General Arcade & Retro Chat' Special Championship Edition

briany

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

Went right off Larry Bundy Jr. when he said a small YouTuber should have "been honoured" to have his gameplay footage (of a zx81 game afair) used by a much bigger channel uncredited, and no permission sought. Not his channel, an obnoxious British retro gaming channel but I thought LB jr whiteknighting that gimp was pathetic.

Meh, his videos are still enjoyable. Separate the art from the artist, I say.

Tom Mann Centuria

briany wrote: »

Meh, his videos are still enjoyable. Separate the art from the artist, I say.

Ah yeah fair enough, it certainly wasn't a big deal but I'm just far too petty about things to watch him again. :pac: I was never a massive fan anyway tbh so no great loss for me, or him I'm sure!

CiDeRmAn

I did a lot of nights as a younger nurse and I got to watch Cybernet, basically a clip show off previews and promos of upcoming games, pre Youtube so it was great to watch.
Ran for a few years too.

KeRbDoG

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

I did a lot of nights as a younger nurse and I got to watch Cybernet, basically a clip show off previews and promos of upcoming games, pre Youtube so it was great to watch.
Ran for a few years too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4DnN73HgR_c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1FBTeccMoI

DaveyDave

I enjoyed Cybernet, it was always a late night thing. That's where I first heard of Alien Resurrection, which came out in 2000 so I was 8 at the time. I wrote it down on a sticky note and misspelled Resurrection in my excitement. Pretty sure this would have been on at 1 or 2am.

And here I am now, waiting to clock out at 1am. All that staying up late had a purpose! Those videos are in my YouTube history for when I go home, I'll watch them with my dinner

The Wikipedia page for Alien Resurrection mentions Loaded, I was actually meaning to mention Re-Loaded as I just thought of it randomly the other day, it used to scare me as a kid. Anyone ever play it? I must look it up.

Steve X2

I've had GamesMaster on my Plex server for years now. I'm not sure what it is, but I just cant bring myself to re-watch any of it and enjoy a few clips here and there on Youtube instead.

The show is 29 years old on the 7th Jan :eek:

Dr Bob

Tom Mann Centuria wrote: »

Went right off Larry Bundy Jr. when he said a small YouTuber should have "been honoured" to have his gameplay footage (of a zx81 game afair) used by a much bigger channel uncredited, and no permission sought. Not his channel, an obnoxious British retro gaming channel but I thought LB jr whiteknighting that gimp was pathetic.

He said I looked like Ricky Gervaise once , I mean he was right , but still!
.But otherwise he's fairly sound.

Retr0gamer

Actually really enjoyed Movies, Games and Videos a lot for the games segments. Brought to my attention plenty of classics. It was were I first fell in love with Rocket Knight Adventures.

Also will always credit Gamesmaster for giving me my first glimpse of Gunstar Heroes. Unfortunately I thought the game looked so good it was ages until I realised it was a megadrive and not a SNES game. Was only reading Sega Zone and Stuart Campbell constantly gushing about it that made me take notice.

And Bits was a guilty pleasure. Sure it was very cynical, basically videogames and hot women but two of those women were actual games journalists and one of the girls might have been a star of grotty B-List horror films but she genuinely liked videogames and was a massive survival horror fan. And sometimes the skits actually paid off. The follow up Thumb Bandits just didn't have the same energy with the only Alex left of the three girls.

barryribs

As someone who only had poverty 1 & 2, the closest I ever got to a games show was Kevo calling something 'rappihh' on the worx or whatever that terrible show was called

Inviere

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Actually really enjoyed Movies, Games and Videos a lot for the games segments. Brought to my attention plenty of classics. It was were I first fell in love with Rocket Knight Adventures.

I remember that show fondly myself

CiDeRmAn

Print magazines were so important back then, especially as home grown shows were non-existent and access to UK gaming programmes were not always an option.
I must have been spending £50 a month on gaming mags at the time, including imports like EGM and Gamepro.
I can remember lusting after the TG Express, I think it was another 25 years before I finally owned one!

o1s1n

I only really bought games magazines regularly during the PS1 generation. Was a bit too young to care about them for the 16 bit gen and then the PS2 gen I was online so getting news that way.

But during the PS1 years I bought everything under the sun.

Official UK Playstation Magazine was a monthly staple for the demo disc, absolutely insane amount of value for money with that. Was somewhere between 5-7 Irish pounds if I remember correctly.

