The first game magazine I vividly remember reading was EGM's December 1993 issue. I must have read through that issue dozens of times. Considering how massive game magazines were around the holidays (thanks in no part to ads), those massive Nov and Dec issues could entertain a kid like me for ages.
Per last weeks answer, my degree in history led to an archivist job, that led to a personal project where I have 75% of EGM's 1989-2009 run shelved and preserved.
One of my favorite things to do on a rainy day is to grab a random issue and read through it all over again.
Anyways, looking back at that issue of EGM in particular, it is funny seeing Eternal Champions being touted as a Mortal Kombat competitor when it was anything but.
QotW: the Christmas '83 edition of Sinclair User is the first I can remember. In '84 Your Spectrum and Crash also started publication and I used to get all three most months. Now I just get Retro Gamer and read about the same ZX (zed, not zee 😉) Spectrum classics 40 years later.
While I don't remember which specific magazine was my first, I grew up overseas as an American expat in Southeast Asia in the 80s and 90s and every summer we would visit my grandparents in the U.S. and I would buy gaming mags and eventually had a big stack of them that I had brought home with me...
For years, whenever the power would go out (in the Philippines in the early 90s that could be 8-10 hours per day), I would read the same magazines over and over again, memorizing them and assuming games like Eternal Champions must have been enormous hits given the outlandish early 90s marketing.
My parents got me GamePro issue 64 because it had Beavis and Butthead on the cover. The big thing in that issue was showing off the Sony Playstation. Along with that they had a few pages of weird Japanese based disc systems that I would never hear about again.
My school had a bunch of old Ninteno magazines to read during breaks. I remember flicking through an old issue about Metroid and the Batman Brave and the Bold game.
QotW: The first "game magazine" I ever read was a binder of articles a friend had of photocopied articles from Nintendo Fun Club(Nintendo Power's predecessor). It was just a collection of the strategy sections, and I remember reading the walkthroughs for games like Metroid and Punch-Out.
QotW: I vaguely remember having EGM and Gamepro issues before this point but the first game magazine I clearly recall reading was a random issue of Nintendo Power I got at Toys R Us or Kiddie City. Looking it uolp, it was issue 44 with a pretty cool cover of Mickey Mouse for Magical Quest.
I remember the older neighbor kid who I would sometimes play NES with came over with the first issue of Nintendo Power. I remember that clay cover and the two-page spread for Super Mario Bros. 2 that detailed the four playable characters' abilities as if they were track and field athletes.
The first one I owned was the issue that was the strategy guide for Super Mario Bros. 3 and it may have been the mos glorious thing I had ever beheld up to that point in my short life. Learning the tricks to the white mushroom houses and that the card game had 8 set patterns was mindblowing.
Shouts out to the GamePro issue with NFL Blitz on the cover, the only issue I ever picked up from the newsstand, which has articles on Pocket Fighter and several other very of-the-time games, and the first annual Tips & Tricks Video Game Codebook, which gave me evwn more fun out of old games I had.
I heard a friend in elementary school had a Nintendo Power subscription, and I convinced him to bring in his back issues and let me borrow them. I don't know what issue was first, but this would be mid-90s content. I practically memorized the WarioLand II guide for when I got it later that year.
Electronic Gaming Monthly, it was a Halo issue because there were variant covers of variously colored Master Chief helmets. I only ever saw a red one and a green one in the wild.
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One of my favorite things to do on a rainy day is to grab a random issue and read through it all over again.