has not yet been introduced, nor its infamous (and usually lame) "Psycho Letter of the Month". The first 3 letters are all about the recently-launched Atari Lynx - a handheld that was firmly in 3rd place when I was young, neglected in favor of the ubiquitous Game Boy and popular Game Gear. There were always 2 or 3 kids with Lynx's, all of them seemingly stuck with California Games or Blue Lightning. I was never much enticed by the Lynx as it mainly featured ports of old arcade games I cared little about at the time. Michael Ardisson then spoke for us in expressing his displeasure with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles NES game. It was quite a shock back then to spend so many quarters on the incredible arcade beat-em up, only to finally get a chance to play it at home and realize you're stuck getting killed by flies and drowning in water.
Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best reviewed game of the month. Steve's initial run-on sentence has to be close to the longest in EGM history. Yet even after all those superlatives, the game still doesn't receive any 10's. For some reason they had in their head that "10" meant literal perfection, which they admit in the reviews cannot actually be obtained. Back in logical reality, 10 should simply mean the very best crop of games as they relate to all other games. And if a game is "as close to perfection as possible" (as Semrad states) then the only logical grade you can give it is a 10. Unfortunately it would take over a decade for this concept to get through to EGM and they would finally start doling them out.
By this point EGM has moved from the single reviewer to the "Review Crew" that would define the magazine. While the particulars would change and evolve over time, the four-reviewer setup grading games on a 1-10 scale would stay consistent. The reviews in this first iteration are the shortest I can remember, lacking any depth or analysis. The summaries below the screenshots are actually longer than the reviews that follow them.
Check out the screenshot of Phantasy Star 2 - did they get Ed Semrad to try to take a picture of the television screen with his polaroid? Ed's review is really the only one that does this game justice - PS2 was a groundbreaking title, especially in the RPG-starved USA and these guys are treating it like Adventures of Lolo. On the other hand, there are 23 reviews in this issue and the grading across-the-board is pretty brutal. On the following page Bonk's Adventure is reviewed, one of the crown jewels of the TurboGrafx library and it can only muster two 7's and two 8's.
The cover story on Castlevania 3 immediately follows the reviews. It's a simple 2 page spread detailing the game, as it had already been released in Japan at that point. What's interesting is that Konami hadn't announced a localization yet, so the article ends with the downer that anyone reading the magazine will not likely be able to actually play the game for a long time. I think that would've driven me mad as a kid. Simon's Quest was a game that completely confused me when I was young - I loved the music and sprites, but I didn't really understand the RPG concept of leveling up and backtracking back then, so I don't think I ever made it past the first few screens. Castlevania 3 on the other hand was much more enjoyable, at least until the clock tower stage and the endless falling down gears back to platforms prior, something I would later experience ad naseum in Tomb Raider.
I love this ad for Shadowgate. Great color pallete. Only two screen shots but they clearly convey the actual game. This era of video game advertising relied heavily on the "generic kid thrust into video game world" trope which would sometimes be taken to hilarious extremes (especially in pro wrestling adverts).
This is from a section focusing on the upcoming games Nintendo showed off at CES. I picked this page because Bigfoot is one of the cultural icons from my childhood that I doubt anyone under 25 here in 2013 has even heard of. But for me it was all about saturday morning cartoon Bigfoot, posters of Bigfoot on my wall, Bigfoot picture books...for a kid growing up in the South, there really wasn't much cooler.
Here's a page from the (much shorter) Turbo Grafx CES section. Both Bloody Wolf and Red Alert did end up being released in the USA (Red Alert became Last Alert) and are two of my favorite Turbo games, especially Last Alert with its cd-quality graphics and soundtrack, and hilarious voice acting. Also amusing is that there is an arcade port of Xybots featured in every section.
The Sega Genesis section is mainly made up of arcade ports, but Thunder Force III receives high praise. The Master System is still hanging in there with a few games, although 5 of the 8 shown are sports titles.
P.O.W. was one of my favorite arcade games as a kid. The whole idea of Prisoners of War was fascinating to me (spurred on by movies like Missing in Action) and the arcade beat-em up let me act out the movie fantasy. I never actually played the NES version - for the most part I didn't want to put up with the subpar graphics that were a staple of NES arcade ports. What's interesting about this ad is the picture of the arcade cabinet - It's in a Dynamo HS-1, but the joysticks are ball tops instead of the plastic hybrid bat/ball sticks that were P.O.W.'s signature. Also the control panel overlay only covers the top portion of the control panel, whereas the real arcade cabinet's control panel graphics wrap around the bottom as well. I like the angled side art - it's something you would see rarely, such as on the original Street Fighter (regular button version).
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