There was a rake of other British mags that I'd pick up too whos names I can't remember in the slightest, some of them were almost verging being lad's mags with young ones plastered all over them!

Gadge

I used to get EGM the odd time, don't remember where from, but it was cool read something so different than the UK magazines at the time, seemed more adult oriented. Am I right in remembering it was a physically smaller magazine than the others too?

+1 on the magazine's with the demos, they were priceless. All the way back to the speccy magazines!

Retr0gamer

Commodore Format was my magazine of choice for the C64. Seemed like the writers there were having an absolute blast.

When I graduated to the Megadrive I started with Sega Zone, then moved to Official Sega Magazine for a while before settling with Sega Power. Did get a few issues of Gamesmaster which was pretty much multiplatform Sega Power/super play as they shared writers and they all worked together. Super Play was brilliant but I wasn't a SNES owner.

When I got my PC next it was PC Gamer although I got a few issues of PC Zone and it was PC Zone and an article about emulation by Stuart Campbell that got me into retro games.

When I got my PS1 I was already well clued in on the Internet and magazines like OPSM felt really childish (and the less said the better about the short lived Irish version).

Would read an awful lot my friends EGMs from back then and also got into buying Games TM, Arcade (amazing magazine that unfortunately was shirt lived) and Retrogamer magazine.

Retr0gamer

Gadge wrote: »

I used to get EGM the odd time, don't remember where from, but it was cool read something so different than the UK magazines at the time, seemed more adult oriented. Am I right in remembering it was a physically smaller magazine than the others too?

+1 on the magazine's with the demos, they were priceless. All the way back to the speccy magazines!

EGM was a bigger magazine in terms of page numbers but most of the pages were adverts so less content. They still managed to pack a lot into those pages and pretty much reviewed everything that was out that month.

Really hate how games journalism is so bad now and badly funded that they can only cover the big games now.

CiDeRmAn

I remember EGM as a better magazine than Gamepro, also memorable was the scratch'n sniff advertisement for Earthbound!

Later on, in the mid-90s, I also got another import magazine for PCs, but I can't for the life of me remember the name...
Used to have amazing stuff on the cover disc though...
Lots of Flash (RIP) menus!

Dr Bob

Retr0gamer wrote: »

When I got my PC next it was PC Gamer although I got a few issues of PC Zone and it was PC Zone and an article about emulation by Stuart Campbell that got me into retro games.

I read PCzone religiously , hell I remember when Charlie Brooker used to do reviews for it!

KeRbDoG

I remember on RTE Aertel there used to be game page(s) - unsure if it had a name or not, but I think it used to have reviews or something? ...or am I confusing this with someone on a UK teletext service

Update: Indeed my memory might serve me correctly!

o1s1n

The internet before the internet!

Our TV at home was too old to have Teletext, used to love messing about with it on my grandparents TV.

I always wondered how that actually worked technologically, just looked it up and it's pretty interesting:

Teletext sends data in the broadcast signal, hidden in the invisible vertical blanking interval area at the top and bottom of the screen.[1] The teletext decoder in the television buffers this information as a series of "pages", each given a number. The user can display chosen pages using their remote control.

Shapey Fiend

I used read Digitizer a bit but I didn't really get the humour so I think I went to whatever the ITV one was which was strictly gaming content. Teletext was pretty slow and annoying I don't think I cared that much to use it unless I was really bored. Met Mr. Biffo at a games convention in the UK and had some pints with him he's dead sound. I really liked his Youtube sketches.

I used get a variety of magazines in the 16bit days Megatech, Mean Machines, Mega Power.. uhh CVG and Gamesmaster a bit maybe. I was still mostly buying comics by the cart load in that era. My neighbours owned a really big newsagents in town so I could happily stand there are read for a couple of hours without getting thrown out like every other kid would.

In the Playstation era I started buying way more of them. I've fond memories of Mean Machines Playstation and Playstation Power (bit of a proto-lad mag that). There must have been a couple of other PS Magazines I can't remember I never bought the official one it cost twice as much and didn't seem as entertaining.. felt you were paying for the demo disk.

When I got a PC I switched to PC Zone. That was probably my favourite of all time. It was funny and had the best features.

