Retro Gamer - Issue 163

[ianpmarks]

Quite a good issue. Liked a lot of it. Didn't bother with the Tomb Raider stuff as its a game I actively dislike. I do understand lots of people like it though, so fair enough it being there.

The thing that did make me laugh though was in the Diablo piece, which was a good article by the way. At one point though it says the developers grew up playing Roguealike games, which it went on to list.... apparently one of the Roguealike games they played was Rogue. You don't really get more Roguealike than Rogue itself do you!

Well it made me chuckle.

[joefish]

I never liked Tomb Raider originally - I played a demo from the PS Magazine and it started in a wide, low room where you had to go up some big flat stairs and jump to an exit high on the wall - and doing so was a really slow and clumsy exercise.
But years later I gave it another go - I think someone leant me the second one, which was just a series of sudden-death surprises, but had some big environments that looked pretty good. I gave the first one another go and realised just how big some of the levels were - I really started to enjoy it. But the exploration style of the first game was never repeated anywhere near as well.

[necronom]

Dodgy printing in some of the last pages of mine - the colours are mis-aligned on maybe 8 pages towards the back.

Mine had some bad printing on a few pages, too. It doesn't normally happen.

Did you get it on the last page (Cho Aniki endgame), and the right-hand half of the Mercenary spread?

It's not on consecutive pages. I'm guessing they print four pages per side onto oversized sheets, which they fold in half, add to a booklet, bind a pile of booklets to make one magazine, then slice off the folds and edges so it looks neat. So then one badly printed sheet ends up affecting a handful of pages spaced a few apart.

Yep, right side of Mercenary (p.99), FF XV (p.102), Games Master advert (p.103), Horace (p.106), Pang (p.107), the cyan was out on p.110-111, then EndGame (p.114).

[Charco]

Still no sign of my copy.

[markopoloman]

Still no sign of my copy.

Have you contacted the subs people?

Email – retrogamer@servicehelpline.co.uk
UK - 033 3777 3362 8am to 8pm Monday to Friday
International - +44 (0) 1795 592 872

[Charco]

Thought I'd leave it til today in the hopes it'd turn up. Will contact them now. Issue 164 is out at this stage.

[William S]

My copy still hasn't turned up either.
I got an email from a subs person today saying they extended my subscription by one issue, instead of replacing the issue that is lost.
When I signed up, the ad said that I was guaranteed replacement issues. Apparently not...
Just ordered my own replacement issue from Imagineshop to be done with it... This has taken way too long...

[Charco]

I had the same problem with issue 159 and was offered to have my subscription extended by one issue. I had to demand a copy to be resent. That's not what I want, I don't want a gap on my bookshelf. This was never a problem under the old ownership. I don't take out yearly subscriptions to have to buy individual issues in the online shop, or have to buy them in my local newsagents. If this is what is suggested to me I will not be renewing my subscription once it expires. I love the magazine, but not that much.

[Antiriad2097]

This was never a problem under the old ownership.

Yes, it was. There are numerous instances in the past on this forum of subscribers having their subs extended as they'd not received an issue.

[Charco]

Not for me, whenever I emailed I was sent a replacement copy, this happened on multiple occasions.

[Antiriad2097]

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13280&p=1016733&hil ... d#p1016733

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=13280&p=877620&hilit=extend#p877620

Just the first couple I found where extensions were added instead of sending a replacement. It happens sometimes, it isn't tied to the change of ownership, it's how they manage stock. Sometimes there just aren't any available for the subs department to reissue.

[Charco]

I am speaking from personal experience! I was never offered an additional issue on my subscription PERSONALLY.

[William S]

I had to demand a copy to be resent

Good to know that they do when asked.
It took almost a week to get the final reply, so I didn't want to wait another week for the next one.
I don't know what the chances are for the issue to sell out in only a month, but I didn't want to risk it.

[romeoteknik]

Add me to the list as well, never received this issue....as of yet. I already sent an email to the team, awaiting their reply.
Maybe it got lost in the mail? In any case, I expect an issue to be delivered regardless of what the problem is.

Clearly if they are selling on their site, they have stock.
https://www.imagineshop.co.uk/magazines/retrogamer.html

Update: They replied and said the issue must've gotten 'astray during transit' and added an extra issue to my sub since they could not "source" a replacement.
I immediately replied back saying that was not acceptable and refuse to have a gap in my issues. Awaiting their reply.

How could they not get replacements when their OWN ONLINE STORE is offering the issue as of today? Issue shows as 'in stock'.

Missing issues are not the fault of the subscriber. If there are issues with the UK and US postal services, then that is something Retrogamer needs to figure out.
Maybe they need to add tracking numbers to international deliveries? Or ship them differently?

[NorthWay]

What is up with distribution for #163? My local newsagent has copies since probably Saturday while I still have nothing in my mailbox.

And it finally arrived today, 3 weeks late. Somebody somewhere needs a good bolloxing for effin up something.