DF Retro at Rezzed 2018: 90s Games Magazines Remembered!

Remember when you used to read about games in magazines rather than on websites? Our very own Rich Leadbetter was at the forefront of games magazines throughout the console era. Join John and Rich for this edit of their talk at Rezzed 2018, discussing how games magazines were made and how things have moved on in the move to the internet and YouTube!

[ajayhomer]

Maybe it’s my age (53), but DF Retro is my fave part of DF. It’s not just nostalgia though; the quality is great, the thoroughness is amazing and there’s lots of ‘I never knew that’ moments, which always surprises me

[MagisterHamid]

Just wanted to say that this is one of the best videos you ever done. Richard is such a cool dude. Lovely to take part of his knowledge and experienceX

[NumairRana]

Just watching this now in 2023, this was AWESOME! I miss gaming magazines man

[VideosbySteve]

Now i cant stop thinking about how awesome a Digital Foundry print magazine would actually be.

[defaultdefault]

Richard is very charismatic. Great to listen to!

[Azmodaeus]

This is lovely, more of this in future @DF

[michiganjack]

When I graduated High School in 2001, I remember throwing away over a decades worth of gaming magazines that I had collected. It was a hard thing to as I didn’t want to toss my EGM collection. But I was moving and had to leave it all behind. 17 years and I kind of wish I still had most of them. Great stuff.

[silentman]

This video is worth a treasure for the Digital Foundry Team! It was really exciting to know the back story of your entire journey as an editor! Kudos!

[PlayinWithGhosts]

Being a child of the 90's, this is super cool to watch. Thank you for posting this. A nice walk down memory lane.

[mcrazza]

90s games magazines. Pre-Internet era. There was no blogs, no 24 hour news cycle. This was how we got our gaming news. They were slick tomes jam-packed with content. Gawd, the month-to-month wait for gaming news, reviews and entertainment was excruciating. And most importantly... demo discs! When you had a small collection of games, demo discs filled the void. The memories. :')

[stevelawson]

Videos like this is what makes digital foundry worth watching.

[fullauto]

These df guys are geniuenly who i look up too.

[cedarstuff]

If we want quality games coverage (or journalism as a whole) to be around in 20 years, the pay system needs to be sorted out. Relying on ad revenue from a 3rd party video platform, or taking direct advertising money is not a sustainable model for delivering quality, unbiased content. As amazing as the web has been, the most damaging thing it has brought around is an expectation of getting everything for "free". Creators need to be paid by those for whom they create.

[ClockedIt]

Great video and to think that I still own most on the magazines shown, almost makes me feel a part of that history and I do feel like we've lost something special since the rise of the internet, but of course we've gained things as well.

[EposVox]

so cool. Thanks for this. More in the future please!

[michaelpegasiou]

I used to walk a mile to the local newsagents and buy my copies of edge magazine and cvg sometimes gamesmaster a month wait between info! Thanks to them I bought all the consoles including 3do and jaguar, import n64 and PlayStation using 110 converters and Japanese text.Mystical exciting times.

[Banderpop]

I know where a review copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga from Sega Saturn Magazine ended up.

Back in around 1998 there was an EMAP website called Game Online with a forum. On there, Rich Leadbetter asked if anyone still had early issues of Mean Machines and were willing to part with them in exchange for some Saturn software that was lying around the SSM offices. I did. And so I was sent a US import of Albert Odyssey, and a version of PDS that hadn't quite been fully localised for its PAL release.

[reallybigmistake]

4:12 oh man look at Rich....dashing young man.

[madfinntech]

This is so fascinating to listen to. More of this, please.

[themexicanstaringfrogofsou]

Me and my bro learned how to do fatalities on MK1 from looking at game magazines, sometimes the pages were already torn off by someone else, so you had to make sure all the pages were there if you were gonna buy it. My favorite was Electronic Gaming Monthly