Bought Arcade when that came out and Edge through most of the 00's. It got a bit boring after that I'd just buy it in an airport or if I'd a long train journey. They don't seem to have any game magazines at all in Easons or the independent newsagents in my town now which is a shame because while I won't read them front to back anymore they're still a fun way to kill a couple of hours if you're waiting about for someone.

Retr0gamer

Speaking of Teletext, Channel 4's digitiser was one of the best places for quality games journalism, reviews and weird sense of humour. Loved their best of the year list they would keep updating as the year went on.

smurf492

Eason were stocking the likes of Edge and Retro Gamer but nothing since last month.. Well Galway anyway.

Nerdkiller1991

KeRbDoG wrote: »

I remember on RTE Aertel there used to be game page(s) - unsure if it had a name or not, but I think it used to have reviews or something? ...or am I confusing this with someone on a UK teletext service

Update: Indeed my memory might serve me correctly!

Wait, I...liked a post? I never like any post here!

briany

Those old gaming magazines had so much personality. Every writer had their own persona, and you kind of felt like you knew each one of them. Loads of humour and piss-taking, funny captions under the pictures from the games, entertaining reviews. Just that kind of sardonic, laddish 90s English tone about everything. You can just imagine those offices being a bunch of mates sitting around, playing games and having a laugh and then writing down pretty much what was said among them. Great stuff.

Dr Bob

briany wrote: »

Those old gaming magazines had so much personality. Every writer had their own persona, and you kind of felt like you knew each one of them. Loads of humour and piss-taking, funny captions under the pictures from the games, entertaining reviews. Just that kind of sardonic, laddish 90s English tone about everything. You can just imagine those offices being a bunch of mates sitting around, playing games and having a laugh and then writing down pretty much what was said among them. Great stuff.

Speaking of old magazines , its before a lot of you times but theres an archive of scanned C64 mags onine here
https://archive.org/details/zzap64-magazine
There was another old archive a while back where most of the covers had Easons price tags , but not sure if this is the same one.

Inviere

What's the difference between a Sony BVM and a PVM?

Also, what's the best way currently to go about getting a decent sized one? Say 21" or so...

Shapey Fiend

BVM is the more high end one more connectors and calibration options but there isn't a gigantic difference they're both good.

I'd say they're sort of difficult to get ahold of now. Shipping from other countries would be exorbitant. Think it's a case of hoping one turns up when they clear out some old broadcasting place.

A Sony Triniton is still really good, and much easier to find cheap IMO. The broadcast monitors are mostly for style points.

Inviere

Shapey Fiend wrote: »

BVM is the more high end one more connectors and calibration options but there isn't a gigantic difference they're both good.

I'd say they're sort of difficult to get ahold of now. Shipping from other countries would be exorbitant. Think it's a case of hoping one turns up when they clear out some old broadcasting place.

A Sony Triniton is still really good, and much easier to find cheap IMO. The broadcast monitors are mostly for style points.

Cheers for that. It's the shipping that'd concern me yeah, Brexit/customs probably killing UK imports now too.

So a good Trinitron would be comparable?

o1s1n

When buying a CRT these days, the number 1 thing to watch out for (as you probably know yourself) is how much it's been used. Tube time makes all the difference. You can have a top of the range BVM, but if it's been used for hundreds of thousands of hours, everything will be running out of spec and it's not going to look great.

A good Trinitron that hasn't been used too much (relatively speaking) is always going to have a lovely picture. Plus if it ends up being a crap overly used one, it probably cost peanuts or was free to begin with so you can just try again. That 29 inch monster I picked up from yourself years ago looked amazing. Shame it took up so much space!

If purely taking about picture quality though, you can definitely notice the upgrade a good PVM/BVM has over a consumer set. The colours are more vivid and the resolution is far sharper. So they are better, sure they'd want to be given the price they cost back in the day.

There's also space to think of, a 20 inch pro monitor is absolutely huge at the back. They're just big metal boxes stuck around the tube and chassis, no thought for space saving.

On the flip side, they do look gorgeous and sit in a modern setting far better than an old TV which most tend to look fairly out of date at this stage.

Maybe try a 14 inch PVM first and see how you go? I'm still using that PVM 14L4 I picked up a couple of years ago, picture is absolutely incredible on it. If I didn't have the space for a 20 inch pro monitor I'd happily be doing all of my gaming on that.

Inviere

This was an interesting watch (if not a bit dramatic at times)