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Post by flatapex on Jun 30, 2015 8:42:55 GMT
Rewind the clock to the late 80s-mid 90s. You are in a games shop and in your sweaty teenage pocket is enough to buy a game or two, how did you know what games were worth the small fortune they cost?
Did you read magazines? Rent them? Just guess?
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Post by Transatlantic Foe on Jun 30, 2015 10:55:30 GMT
Screenshots on the back or from those catalogues that came with the games. New games had reviews which gave you a good idea but I couldn't afford £30-33 all the time, so settled for older titles a lot of the time.
I knew what sort of games I liked, so never made any serious mistakes... except for Cyber Shinobi!
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Post by jessie on Jun 30, 2015 12:29:47 GMT
Guess work mainly. If the story sounded compelling enough and the graphics looked good, I would usually buy it.
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lorf
Alis
Enduro Racer is the best game ever made for the SMS.
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Post by lorf on Jun 30, 2015 13:46:48 GMT
I would always stare at the artwork and screenshots then hope for the best. £30 back then was a lifetime of saving for me so was always hit n miss. Luckily one time I spent well and chose Wonderboy 3: Dragon's Trap. Had no idea what it was about but looked awesome and turned out to be one of the systems best games! Another time I completely made the mistake of picking The Ninja. I can still remember sitting there week after week and not being able to get past that first level!
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Post by tap on Jun 30, 2015 13:54:19 GMT
Guesswork/seeing what my friends and cousins were playing.
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Post by flatapex on Jun 30, 2015 14:33:10 GMT
I was lucky growing up as I had a photographic memory so it was easier for me than most. If I went to meet my friends I was always early so I would go into the large newsagents and read the magazines, this was done a lot back then so noone cared. There was one magazine back then that had all the review scores in every issue, I kept one constantly for reference, was it Sega power that did this?
When I bought my master system I initially didn't know anything and anything that looked or sounded interesting was a winner
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Post by korax on Jun 30, 2015 15:00:24 GMT
I didn't know! Had no access to any Sega Master System related magazines either, so I had to take a good look at the screenshots on the back of games and the description, or browse through the Sega catalogue beforehand and make up my mind. Usually though I ended up with some great games, I only remember one or two titles where I received something that was not as expected, and ended up returning.
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Post by Centrale on Jun 30, 2015 16:53:52 GMT
I often went for home versions of arcade games... 'translations' as we called them at the time. So I knew I liked the arcade game, and I had some realistic expectations and understanding that the SMS wasn't going to be as powerful as the arcade machines. Aside from that, I would stare at the Sega catalogs and posters seemingly for hours at a time, examining the screenshots and reading the brief descriptions. Occasionally I'd convince my parents or my older brother to take me on a relatively long drive to a Toys R Us which had pretty much every SMS game, and I'd look at all the screenshots and text on the backs of the boxes, and just kind of took a chance. By 1988 there was finally a new video game magazine, Electronic Game Player, which became EGM after four issues, and they did a good job of providing coverage and reviews for Master System games. By the time there were several U.S. magazines, late '89 - early '90, Sega had pretty much stopped supporting the SMS in the U.S. and all the coverage was on the Genesis.
All in all, though, the only games I ever disliked enough to return were Great Football and, reluctantly, Ghost House. I don't think I really grasped Ghost House conceptually... in some ways it's a puzzle game but I thought it was going to be more of a standard action platformer.
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Post by Transatlantic Foe on Jun 30, 2015 18:21:15 GMT
Speaking of arcade ports, I loved Star Force as a really young kid but couldn't remember the name a few years later. When I saw the SMS catalog, the screenshot for Power Strike looked like the level layout Star Force had. I literally searched for it for ages and bought it, expecting Star Force!
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Post by barney on Jun 30, 2015 20:26:34 GMT
Sega Power and Mean Machines Sega - though it could take me all year to save up £30 for a new game back then, so I got a few second-hand titles at random too.
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Post by Batman666 on Jun 30, 2015 23:30:10 GMT
Pre 14-15 years old, it was my father buying all the games for me as we were Jehovah Witnesses' thus didn't celebrate Christmas nor birthdays for me to get any games or money so he felt sorry for me and would buy games monthly, though at a catch, only games on sale or budget titles. After 15 when I had own spending money and also non religious which meant birthdays and Christmas presents, was the Playstation era and by then I had both the Internet, the official Playstation magazine with the demo discs and of course burned copies of games, so I never ended up with a stinker feeling ripped off
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Post by happyguy1984 on Jul 1, 2015 16:22:17 GMT
Flatapex both Sega Power and Sega Pro used to have full review listings in the back of their magazines! I used to do a mixture of looking at magazines and taking blind guesses/luck. When I first got my Master System 2 from Woolworths, my Mum told me to pick 3 games and this was before looking at any magazines. I chose, Moonwalker, Castle Of Illusion and Sonic The Hedgehog. Pretty lucky first choices I tended to look at reviews for newer full priced games but take gambles on the cheapie games like The Ninja and TransBot. A local shop on my way to school used to have a box of them next to the sweet counter and I remember staring at the artwork with my friend wondering what to get next
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Post by ShadowAngel on Jul 1, 2015 16:40:55 GMT
I didn't, my brother didn't which led to us buying crap like Pro Wrestling and World Cup Italia 90 In the early years of the Master System i didn't buy magazines because the it wasn't until mid-1992 that Gamers showed up as an exclusive Sega Magazine here in Germany, you only had multi-system magazines like Power Play and ASM who then feature maybe 1 or 2 MS reviews. So it was a look at the cover, the back and screenshots or going by theme and if it's multiplayer for us. Somehow my father always had this talent of spotting out great games, leading to games like Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Castle of Illusion and Enduro Racer. I still haven't found out how he managed to do that
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Jul 1, 2015 22:00:01 GMT
The games shop i visited had an sms setup, you could buy a game and then try it. If you didnt like it you could exchange it for another. I used to spend hours playing games before i finally took one home. (Thanks for the memorys PV tubes Accrington)
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Post by rupert on Jul 7, 2015 21:42:53 GMT
I remember buying Sega Power and Mean Machines but I think most of my Master System games back then were received as Birthday and Christmas gifts. The ones I chose myself were mainly based on the screenshots and art work - I have fond memories of spending a long time in Toys R Us going up and down the isle trying to choose something, the game covers were behind a sheet of plastic and you took a ticket to the big caged area at the back to collect the game, if there were none in stock then the back of the ticket holder would be visible, it said 'sorry something something' i think.
I also rented games from the local video shop, Astra Video. I did this fairly offten and must have rented Putt & Putter between 5 and 10 times, eventually buying it from them when they were selling off older games (this actual one is in my collection and some of you have played the actual one at the sega8bit meet ups. I only recently bought a spare at the Leeds Games Market).
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