Bright, colorful, full of advertisements, and filled with items dated before they left the publisher’s warehouse, retro video game magazines are delightful little static moments in video game history captured on paper. The Video Game History FoundationVintage Magazine Subscription Service wants to have those old nostalgia bombs delivered to your doorstep while you pay.
I used to love video game magazines, before part of my job was scouring the internet for every little scrap of video game news. You might find copies of Electronic gaming monthly, Nintendo power, PSM, GamePro, GameFan, and more on my coffee tables, next to my bed, and sometimes on my bathroom floor after forgetting about them during a particularly heavy shower. In my early teens, I developed a habit of ripping the ads from the magazines and pinning them to my bedroom wall like wallpaper, much to the chagrin of my parents and our landlord.
I don’t need to buy video game magazines for breaking news and reviews these days, but I long for the days that I did. When I found out that the Video Game History Foundation was a selling monthly “blind bag” subscription service for gaming magazines published from the early 80s to 2010, I took the chance.
As part of its mission to bring video game history back to life, the Video Game History Foundation is working to collect a complete collection of all video game magazines ever published. In the course of this effort, the organization has received a number of duplicates. Instead of all these extras in a huge warehouse à la. to store Hunter of the lost treasure, the organization wraps the extras in protective Mylar bags, wraps them with a certificate of authenticity, and sends them out to people who subscribe to the service for $ 15 per month.
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These are not holdovers from bookstores whose front pages have been torn off or old copies salvaged from landfills. The magazines on offer are well preserved and well protected. If you want to screw them up, you have to do it yourself.
As a brave video game historian, I opted for a single issue before committing to the monthly fee. In hindsight, it was a $ 5 waste paying $ 20 for a one-time delivery instead of $ 15 for a monthly service that I can cancel at any time, but I felt very smart about the order. A few weeks later I received a flawless, very thick copy of the Top Secret Passwords: Nintendo Player Guide.
Although it has no advertising in it and is more of a guide than a regular magazine, the volume is in excellent condition. I can almost smell the ink inside as I flip through the alphabetical pages of tips for playing games Adventure of Lolo II to Vice: Project Doom. I was hoping for something wider, but that’s the luck of the draw. Check out what video game personality and father-to-be Greg Miller withdrew his first shipment.
So jealous.
Overall, I am incredibly satisfied. Not only do I now own top secret passwords for many Nintendo games, all magazine sales and subscription income goes into expanding the Video Game History Foundation’s library with the goal of eventually turning it into an open resource for the public to use. As for me, sorry kids, my personal library will remain private for the foreseeable future. You don’t want to go to my bathroom anyway.
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