One of the biggest reasons I've begun collecting 1990s video game mags, again, is that I'm 46 years old. I'm approaching 50, and for some reason that is unfathomable. Granted, I'm happy that I'm living to see that age, but it beggars belief. I remember being a teen like it was just years ago. Not that many years ago...
During the '90s I collected a lot of damn video game mags. I mean a lot. Gamepro, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Diehard Gamefan, Next Generation, Game Players, is there more? Sega Visions and Video Games, and on and on. I had approximately 6 or 7 boxes of game mags saved up, but when I moved home in 2001 I had nowhere to put them. That's a lie, my parent's basement was filled with random boxes, but I simply thought I would never need these magazines again. I never once imagined I would need to ever reread these things again. I had no idea what my future would look like.
My future looked sad. I'm kidding; I have a great life, with a great woman, a cool Boxer (dog not the human). I've had lots of motorcycles, and some good friends. A cool job with motorcycles. But I'll be damned did nostalgia hit me hard. I regret tossing those boxes in the trash that Tuesday morning that it is now like an itch that I cannot scratch. Like my retro gaming collection, I'm finding myself repurchasing a lot of the stuff I had already picked up in the '90s! It's a strange ouroboros ride, this life of mine.
It's amazing how flipping through the pages of a 25-yo magazine can take you right back, like a weekend furlough from the prison of reality. Some of these ads, and even editorials, I remember immediately. The Sega Saturn ads, with the bald lady and Ice Cube, are particularly nostalgic to me right now. The Sega 32X ads takes me right back to the toilet on Harold Road in Dundalk, where I spent way too much time not to have developed hemorrhoids.
With Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 60, July 1994, I can still hear REM's Orange Crush playing on the radio in my bedroom. With this cover burned into my youthful retinas, memories of the mental debate whether or not to steal this issue form the 7/11 on my street corner still seem vivid. In the end I hid the issue in the back of the rack, and my mom purchased it for me the next day. Chalk one up for the good boy...
Today, these magazines are as important for me as the games that were previewed in its pages. This particular issue here is a favorite not only because of the memories with obtaining the issue, but because Mortal Kombat II completely stunned me when I first saw it in the arcades. The sounds and music, the art and story, the fatalities! All of it wowed me, and while I was never any good, I still enjoyed playing it and it became a favorite of mine. I enjoy MK3 a bit better only because the Run button sped up the gameplay nicely.
It's hard for me to believe that I was still in high school when this issue was on newsstands. At this time the 3DO was still out of reach for me personally. This early on the Sony PlayStation was dubbed the PS-X. There's a cool feature on the Nintendo of America headquarters in the issue, which I have to admit as a kid impressed me that Nintendo was making some games here at home. At this time and era for gaming mags I was reading them cover to cover; even the games and systems I wasn't all that into, save for handhelds. The pages of ads in the back were glued to my eyes, dreaming of owning it all. I always read the letters sections, of all the game mags, just to see what other folks thought of the same stuff I was playing.
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