Issue 101 Feedback Thread

[Hitman_HalStep]

picked it up yesterday looks like lots to interest me but after a quick look through i see two badly printed pages again p72 + 77.p77 is in the worst condition and it's one of the interesting articles i want to read.

i did ask before about a previous mag but didn't get a reply,i'll try again.is this every mag or just some or even just mine?

i'll try to offset this with positives once i have read through a bit but for now great cover.

[Havantgottaclue]

I think what's problematic about the NES article is not that the author is passionate per se but that the tone is exaggerated to a point where it becomes, for many people, an account that doesn't seem consistent with the reality they lived through. Opinion and passion can be positive - purple prose rarely is. Look at this for example, from the very beginning of the article: "Home computers began to suffer from a heavily saturated market of homemade releases. Nintendo was aware of these issues and proceeded to offer gamers the lifeline they had been crying out for."

I have to say that from my perspective, that is complete and utter cobblers, basically. As a matter of fact, Nintendo didn't sail into the newsagent near to me and replace those lovely Speccy, C64 and Amstrad tapes with their cartridges. Had they done so, I expect I would've been most put out that my two pounds of pocket money wouldn't have gone very far. I would probably have given up on games and spent it on sweets instead. I would have become obese! Nintendo would've given me diabetes!

(Okay, now I'm exaggerating. And excess sugar doesn't cause diabetes, I know).

Best thing of all actually is that above the text, which dismisses the mid-80s computer gaming scene as bloated with bedroom coder piffle, is a picture of a Dizzy game. And where did that start life? On the dear ol' ZX Spectrum, as we all know, programmed by a couple of schoolkids. Irony or what?

[noobish hat]

I was just happy to see another Cosmic Spacehead cart in RG (after the Game Gear version in issue 98)!

[adippm82]

I would not normally comment on the efforts of the writers of any magazine, but even as a person who has more than a soft spot for the NES, the collectors guide raised my eyebrows more than a few times.

I have to agree that it is almost as factually incorrect in places as a Mel Gibson movie, The very idea that Nintendo arrived with the NES like a knight in shining armour to rid us all of our low quality computer games is really so far off the mark, the author must be aware that Nintendo had no real presence in the UK or very much of Europe at all until the release of the Gameboy, and only with the SNES did they get a foothold in the home console market of any consequence, certainly in the UK.

I would like to quote the earlier NES Retroinspection in Retrogamer which states:

'Unenthusiastic distribution deals began to filter machines into Europe in 1986, beginning in Scandinavia and Germany in 1986, spreading to Spain and France, before finally being brought to the UK by Mattel in 1987.
A distinct lack of interest from Nintendo itself, and Mattels reputation as a toymaker, and a delay that took the console out of the technological heats, made for a hurdle that was far too high to vault in one leap.
The Sega Master System had hit the UK ground running, and while the American market may have disappeared up it's own...earlier in the decade, this had created a wealth of opportunity in Britain for affordable home computers, competing with the superior and well established Sega machine was one thing, but taking on the likes of the ZX Spectrum and it's prolific catalogue of games on it's home turf, or the astounding next generation gaming power of the Amiga was another entirely.
Sega claims a good deal of responsibility for ensuring the NES never got a foothold in the European market, though in truth, much of the culpability lies with Nintendo's own indifference to Europe, and in particular the UK'

So in short Nintendo did not care about us in Europe, and we cared little for them, not for a few good years.

The very idea that the gamers in the UK had mainly poor quality games coded in the bedroom is insulting to all the big publishers of the day, such as Ocean, Hewson, Imagine, Durell, Firebird, Rainbird and others, who produced many high quality games on the 8 and 16 bit systems, and also Sega who marketed the Master System in a very clever way.

Between 1986 and 1990, I did not know a single person with a NES, my only contact with it in that time was the lonely cabinet in boots, that looked like a Karaoke machine, with the awful artwork on the boxes that exaggerated the blockiness of the graphics, I personally used to wonder who the hell would bother with it, and few did, too late and out of date.

The NES did have a respectable Christmas in 1990, when the console was packed in with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles who were huge at the time, but it's UK sales were hopelessly behind Sega at this point who were storming along with the Megadrive by this point. The NES was bought by people only as a means of playing earlier games in the series starting to appear on the SNES, this is how I ended up with one.

I do love the NES, it has a certain charm, and some damn fine games, and I use it far more than my Master System, but it was almost irrelevant in the UK during it's commercial life, and I read somewhere that it had only 10-12% of any market in the whole of Europe, hardly a smash hit in every country but the UK.

[Greyfox]

after reading that..i think that should have gotten you to do the article...thanks for straightening all this out with actual factual information..

[DreamcastRIP]

Great post, adippm82.

Quoting your final sentence,

... I read somewhere that it had only 10-12% of any market in the whole of Europe, hardly a smash hit in every country but the UK.

