Anyone remember Electronic Games magazine???

[zzip]

5 minutes ago, Blues_Bloody said:

You seem to be getting VG&CE confused with this magazine, Computer Entertainment: https://www.retromags.com/publications/united-states/computer-entertainment/

Yeah that's the magazine I'm thinking of!   Thanks

[8 bit idiot]

Hello all,

    Newbie here. I remember Electronic Games monthly magazine very well. Great articles and tons of information. Loved it! Got all kinds of ideas from that magazine. Also loved the Computer shopper. Miss them both.

[NE146]

If I recall, in the 8 and 16-bit console days, VG&CE had a sort of editorial policy of not giving much attention to games, until they were available for retail.. which I think kind of hurt them especially in comparison to EGM which thrived on rumors & previews, and also gave tantalizing looks at games and hardware from Japan, etc. After all that's what we all wanted right? We ate that stuff up. 

 

 

[Keatah]

EGM really set the tone and was integral to our gaming life back in the day. The cozy autumn nights with frozen dinners and other gaming activities going on in the background. Reading about strategies and tips and new consoles & cartridges coming up. And most of the rumors and previews were true. Stuff actually showed up in stores. The one blaring example of it not happening was the Coleco SuperGame Module. Or Expansion Module #3. Then the crash happened. Then we came of age as teens. Our copies of EGM were either given to the libraries or thrown away. Didn't care anymore. And computers were the thing. 16 bit all the rage, and EGM wasn't covering much (if any) of it.

 

Either way. EGM and other magazines even in other hobbies, seemed to have immense power in how they shaped the hobbyist, how they set expectations and trends. To be in that position is enviable.

Edited September 3, 2021 by Keatah

[schuwalker]

On 9/1/2021 at 8:47 PM, Blues_Bloody said:

They did relaunch it in 1988 with Arnie Katz, Joyce Worley and Bill Kunkel contributing. It lasted until 1993 when it was renamed "Video Games-the ultimate gaming magazine". The Electronic Games reboot in the early 90's was done by a different publisher. 

 

The u-force cover was my first issue! I wore that thing out reading it from cover to cover. I agree it was the best mag of the early 80's, it had more substance than EGM and Gamepro at the time which seemed to be geared towards little kids. EGM had more exciting layouts but I learned so much about video game history from stuff like the game doctor columns and their feature stories. By the 16-bit era I had switched to EGM and Game Fan but VG&CE was always my favorite.

Looking back, Gamepro was always the weaker periodical to me. For me, EGM really took charge of the gaming magazines when the SNES was on the horizon and it's eventually release. You can tell because at that time frame, the issue nearly doubled in size. I want to plug Game Players magazine, even though some issue were hit and miss, the ones that were good were really good. My knock on them was too many spin offs they did to each console.

[schuwalker]

On 9/3/2021 at 7:18 AM, NE146 said:

If I recall, in the 8 and 16-bit console days, VG&CE had a sort of editorial policy of not giving much attention to games, until they were available for retail.. which I think kind of hurt them especially in comparison to EGM which thrived on rumors & previews, and also gave tantalizing looks at games and hardware from Japan, etc. After all that's what we all wanted right? We ate that stuff up. 

 

 

I never really noticed this thumbing through those first dozen issues.

 

I ran into this August issue, which had some good Genesis content. I remember getting this issue before the Genesis was launched. 

 

[NE146]

  

15 hours ago, schuwalker said:

I never really noticed this thumbing through those first dozen issues.

I guess basically what I was saying was VG&CE always seemed much more hesitant to cover rumors and gaming gossip, or even report on overseas gaming news (i.e. Japan). So in the speed of news back then, it seemed they were always "scooped" by EGM with VG&CE behind the ball by a couple months. For example  EGM would show us the Famicom Disk System, Gradius 2, Dragon Quest, or would show how the Jap version of SMB2 was different from the US one. However VGCE would not consider any of those to be news for their US readers. Don't get me wrong.. I liked their mag. I liked all video game magazines!  Back in 1988 and continuing for several years, I would literally wait each and every month for all the video game magazines to come out and I would buy all of them. So that's how I know about VG&CE's editor's philosophy of not covering things too early, because I totally recall they would state it themselves!.. either in the editor's column or in their replies to letters.

 

15 hours ago, schuwalker said:

I ran into this August issue, which had some good Genesis content. I remember getting this issue before the Genesis was launched. 

Yes but EGM was running coverage of the 16-bit systems (Mega Drive & PC Engine) in Japan months before that. VGCE waited until it was a done deal for the US (i.e. summer 1989) to finally start writing seriously about it vs. just mentioning it in passing here and there. 

 

Edited September 5, 2021 by NE146

[LiveQM]

I realize this forum post is a little old but, I found an entire box of these Electronic Games Magazines in a collection I recently picked up. Do they hold much value? Many of the ones on eBay seem a little more... "expensive" than I had expected. Haha. Thanks!

[+x=usr(1536)]

23 minutes ago, LiveQM said:

I realize this forum post is a little old but, I found an entire box of these Electronic Games Magazines in a collection I recently picked up. Do they hold much value?

Have you got the complete run of the magazine?

23 minutes ago, LiveQM said:

Many of the ones on eBay seem a little more... "expensive" than I had expected. Haha. Thanks!

I'm not saying that this necessarily applies 100% to your situation, but:

• Complete runs of a magazine's print editions are generally an easier proposition to find a buyer for than a pile of random issues.
• If you have a pile of random issues, expect them to sit around indefinitely while people who only want  a couple of them to complete their collections cherry-pick what they need and leave the rest.
• Whatever the pricing is on eBay (and I haven't looked), it's too much.

