Will never happen, but a Dreamcast Mini would be amazing. So many good games on that system.

...Shenmue...

Aye. Outrun. Great game. And that update on PS2/Oldbox is a stunner.

Yeah the digital-only "Outrun Arcade Online" is now gone off both stores.

Outrun has run out.

If it's realistic only I want Motorstorm RC on my list.

Aye, rich bastards.

Blocks100 wrote:

I could only afford Chequered Flag on me Spectrum.

I could only afford a flag.  Wasn’t even chequered.  Rich bastard.

New Edge #313 (“Christmas” issue not December cos we’ve had that already) is up on Readly so presumably it’s dropped onto mats too. 

Golf Story got a [5]

Basically everything is a bit shite this month. But there's a great interview with Julian Gollop.

There's not much wrong with Edge except that most of it is irrelevant by the time the mag turns up.

Reinterpreting the question to be about 'print media' rather than magazines specifically, I'd just rather read a book or bookazine about gaming than a magazine at this point. Magazines are a dreadful medium for reviews because they aren't timely enough and limit word counts. Previews, again, are not timely in magazines and have also been superceded by PR drip-feed, pre-release gameplay footage videos and demos. I'm holding what I think is the most recent issue I own and that's like 40% of the content immediately compromised in its relevance to me.

Then we get to the rest of the content. There's a periodical kind of bit at the beginning. There's news, and some of it looks like vaguely developer-oriented stuff that won't necessarily come up on online news, but honestly, I don't really care that much. There's a two-page interview with an obscure semi-famous person that I don't care about. Letters from nobodies that they literally have to beg for these days because nobody sends letters any more. We're literally on forum for normie comments, I don't need any more. There are two columns, one from a writer I don't care about and another written by a staffer to save money, and it's obvious from Twitter that they're mostly just bashing something out to fill space. That's like most of the magazine gone now. I haven't started caring about any of this content.

Here's the center features section. There's an extended ppreview/interview feature. I've already made clear what I think of these compared to online. There's one interesting article about research into whether an eSport could be considered a martial art but that same research has literally been turned into its own book. There's an interesting-looking 'making of' a recent game that could probably be online. And a studio profile I don't care about. And that's it.

So mostly a bunch of content I don't want for £5.50. Whereas for a bit more I could buy a short game studies book by MIT Press and for a lot more I could buy an in-depth book made using high-end processes and materials with hundreds of pages of content I'm interested in. I guess I'd rather buy a big chunk of content from people who went 'I want to make a discrete slab of content about this' than collections of little bits of content that are often just put together to fill pages and create the semblance of a quality periodical.

Also, there's a specialism/authenticity issue for me. I like JRPGs and my gaming is skewed towards them. Edge is more generalist and often their JRPG coverage seems pretty bereft of passion. So even though online resources and forum posts, etc. aren't as reputable as Edge, they're just more useful for me. I've been reading ROM's Britsoft book recently which includes interviews about the 80s mag scene. Passion and authenticity were a big thing then, a lot of it was a 'by gamers for gamers' kind of thing. Edge never really had that but now it's been taken up by YouTube. And while Edge still had timeliness and quality, it's also lost timeliness to the Internet. Quality is subjective but I do think budget pressures have probably made the magazine worse. And there's a lot of genuinely good stuff online. I think it's quite easy to say 'We're producing the best content in the world!' while just competently filling pages.

There's a mag called Long Live Vinyl we've started to get in at work, unless I'm mistaken it's only been going for a few months. I've got no interest in collecting or listening to stuff on vinyl myself, but their articles and features are solid and I've started to look forward to it turning up.  Quality magazine. 

I still subscribe to Retro Gamer but only beause the sub was a pressie.  The mag is decent enough but the highs are few and far between, and I probably only spend 15mins reading the choice bits in each issue.

Speaking of books, on hols there I read Blood, Sweat & Pixels by kotaku news guy Jason Schreier. Absolutely brilliant, so it was. Get on it chaps.

Yes?