That was of course a reference to the wildly false statement in the article's box-out written by Lorfarius which reads, "The NES was a smash hit in every country apart from the UK."

Just thought it worth mentioning as it'd be unfair to heap all the blame for this shockingly poor article on Adam Buchanan. (not that you were doing that anyway!)

[The Laird]

Great post, adippm82.

Quoting your final sentence,

... I read somewhere that it had only 10-12% of any market in the whole of Europe, hardly a smash hit in every country but the UK.

That was of course a reference to the wildly false statement in the article's box-out written by Lorfarius which reads, "The NES was a smash hit in every country apart from the UK."

Just thought it worth mentioning as it'd be unfair to heap all the blame for this shockingly poor article on Adam Buchanan. (not that you were doing that anyway!)

Well to put it in perspective the NES sold just shy of 62 million units worldwide. Excluding Japan and North America it sold 6 million units. So that 6m split between the whole of Europe, South America, Australia & NZ, Africa and the rest of Asia. And that is confirmed figures from Nintendo which they have been known over the years to exagerate. Nintendo have never confirmed the exact sales figure for the UK but there are several press reports that it was around 600,000 units.

[DreamcastRIP]

Interesting statistics there, Jagfest_UK. They sure put paid to any remaining doubt (not that there was any) of the foolishness of said statement made by Lorfarius in this month's RG. Truly the stuff of amateurish fanzines that has no place in a publication of Retro Gamer's fine standing.

[The Laird]

Interesting statistics there, Jagfest_UK. They sure put paid to any remaining doubt (not that there was any) of the foolishness of said statement made by Lorfarius in this month's RG. Truly the stuff of amateurish fanzines that has no place in a publication of Retro Gamer's fine standing.

Just to put it in perspective a little more:

The Sega Master System sold 10 million units excluding North America, Japan and South America. So pretty much double the NES and a reported figure of just over 2 million were sold in the UK. The Atari Lynx sold over 1 million in Europe alone too.

[Evermore]

Picked up the mag in the shop today and had a leaf through. Will likely pick it up later in the month but when I got to the back page I was pretty miffed to see what the headline article will be for ish 102 - more Spectrum! Seriously, this is getting boring now. Its an interesting machine sure, but its being done to death at this stage. Its 30 years old, but wasn't that fact celebrated enough in issue 100? And what more can be said about it at this stage?

[noobish hat]

Picked up the mag in the shop today and had a leaf through. Will likely pick it up later in the month but when I got to the back page I was pretty miffed to see what the headline article will be for ish 102 - more Spectrum! Seriously, this is getting boring now. Its an interesting machine sure, but its being done to death at this stage. Its 30 years old, but wasn't that fact celebrated enough in issue 100? And what more can be said about it at this stage?

Can't disagree with this. It's been featured in issue 100, there was the C64/Spectrum stand-off in 99, and a whole bookazine devoted to the pair of them recently.

[DreamcastRIP]

Picked up the mag in the shop today and had a leaf through. Will likely pick it up later in the month but when I got to the back page I was pretty miffed to see what the headline article will be for ish 102 - more Spectrum! Seriously, this is getting boring now. Its an interesting machine sure, but its being done to death at this stage. Its 30 years old, but wasn't that fact celebrated enough in issue 100? And what more can be said about it at this stage?

Couldn't disagree more. I found Issue 100's Speccy article a fascinating read which contained several pieces of info' I didn't already know about and it also featured some interesting new facts too, iirc. A thoroughly excellent article showing RG at its best. Roll on Issue 102 for more cool info' celebrating the Speccy's 30th anniversary!

[Eric]

Nearly typed "Catcher Snatcher" into my 100+ issues contents list as listed in the mags Index page. The Retro Revival is for Vic 20 game "Catcha Snatcha".

More Spectrum next month. Issue 100 had the feature "Inside The ZX Spectrum" & Issue 99 had the "C64 vs ZX". More 8-bit the better though.
Got £9.99 waiting for The Amstrad CPC Bookazine.

[markopoloman]

Picked up the mag in the shop today and had a leaf through. Will likely pick it up later in the month but when I got to the back page I was pretty miffed to see what the headline article will be for ish 102 - more Spectrum! Seriously, this is getting boring now. Its an interesting machine sure, but its being done to death at this stage. Its 30 years old, but wasn't that fact celebrated enough in issue 100? And what more can be said about it at this stage?

OMG! Is there anything else in there? I'll assume the X-Wing series is not on the speccy, the Super Mario RPG not on the speccy, Wipeout not on the speccy...... Get a life man! It is a retro mag that caters for LOTS of retro loving people from different decades that all want stuff written about machines they like. How many times does Darran or any other person have to come on here and state that the mag is NOT JUST FOR YOU x Pi

[markopoloman]

Got £9.99 waiting for The Amstrad CPC Bookazine.

That'll be in the budget section for 99p