For a random issue in decent shape, I wouldn't give someone more than $3 to $5 for it depending on how badly I wanted it.  While they're a neat artifact of the time, magazines are a pain to store, heavy in bulk, and - in this specific case - available electronically, usually in PDF format, from a number of online sources.

 

Granted, there is something special to the right person about holding the magazine in their hands, an experience which might cause them to value the magazines more greatly that I would, and I completely understand that.  But I can really only speak from my perspective, which is that having read these magazines when I was a kid, there just isn't that much draw back to them for me as an adult.

[Keatah]

1 hour ago, LiveQM said:

I found an entire box of these Electronic Games Magazines in a collection I recently picked up. Do they hold much value?

To me? No.

 

51 minutes ago, x=usr(1536) said:

While they're a neat artifact of the time, magazines are a pain to store, heavy in bulk, and - in this specific case - available electronically, usually in PDF format, from a number of online sources.

Yes all that. And PDFs don't rot or turn yellow.

[CapitanClassic]

13 hours ago, LiveQM said:

I realize this forum post is a little old but, I found an entire box of these Electronic Games Magazines in a collection I recently picked up. Do they hold much value? Many of the ones on eBay seem a little more... "expensive" than I had expected. Haha. Thanks!

I have to agree with Keatah and x=usr that these magazines aren’t worth much. Maybe a $1 or $2, unless the issue covers some iconic game.

 

If you have good conditions on the magazines, it would be nice to check out archive.org and see if they have any missing issues. Then scan those missing EGMs and upload them.

[LiveQM]

Sounds good, thanks for the input everyone!

[TeddyKoolz]

E.G. was the bomb back in the days. Great Magazine.

[Chris+++]

 

I discovered that magazines about video games existed at the same time I encountered the July, 1982 issue of Electronic Games at a convenience store. This was probably in August. I was 10. My eyes popped out of my head as I leafed through it.

 

We were visiting family in Buffalo, and my mother was in that "less stingy" mood parents can get into when they're on vacation with their kids. I told her I needed the magazine, and she actually bought it for me. I was surprised but extremely happy. (Forty years ago, three bucks was a lot of cash to ask for out of the blue.) I re-read that magazine so often that summer, trying to imagine what all of the games with screen shots actually played like, that the cover came off. I remember wondering what an Atari 400/800 was. It sounded mysterious and fascinating. What did 48K mean? And could computer games really be hidden on innocent-looking music tapes? How impossibly cool!

 

I bought a few more issues when I could during the following two or three years. I always loved the magazine, except for the reviews, which I often thought were too negative. Sometimes, it seemed as if the writer didn't even read the manual and fully understand the game. That was mostly in later issues, however, and Electronic Fun with Computers & Games was much worse with that sort of thing.

 

In the early 2000s, a member here very kindly color-scanned and mailed me a copy of that first EG issue I'd had as a kid. This was before magazine scans were available on Digital Press. I wish I could remember who did that for me. I hadn't even asked for such a thing -- I think I had simply inquired about where one would find back issues. The guy's AA name only had three letters, and I didn't see him here for a while, so his name left my brain. He wouldn't hear of accepting anything in return, including money, try as I might to reciprocate what I felt was a massive favor. He just did it out of the kindness of his heart, and to this day I'm still trying to "pay it forward" when someone needs something I have.

 

This is a slight tangent, but it's worth including. Bill Kunkel, AKA the Game Doctor, was one of the magazine's founders and original writers. Along with the other two founders, Bill gave a talk when my buddy Adam and I attended the World of Atari 1998 convention in Vegas. He was extremely funny and had a lot of insight into 1980s Atari ("like its own city"), why modern games weren't quite as much fun as the creatively risky originals, etc. I later wrote to him and asked if I could interview him for my and Adam's newsletter, and he kindly agreed. After we switched from paper issues to a website, I transcribed it. I'll paste the link below, in case anyone's interested.

 

For years, Bill and I occasionally wrote back and forth. He was very encouraging about our newsletter, and he never acted haughty or self-important, in spite of pretty much starting the field of video-game journalism. The chance to meet him in person was finally in the cards, as he was planning on attending CGE 2012. He said I could expect a "box of goodies from the Game Doctor," which obviously thrilled the kid inside, as I had read about such boxes being sent to EG readers who would get their questions published for him to answer. Of course, the meet-up never happened, as Bill died in September, 2011.

 

One reason I've always admired the guy is that he risked the perks of his game-journalism career to testify in court against the biggie: Atari. He felt that K.C. Munchkin! by North American Philips (for the Odyssey², of course) contained enough original, non-clone elements to make it valid as its own game, and he disagreed with Atari's lawsuit against Philips. The former eventually succeeded in getting the game pulled off shelves, but Bill's display of integrity was rare in his profession. You're missed, Game Doctor!

 

https://www.orphanedgames.com/kunkel.htm

 

[thegamezmaster]

Had this and a few of the other mags mentioned. Still have them stored. Great times and memories. Was there a small one called The Computer entertainment? Anyone know? Thanks!

[Chris+++]

7 hours ago, thegamezmaster said:

Had this and a few of the other mags mentioned. Still have them stored. Great times and memories. Was there a small one called The Computer entertainment? Anyone know? Thanks!

 

This one?

 

 

[thegamezmaster]

24 minutes ago, Chris+++ said:

 

This one?

 

 

I think so but that was a long time ago. Would have to check and see maybe.