For me, it probably went, GamePro (when I was 5-6), then Nintendo Power when I saw copies of it at friends' houses and realized that the NES coverage was better, then EGM alongside Nintendo Power because I preferred the multiplatform coverage and the editorial was less biased, and NP switching over to American layout staff negated it having the edge in busy layout visuals, then [Ultra] Game Players for its humor when the 3-D revolution felt like it was making EGM more dull than it used to be and Nintendo Power had nothing to write about anymore but stretching out N64 previews over years, then PSM when I was only buying PS1 games and Game Players people had migrated there and sometimes Tips & Tricks, then nothing.
Smatterings of occasional issues of everything else in between. I never saw what people were seeing in GameFan. I thought that EGM and PSM's Japanese coverage was good enough already.
Here's a question that I have: is there any specific physical magazine or book that you guys use that's an especially good go-to source for codes and passwords covering games from the NES era up to the PS1/N64 era (or even after that)? Like, besides "the internet" or "just google it"? Sometimes it's nice to just have a physical book or magazine on hand and not have to wait for your phone's browser to scroll through GameFAQs to maybe get what you want.
Nintendo Power's Top Secret Passwords was always a good one, though obviously that doesn't cover anything from Sega or Sony. I used to have this interesting 300-page NES hint book that Microsoft published in 1991 called "The Game Counsellor's Answer Book for Nintendo Game Players" that I used to consult frequently, and which I learned most of the Master Quest stuff from Zelda 1 through, but I've looked back through it recently, and it's actually kind of terrible, with probably about 40% of the hints being "Q. Does this game have a stage select code? A. No."
Wasn't there a brief period of Tips & Tricks that covered codes for most consoles from the NES through the N64? Is there a specific era of especially helpful issues, or were there any specific "Tips & Tricks Codebook" releases to look out for?
I remember UGP did get pretty weird. They were talking about some cleansing or something and it finally happened in one issue. Wasn't as eventful as they hyped it to be.
GamePro put out a hint book thing in the early 90s that has been my go-to guide on NES games since getting it. It covers a pretty good range of them, though it isn't complete by any means (the M section only has the first three Mega Man games, for example).
My copy is so worn out and annotated, though. The cover has long since disappeared and it split into two halves at some point, right around the late I's.
I think it's this one. Wow, I forgot that it had Battletoads on the cover originally.
Joined: 18 Nov 2004 Posts: 57 Location: Lewistown, PA USA
Posted: Mon Jun 09, 2014 2:49 pm Post subject:
Yeah, the cardboard cut-out masks were hilarious... I forgot all about those! And yeah, The Cleansing... was just weird.
The banter between the staffers at UGP was just great, though. I remember being sad when Chris Slate left, but thrilled whenever I realized how much of a guru Fran Reyes was.
My subscription ended with the very last issue... I remember reading the blurb in the magazine that said they were switching format to Game Buyer and being in complete disbelief. I looked for Game Buyer where I used to get UGP before I subscribed (at my local grocery store of all places) and I could never find it. I had no idea it only lasted a few issues.
As far as a magazine that was a go-to for passwords, cheats, and the like... I always referred to Tips & Tricks Magazine. They had a huge library of cheats in every issue. Pre-internet, it was all I used.
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