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Retro Games Journalism - GamePro March 1990 (aka the Phantasy Star II issue)
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This is next gen...
This recurring series of blogs will take a look back at gaming magazines from the late 80s to the 90s. Today, we consume almost all of our gaming information through online sources; we've left behind the days of print. Without anything tangible to hold onto anymore, these once-great publications need to be preserved and archived so that we can see the evolution of video games as a business and the outlets that covered them. Special thanks goes out to retromags.com; they are doing a great job in finding these old magazines.
Magazine: GamePro March 1990
Headline: "Phantasy Star II - The Sensational Saga Continues"
GamePro was the first gaming magazine I bought on a monthly basis, and there was really only one reason why it was my magazine of choice: protips. At the time, every game that GamePro covered came with these short blurbs that were designed to help players out. Being the naive dork I was at the time, I thought these were industry secrets that these "Pros" stole straight from Nintendo and Sega to give to us the readers. Yeah, anyways...
- Oh look, there's 79 pages. EGM near its death says that page count is pathetic.
- The editorial that doesn't really talk about anything in particular other than how awesome GamePro is is titled, "Phantastic Pfun with PS II." Nice.
- In the letters section, a reader chimes in to demand that the magazine stop printing tips and tricks because they want to discover the game on their own. While I understand that point of view today, I probably cursed this letter and would have written a response saying that kid must not like having fun. Good thing there was no message board or twitter then.
- Before Sega's Tower of Power, there was NEC confusing the hell out of Japanese gamers by fragmenting the market with three different versions of the PC-Engine (the Japanese TurboGrafx-16). In a decision that can only be described as "fail," NEC came out the with the Shuttle (plays only Turbochip games), the CoreGrafx (Turbochip and PC Engine-CD games), and the Supergrafx (the all-in-one slightly, and I do mean slightly, better looking TG-16 games) at the same time. And then there was even talk of MORE add-ons. With the braintrust at the NEC, I find it hard to believe they're still not alive and kicking today.
- Anybody want to call 1-900-646-1036 for me?
- So in between the protips, there was The Adventures of GamePro, a generic superhero that does battle against the nefarious forces of evil in different video games like California Games and Ghouls 'N Ghosts. Yup, California Games. Moving on, the GamePro is taking on the different villains alongside GNG hero Sir Arthur but breaks off the designated path of the game by going inside a windmill. Since GNG never has a "go inside a windmill" section, Arthur or the evil turtles can't follow Arthur inside. That is so meta.
- A 3-page ProView of Phantasy Star II. Awww, hecks yeah....
- If anybody cares, I'm really sorry I haven't been updating my decade old journey with Phantasy Star II. Apparently, it's going to take me just as long to finish writing about it.
- I love the old GamePro pseudonyms. I was dreamed of one day becoming "The Number Juan" and reviewing games for GamePro with that name. Did I just say too much?
- I used to really eagerly await the S.W.A.T. tricks section, hoping that a game that stumped me would have some sort of trick to beat it. Alas, my games were in Japanese most of the time and I rarely got anything useful. But I never stop believing and kept home alive that I would solve that Legend of Kage game tape.
- Anybody remember this ad for Chiller? I thought it was pretty freaky that you were this dude trapped with a bunch of zombies and all you had to fight them was a laser light pen. Since I couldn't just buy games like that in Greenhills, I never actually saw what the game looked like back then; but now that I have, I really regret it. 64
- Even back then, people were begging for help with Alien Syndrome. Yeah, that game was hard...
- Oh, how I begged my dad to let me ask a relative in the US to buy me a GamePro t-shirt. I would have been so rad in school (yeah, I said "rad").
- I totally forgot Val Kilmer was in "Willow." I just remember not liking that movie even as a kid and blocking it from my memory.
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