I haven’t been motivated to actually play any vidya recently, but I love flipping through old video game magazines. Other than the obvious nostalgia rush, it’s also interesting to observe the general tenor of reporting and how people thought about games or systems in the moment. Like, I looked at the issue that was mentioned right below this one at time of commenting (Next Generation February 1998) and in their coverage of Space World '97 they were pretty skeptical about Nintendo going all-in on Pokémon:
U.S.
gamers will be forgiven for raising
an incredulous eyebrow at
Yamauchi’s grim view of the
videogame market and for asking,
“What the hell are Pocket
Monsters?” But Space World is a
show for the Japanese market, and
Yamauchi was addressing specific
Japanese concerns. In Japan, Pocket
Monsters on Game Boy is both the
best-selling game of 1997 and the
best-selling Game Boy cart of all
time. It’s provided a much-needed
boost for Nintendo in an otherwise
tough year, although whether it will
settle into a long-term stable
market or succeed anywhere
outside of Japan is doubtful.
I’m not at all blaming the reporter for not being a soothsayer, but imagine going back and telling them that this was gonna become the most profitable media franchise of all time!
In the same issue this emulation story is taken from (November 1998) they have an extensive preview of Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast which has a reminder of a very different console-PC paradigm:
The graphics are,
quite simply, phenomenal: fast, high-res,
and with a mind-boggling number of
polygons on screen at once. Still, they
look fundamentally “console” in nature:
Those who think that Dreamcast might
just produce PC-like graphics appear to
have nothing to worry about.
If you’re interested in perusing these mags for yourself, definitely check out the recently-launched archive.gamehistory.org from the Video Game History Foundation. They developed a custom OCR solution for the magazines that works incredibly well, so if you wanna find every mention of Superman 64, knock yourself out!
I haven’t been motivated to actually play any vidya recently, but I love flipping through old video game magazines. Other than the obvious nostalgia rush, it’s also interesting to observe the general tenor of reporting and how people thought about games or systems in the moment. Like, I looked at the issue that was mentioned right below this one at time of commenting (Next Generation February 1998) and in their coverage of Space World '97 they were pretty skeptical about Nintendo going all-in on Pokémon:
I’m not at all blaming the reporter for not being a soothsayer, but imagine going back and telling them that this was gonna become the most profitable media franchise of all time!
In the same issue this emulation story is taken from (November 1998) they have an extensive preview of Sonic Adventure for Dreamcast which has a reminder of a very different console-PC paradigm:
If you’re interested in perusing these mags for yourself, definitely check out the recently-launched archive.gamehistory.org from the Video Game History Foundation. They developed a custom OCR solution for the magazines that works incredibly well, so if you wanna find every mention of Superman 64, knock yourself out!