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#41 | |
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#42 |
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Join Date: Dec 2020
Location: Italy
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def the birth country influenced in this matter
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#43 |
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Location: Marseille / France
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And the age also. Because I'm pretty sure that not many Megadrive owners in France could "drive" to a shop to get imported games by 90/91/92.
People born before 1978 in my hometown were more intro hunting and fishing rather than playing what was largely considered a toy for kids here by the early nineties. ![]() Last edited by sokolovic; 19 November 2023 at 16:09. |
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#44 | |
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Location: Ireland
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The main magazines i was reading at the time were CVG and ACE and i was well aware of the grey import market for consoles from these magazines, i was just not interested in it as i wasnt really interested in consoles until the PS1. |
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#45 | |
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: London
Posts: 1,180
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I lived near a largish town of around 70,000 in the south of England near London. Went to a big school of over 1000. People with more well-off parents (looking back, that included me) were lucky to have a computer like an ST or Amiga. Console owners were a rarity. The idea of importing console games and having the setup (imported console, special TV) to play them was incredibly exotic. There was nowhere to rent games. There were no arcade machines. I saw arcade machines occasionally on visits to seaside towns. Games came from Boots, John Menzies, and some department stores. I saw megadrive and snes carts in woolworths for £40+. My parents were not strict, but the idea of dropping that kind of money regularly on a game was absurd. I don't even know what the price of imports was. I got games on magazine coverdisks, budget games, and sometimes the odd pirated game off a mate. I had a mate who's family was from Singapore, and one time he came back from his visit with an Asian megadrive and a copy of Sonic. As far as I know that was the only game they had for it, with no way of acquiring more carts. We played it on a crappy UK 14 inch telly over RF with the colours corrupted and the picture rolling. Sound only worked through the headphone socket through a pair of partially broken headphones. We played it anyway. We were children! |
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#46 |
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Join Date: Jul 2015
Location: The Netherlands
Posts: 3,464
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The discussion regarding imported games seems a bit weird to me
![]() Gaming magazines served a small percentage of the gaming public. This is simple to verify because they had their circulation numbers widely published. Even the absolute juggernaut multiplatform magazines had Europe-wide circulations averaging well under 250,000 copies a month, while the consoles & computers they represented were present in homes in the millions. The Sega Megadrive alone sold around 7 million units by 1992, there were millions and millions of PC's in use, etc. Not only that, but the magazines only had very small (and often infrequently featured) sections on import games. It seems reasonably to me that if import games were a big thing, they'd likely would have had far more pages dedicated to it. As far as I can see, the truth is that almost all computer and console users, whether you want to use hyperbole like 'nobody', 'tiny fraction', or things like that seems less important to me than the underlying point, seemed to have had no idea about import games, didn't go to specialty stores (which is why those stores were so small and often in out-of-the-way places) and didn't even read magazines. They also had, on average, only a small numbers of games. In the MD/SNES era, AFAIK game to console tie-ratio was fairly low, I personally didn't know anyone* who had more than say 3 or 4 games for their console of choice. We're the exception, we're the people who care about games and who loved them then and now ![]() Most people didn't see it as we do (or did). As for import games, I personally couldn't even get a game imported from the UK by my local gaming store, let alone from Japan. Where I lived there was one of such stores that I could reach and it didn't even sell import consoles. Maybe things were different over in the UK or Germany, but here all the people I knew either didn't have a console, or had one with like 3 games - all of which they bought at the nearest store that carried any. Usually without reading any magazine about them. Often they hadn't even seen any adverts and bought them because "that Zelda game has a gold cartridge, it must be special" or "wow, a game about my favourite sport". The stuff people like us did was really the outlier ![]() *) I did have a lot of (original) games (to the chagrin of my parents, who allowed me a computer for all the non-gaming stuff they imagined I'd exclusively use it for and didn't like me spending most of my pocket/birthday money on games ![]() Last edited by roondar; 20 November 2023 at 10:26. Reason: Rewrote a bit of this, fixed some errors and it felt to me like it came across a bit less friendly than I meant it. |
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#47 | |
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This has changed a bit now, since everyone has a media center in their pocket, but back in the day magazines bought once would be perused by others, seen in libraries and, most importantly, talked about. If mags really had such low influence, and most people bought Zelda because of a shiny cart, then it should follow that sales are mostly impulsive and should be randomly distributed. So why is that that the beloved Hybris et al didn't sell in equal measure to Xenon 2? For the record, this whole angle is a bit pedantic because I don't find the whole "they could compare to import games" argument particularly relevant anyway, as I said earlier. But, hyperbole or not, saying that all console owners were just a bunch of clueless preteens seems rather far fetched. |
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#48 | |
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Location: Marseille / France
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There is also a reason why some games sold in huge quantities despite low reviews by magazines. The whole business of some companies was buying expansive licenses and sell crappy games, most of them slashed in magazines. It didn't prevent people to buy them thought. |
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#49 | ||||
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Location: The Netherlands
