CVG

Ostrom

Anyone remember the great days of CVG?

The glossy comic covers?
When exclusives and inside news came but once a month?
Months of excessive tekken 3 coverage?
The bog roll insert?
Ed Lomas???

I recently dug through my old pile of CVG's; what a journey Remembering pre- internet, when having the inside news meant being the first to pick it up.

Ed Lomas five year quake obsession and pink floyd jibes.

Watching its undigified downfall, highs and lows....

Anyone have any fond memories?

My favourites had to be the yearly apirl fools: the lara croft nude cheat to the tune of the spice girls, the body suit controller and ultra fernando cousins stand out. Classic

CiDeRmAn

I used to read it back in the 80's having got a bunch of back issues from a cousin, I used to read it every month for the latest Speccy game reviews, that and Crash and Your Sinclair, brilliant.
I loved the comic they had running, with the team of robots, Big Red used to fall onto an orphanage in nearly every issue, never knew why.
There was also a strip of a robot cop, four arms and lots of guns, very well drawn, just never sure what any of it had to do with videogames.

It really took a nose dive in the 90's, it may have outlasted the old speccy mags but it could never hold a candle to the likes of Edge.
Sure for a long while, due to the ubiquitous nature of the PS the only mag you needed was the Official Playstation Magazine!

Oh, and I loved the futurists predictions, every now and then, of what we'd be playing in 10 years time, or what the Sony/Nintendo team up system would look like, all very amusing now!

K.O.Kiki

I only got to reading CVG in the late 90s, and looking back on it now, it was a bit time-wasting -- sure, the Johnny Minkley dress-up shame was hilarious, but the magazine already felt bought by publisher money --__--

I mean, how many times can you give a broken 7/10 game a 4-page exclusive review & the GOTM award, when 2 pages later you praise to the heavens some itty-bitty RPG or shooter?

Actually, all the sites still do that, don't they?

CiDeRmAn

All you had to was see who had the double page advert inside the front cover, and even if it was the worst piece of dung ever the mag would still give it at least a 7 out of 10, a lot of mags did that, to their eternal shame.
Not dissimilar to the Driver3 nonsense a couple of years ago, with forums with a good reputation becoming part of the corporate machinery, censoring not only posters but their own mods, disgraceful stuff

Ostrom

Didnt they rate out of five? Are you talking about when they made it new, shiny and crap?

BLITZ_Molloy

I never really bothered with CVG cos it was multiformat and I only ever had one console/computer at a time.

My first and favourite magazine was Mean Machines Sega. The fact they had a few 2nd opinions on the games was helpful. It was nicely presented and had a good sense of humour.

When I got a Playstation I started buying the very short lived, but excellent continuation that was Mean Machines Playstation.

Then I switched to Play, which was great for the first year or so. Then I switched to Playstation Power (I think?) when that launched cos it was much cheaper, and always put hot birds in the magazine.

Then I got a PC and started reading PC Zone. They had magnificent writers and great humour. Plus, loads of cool stuff on cover disks which were still actually useful back then when internet was slow and expensive.

Finally started reading Edge around the time the PS2 came out, and haven't really found anything else worth reading since. GamesTM is full of blatering, bloated previews and poorly researched articles. Retro Gamer is alright, but a little insubstantial. The rest of the magazines don't have anything even approaching passable writing. I think they assume their audience stick the disk in the computer and bin the mag without reading it.

appleidog

CVG was lengendary, when it had the Yellow Pages ads in it man I remember them Reviewing Radiant silvergun back in 1998 and giving it 5 stars, then they turned really ****.

Ostrom

BLITZ_Molloy wrote: »

I never really bothered with CVG cos it was multiformat and I only ever had one console/computer at a time.

My first and favourite magazine was Mean Machines Sega. The fact they had a few 2nd opinions on the games was helpful. It was nicely presented and had a good sense of humour.

When I got a Playstation I started buying the very short lived, but excellent continuation that was Mean Machines Playstation.

Then I switched to Play, which was great for the first year or so. Then I switched to Playstation Power (I think?) when that launched cos it was much cheaper, and always put hot birds in the magazine.

Then I got a PC and started reading PC Zone. They had magnificent writers and great humour. Plus, loads of cool stuff on cover disks which were still actually useful back then when internet was slow and expensive.

Finally started reading Edge around the time the PS2 came out, and haven't really found anything else worth reading since. GamesTM is full of blatering, bloated previews and poorly researched articles. Retro Gamer is alright, but a little insubstantial. The rest of the magazines don't have anything even approaching passable writing. I think they assume their audience stick the disk in the computer and bin the mag without reading it.

Mean machines was excellent.

I think Lomas ended up at either mean machines (if it was still going then) or official dreamcast when CVG folded. I like Games, the odd questionable review (fahrenheit 9/10???) aside, the retro section is usually excellent.

redmosquito

I think its definately time for me to go to the attic and get my boxes of em out, hope they havent been ruined up there! Loved this mag mid-late 90's

Retr0gamer

I really miss Arcade. It was the last great old school style magazine which was very informative but yet didn't take itself too seriously like Games tm and Edge do and had a more playfl and fun feel to it. It will be sadly missed. I think retrogamer really only comes close. I used to love all the old future publishing mags but they really went to **** in a very short time. They all had a similar feel to each other since they shared a lot of writers and contributors and there was a playful rivalry between the likes of Sega Power, Gamesmaster and PC Gamer. Gamesmaster really is unrecognisable from the excellent mag of old.

Ostrom

I miss the character.

The monthly introductory lists of current staff favorites, the running threads of jokes about particular reviewers preferences, along with the alternative comment boxes from other staff. I cared. I honestly did, and I loved knowing who got to write the review, what they were playing/had played.

Dont get that no more