Your first gaming magazine

FarligOpptreden

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I'm sure most (if not all) of you have bought a gaming mag in your lives. Share your first experience here and lets all bask in a bit of nostalgia! Let me start...

I remember buying my first gaming mag way back when I was still in I passed by one stall that was selling magazines of all sorts. My eye fell on one magazine cover with some cartoony army soldiers on and I decided to buy it. The cover was for a "scoop" review of... Cannon Fodder! I can't remember the name of the magazine, but it was a console-focussed magazine from the UK with a large focus on Nintendo, but SEGA was given a bit of love as well.

In the magazine they reviewed Cannon Fodder, Cruisin' USA, Chaos Engine and were comparing the different released of Mortal Kombat 2, even providing some cardboard cutout masks for Scorpion, Sub Zero and Reptile! Those masks were cut out and stuck on my wall together with numerous other posters and pictures on my bedroom wall. I read that magazine cover-to-cover countless times and enjoyed it every time. I marvelled at the pictures and remember thinking that gaming can't get any better than this...

My first proper PC gaming magazine was a thick copy of EGM - Electronic Gaming Monthly. A notable review in it was Age of Empires and I also remark how impressed I was with the screenshots in it. I kept dreaming of the day that I could get hold of that game and scoured the mini-reviews at the end of the magazine where they listed hundreds of games in all genres with scores, pros and cons. IIRC it also came with a demo disc with Incubation and Earth 2140 on, among others. The Earth 2140 demo had 2 or 3 missions from each of the factions on and I finished that probably 10 times after installing it... I LOVED it!
 
Wow, I have no idea what my first magazine was. I know it must have been somewhere in the early to mid 90's and it would have been an international magazine full of games and consoles that I was destined to never own.
 
You know that this is gonna make some people feel really old don't you :p my first gaming magazine was actually imported by CNA It was back when i was in Std 6 1993 :p it had the first review of sonic 2 in it :D
 
You know that this is gonna make some people feel really old don't you :p my first gaming magazine was actually imported by CNA It was back when i was in Std 6 1993 :p it had the first review of sonic 2 in it :D

The idea is to stir up the nostalgia. I remember the days of paging through those magazines and staring at the screenshots quite fondly. I always imagined owning a console, but I only got hold of my first one in 2006 - an XBOX 360. Prior to that I've always been a member of the Master Race. These days I own a desktop, PS3 and PS4. I sold the XBOX due to lack of playtime and need for funds... I do miss it sometimes though.

Back on topic: I used to buy PC Format religiously back when it was still good. I stopped after high school (circa 2001), but bought a couple of copies again around 2007-2008. I bought NAG on the odd chance they had something that interested me, but couldn't really get into it.

I also worked at CNA for a year or 2 whilst studying at varsity, so at the end of each month we could buy the month-old mags for next-to-nothing! I remember getting hold of stacks of demo disks that were redundant and gave copies to my buddies as the store owner had no use for them.
 
My dad brought me a copy of NAG from somewhere. I held on to that copy for almost a year before I went and bought a NAG for myself. Can't really remember when this was, I suppose it was somewhere between 2001-2003.
 
Your gonna think i'm insane now but i have every single issue of nag from their launch including every CD in a huge folder and the mags stashed in the Garage.

The missus want's to throw them away but i'm fighting tooth and nail for it :D
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You know that this is gonna make some people feel really old don't you :p my first gaming magazine was actually imported by CNA It was back when i was in Std 6 1993 :p it had the first review of sonic 2 in it :D

No, but I probably will... got my C64 magazine from CNA and the Zzap 64! magazine, when that finally got to SA. Probably 1986 thereabouts...
 
Really got into gaming mags after getting my playstation 1. I used to buy them during school holidays when I was in Cape Town.

I just bought UK mags at paperweight as they were cheaper than the local mags.

First mag I bought...Gamesmaster December 2000 Gold edition :)

And I got a Playstation 1 Final Fantasy 8 vinyl in one of those of mags so it was totally tits :P

Don't even want to mention all the cheat code books I've bought.
 
Hmm does PC Format count? Bought first one in 1999... I was into gaming and hardware equally back then

The whole way through this thread i was thinking PC Format...

It was actually pretty cool how the mags came with demo discs so you could try out a bunch of games...
 
Not really a game mag, but they did have a few game reviews in it: SA Computer Buyer, Issue #1. I think it was somewhere in the early 90s?
 
First one I read was some sega one can't remember the name back in 1994. My first two I owned(got them on the same day) was nag the first issue and some american gaming mag. I loved the american one seeing games that never came out here. Also had the blood 2 add for it it :p Some preview of half life, and age of empires 2 :p
 
My first one was NAG's first issue, me and some buddies went to Icon (or was it called GenCon, I think the name changed somewhere along the line), and they were handing out issues of this NAG with StarCraft 1 on the cover (this was in 1998).

I remember devouring that magazine, and I regularly bought the mag after that. I would cut out the cool pics and post them on my school books and in my homework book, space case etc.

Started following PC Format after NAG became equally console oriented, came back to NAG when I got my XBox. Actually bought last months issue :)

I'm just disappointed with the quality of game demos lately. You no longer get demos for the premium titles, only video trailers.
 
I remember my first gaming magazine. My folks bought me a PC Format, the July 2000 edition. The CD had a demo for a game about a cherub, which I found disturbing. In it they reviewed Deus Ex, and I remember reading the review, going out and buying the game, and until this day, I still think Deus Ex is the best game I have ever played.

I kept reading PC Format for about 5 years, never missing a single edition, and I always read the magazine from cover to cover. I stopped buying them when I became a poor student and couldn't afford them on a monthly basis anymore.
 
Do the Nag magazines these days come with Demos?

Anyone bough the Playstation Magazine ever? Does that come with a disc for the PS4 these days?
 
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