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Note: I'm really not trying to be negative about people, the truth is simply that the number of people that are engaged with any topic (especially niche ones like importing games from Japan or the US) is just a lot lower than most of us who are engaged with said topics think. Quote:
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Of course I'm not claiming word-of-mouth didn't exist or had no impact (indeed, it was quite important!), just that when it comes to niche aspects of a market it's not nearly as effective. I guess a good question would be: if importing games was at all popular, why was it that only subset of often the smaller specialty stores ever offered it? And then only as a side-hustle to their main specialty of selling the local consoles and carts? To me that is exactly what you'd expect of a niche aspect of a hobby. In fact, I'd argue that Xenon 2 and Hybris are good examples of exactly what I mean - both had good review scores, one was and still is beloved by people like us (i.e. those who love good games), the other was bought by vastly more people despite how poor the game ended up being. Come to think of it, it's been known for a long time that it's quite common for games to receive great or excellent reviews and still do very poorly in the market. Quote:
Anyway, I should try to make these posts smaller again (or even stop posting), as I'm noting that I'm in that silly mood I sometimes get where I engage far too seriously with stuff about my hobbies. My apologies if that comes across in my posts, I'm not trying to be negative or unfriendly ![]() |
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#50 | |
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Location: Ur, Atlantis
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![]() It all doesn't matter much anyway (hence a lack of blow-by-blow rebuttal in this post), it's just sometimes I like to squabble about details. All I will say that Xenon 2 really isn't as bad as people like to paint it nowadays, and that's the mainly answer to all the gripes in this thread. |
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#51 |
Missile Command Champion
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Germany
Age: 52
Posts: 12,479
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I don't get this "you had to be 10-12" when you were playing video games at that time. This is nothing i can't even remotely confirm. I was 17 when i got the Amiga 500 and 19 when the MD started to be a thing (including imports). A lot of my friends with gaming interests were around the same age (or 1-2 years older).
As i said, video game magazines had a big impact (and literally the only source for proper infos/reviews) for gaming enthusiasts back then, video rental stores too. The latter especially for MD and SNES, later PSX too. I don't think we can do generalization here. Last edited by Retro-Nerd; 20 November 2023 at 19:56. |
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#52 | |||
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#53 |
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Join Date: Dec 2019
Location: Ur, Atlantis
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[QUOTE=roondar;1655375I really rather enjoyed Starfield, yet the internet told me I should hate it
![]() Ah, don't start me on Bethsoft hate, this is one of the silliest/unfairest things that came with Internet groupthink ![]() |
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#54 | |
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Join Date: Dec 2020
Location: Italy
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never read something unfriendly in your posts always a pleasure to read your cuts, as other back in the day memories ![]() --- these latest posts let me remember the crazy phone call i did in the UK, to order Microprose Soccer for the c64; i mean directly at the Microprose offices ![]() now that was really funny, considering mine almost zero english level yet i reached lol Last edited by kremiso; 20 November 2023 at 16:59. |
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#55 | |
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TV ads were also important. Another way to know about new games was playing at friends, borrowing the game or renting But notice that during that time early elementary school kids had it easier and were more carefree to take the bus, tube or tram to visit the city centre alone. For computer games though, magazines were mandatory |
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#56 |
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Location: Ireland
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#57 |
Banana
Join Date: Jul 2016
Location: Darmstadt
Posts: 1,217
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I don't think I ever bought a full price MD game, nor did anyone else I know. Certainly didn't read magazines or collect imports, just went down to the local games exchange and see what they had versus the money in my pocket. I can't imagine that was an uncommon experience.
Last edited by E-Penguin; 21 November 2023 at 20:09. |
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#58 |
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Battle Squadron is actually an interesting case, and warrants a closer inspection. Obviously, the game suffered both aurally and visually. While Rob Hubbard's edits to the songs were quite tasteful, the terrible samples meant that the music sounded much worse when compared to the original soundtrack. The visuals took a hit, too. While the Amiga backgrounds have ~24 colors, the Mega Drive dedicates only one of its four 16-color palettes to them, so the shading got a little rougher and the result is visibly more drab. They saved massively on tiles, not least through extensive use of the MD's tile flipping ability. Overall, they still did a decent job, even though I’m sure that more experienced developers could have done better. Gameplay-wise, there are actually areas where the MD version improved upon the original. The altered level layouts are tighter and more interesting, and the fact that bombs can only be earned in the underground levels and the lack of extends (both pick-up and score-based) mean that you can’t just farm the surface level for resources. The balance of the game is definitely better. Unfortunately, some really bad alterations overshadowed the good ones. They went a little overboard when dialing up the difficulty by making the regular enemies both more numerous and sturdier while nerfing the weapons and bombs at the same time. Also, the newly introduced foreground parallax layers that obscure the action are inexcusable. |
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#59 | |
Missile Command Champion
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Germany
Age: 52
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Exactly. I can't believe that they did this. Without it i would have called the port somewhat acceptable. ![]() |
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#60 | |
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