The 90's 'tude and constant sexism is just dripping off every page in these old gaming mags
this post was submitted on 16 May 2025
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This is the issue (Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, Volume 1, Number 1, Issue 1) if anyone wants to read it:
https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/28d63139-e6a9-4488-8501-31fe31c4913a
Searching "Crystal Dynamics" will take you right to the page—the Video Game History Foundation developed a custom OCR solution specifically tailored to video game magazines so the accuracy is excellent. Really great resource if you ever want to find stuff in old magazines, and they also have other categories like trade publications and convention materials.
edit: PaRappa and I.Q. on the same demo disc? Hell yeah. Okay, I haven't actually played either of them buuuut they both have great aesthetics. The I.Q. soundtrack is magical (shoutout to Dunkey for introducing me to it).
You know what? I'm gonna grab that demo disc and check 'em out
edit: ...I feel so fucking stupid, I have no idea how to play PaRappa. I looked at the explanation in the magazine and at the manual and I'm still at a loss. I'm good at rhythm games, so it's not a rhythm issue, but I genuinely have no idea what the game is asking me to do.
The first thing that's throwing me off is that the usual rhythm game paradigm is to have notes advancing towards some single zone, and you hit the corresponding button(s) exactly when the note reaches that zone. But in PaRappa, you've got notes going from left to right, and what I perceive to be that zone is almost all the way to the left, so clearly that's not how it works. The bar appears to have small sixteenth note subdivisions and larger markers on the quarter note beats, so I tried pressing the indicated button on said beats, but I can't even tell if my button presses are registering--I don't see a "miss" icon or hear a sound or anything. If my controller weren't working or the bindings were off, I wouldn't have even been able to start the game, and when I tried Ace Combat 2 it worked fine. What do
(also I know that I could just look up a video or whatever, but I'm going for the authentic pre-internet experience of just asking someone at school).
Okay, so I tested it out with the full game and it turns out my inputs weren't being registered...very strange. Also, the timing is still kinda weird, but at least I can actually play. My inputs also didn't register in I.Q., but they worked fine in Fighting Force, so I have no idea what's going on
Does that site have any UK Official PlayStation Magazine issues? Archive.org used to have almost all of them but some UK forum issued a DMCA takedown.
The UK version started out a bit earlier and there are a ton of games the US one didn't get to cover as a result
Unfortunately, no. And I was surprised to see that Retromags only has 5 out of 108 issues. That really sucks about Internet Archive...I just looked it up and apparently as you said, it was some forum that apparently charges for access to their scans. Wack. The issues Retromags has are original scans so they won't run into the same problem, but it's probably pretty demoralizing to know that the scans already exist but are just being gatekept.
There's still ~15 other issues on the Internet Archive (plus a few more here), including the first issue. In a Reddit thread I found about the takedown someone claimed to have nearly the full set from before the takedown (minus an issue or two) and said they would make a torrent or send links; unfortunately, they never posted anything publicly, and the account has been inactive for nearly two years, so asking them directly is probably a dead end. Your best bet would probably be to DM the people who asked for the links and hope that one of them might be able to share. Wish I could've been of more help! If you decide to pursue it and end up finding anything, though, def let me know—I've got the full Retromags collection saved precisely because you never know when a takedown might happen.
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