Now, my first thought: there was an EGM2? God, but for the golden age of gaming magazines. This thing is roughly 250 pages, and this is all the stuff they couldn't fit into the 250 page issue of EGM1. Last game magazine I picked up had roughly 40 pages of content in it. Ugh, I will miss the gaming mags when they inevitably die out, but if they were still publishing 250 page monsters chock full of content and mini strategy guides and features for six bucks a pop I would buy them! And I'm the only market that matters. Cater to me.
This issue was published in... god, I could go back and look, I could, but yeah... I believe 1994. The 32X is about to come out, and the cover proudly boasts coverage of Jaguar, 3DO, and CD-I games. Now, I wasn't really cognizant of the industry in 1994, being 7 and all; I just bought what the ads told me to. It's fascinating to look back. The Jag, 3DO, and CD-I were all relegated to the ash heap of gaming history, but this must have been them in their (for lack of a better term) heyday, being treated as serious contenders, with reviews, previews, strategy, and advertising galore. There's talk of Sony and Sega's 32-bit consoles, but they won't be out for a year. It's just... wow, really interesting. I've always said I want to write a book (series) on the industry, and it's clear that I could do a volume on 1994 alone if I had a stack of these things.
Now, combining the topics of young me re: the gospel truth of game advertising and the sorta-3D-halfway-between-generations 3D0, Jaguar, CD-I, and 32X, I came across this WONDERFUL Nintendo public service announcement about the dangers of buying new hardware (unless you don't own an SNES, in which case buy that).
Check it out, Pedro, THUMBNAILS:
Holy hell. You know, at E3 '09 the crowd "ooooohed" at some remark the Natal guys made about their mini-astronomicon's real gameplay as opposed to the Wii's canned motions, but christ, back in the day these companies ran fucking smear campaigns. This is a goddamn political smear campaign! So put on your best Karl Rove smugly pointing out the obvious flaws in Sega's national security agenda inner voice and let's read this thing:
First of all, what's with the NEW HARDWARE NOT NECESSARY and 16 BITS IS ENOUGH? They're like newspaper headlines but don't quite fit for me... maybe I'm just weird, but make your ad look like a newspaper or use complete sentences, goons.
Oh, and also, it's very clearly designed to look like any other article in the magazine, and I don't know if it's just a design thing or if they actually thought children would say "the editors of EGM2 make a good point!" You see this crap in real newspapers too, something like CAR DEALERSHIP HAS GREATEST DEAL EVER, and while you're thinking god, the wall street journal's not even trying anymore you see the giant ADVERTISEMENT labels undoubtedly required by law plastered all over the thing. Why didn't you see them immediately? Shut up, my example uses dream logic okay?
Now, we begin with a lot of talking about "The Next Level," saying that all of these half-breeds have promised but not delivered. Now, Jag, 3D0, fine, but they say that the Genesis promised to be the next level, and I guess wasn't? When it was released in 1989? Put Sonic 3 next to Mario 3; that's the next fucking level! That's like at least seven levels of graphics and four levels of sound more. They totally raised the level there! I don't know how they can say that that level was not the next level over their then current level when that level was clearly several levels beyond the highest level they could have obtained.
No no, Nintendo had a different strategy than to release a new console two years in that would be slaughtered by upcoming consoles that could do 3D that didn't look like Star Fox with fewer chromosomal disorders: they signed a deal with Sony, realized they didn't read their contract, and made an enemy for life that ended up beating the shit out of them for the next decade; I mean the 32X may have cost Sega $100 billion, but that's (astoundingly) nothing compared to Nintendo's blunder there. But I digress, I was going to do a tangent, thing then it went on too long... anyhow, Nintendo apparently decided to "improve today's games through new software development techniques." Of course! All the corporate heads were sitting around the table and came to that unanimous decision, "let's continue to make our SNES games look and play better." Thanks guy, there's a reason the stockholders pay you such a high salary!
Nintendo (and I realize that a guy probably wrote this, not the whole of Nintendo, shut up) goes on to say that CD-ROM games never live up to the hype, a position they would cling to for the next half decade despite all sales evidence to the contrary. It's pointed out that even with 500mb of memory you're limited to a very small amount of fmv to make crappy games out of, so instead, why not use 3D polygonal characters that can be viewed from any angle? Thus sorting out the dilemma of the superiority of cartridges forever.
Now Nintendo just really rips into these pricks. "In fact, the most impressive numbers are the high end retail price tags of the systems" WHOOAA kitten's got claws. Then they point out that none of the systems have sold well, "it seems that game players aren't convinced the 3D0 and Jaguar represent the next level any more than the slow-selling Sega CD" DAMN Nintendo what won't you say? As a sidenote, ever notice how douchey the word "seems" makes you? It SEEMS like this guy did this hurm hurph hurm I'm so cool and calm and right hurm harm. Okay okay, moving on, here we fucking go: "as for Sega's 32X adaptor, how many games do you suppose will be made for a tacked-on system with a life expectancy of maybe a year?" Sure they turned out to be right, but at that point they had no way of knowing.
"It's simple. The Super NES has the best games in the world and it won't bankrupt you." You know, this is an awesome advertisement in its sheer jerkassitude (that Sega started by the way, I ain't playing favorites), but god that is easily the best line. Hey assholes, we cost less and check out our bitching game that looks better than everything those douchebags are doing. This is the one point where if you were buying one of those consoles over a Super NES Nintendo was allowed to call you out as a fucking idiot, and history completely vindicated them.
Ah well. I need to get more of these magazines, I love this crap. Yeup, DKC was a huge market crusher and Nintendo had two sequels made, crushing the 16-bit market with huge profits for the next and last two years of 16-bit profitability before moving to the N64, while every other console on the market at the time died. Everything in this ad turned out to be 100% true. I wish they had the balls to produce more smear campaign ads in this day and age, though as they wouldn't work as pop-ups I doubt they ever will.
Oh and also, apparently Star Control 2 came out for the 3D0. I wonder how much they run for on ebay...
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