Retro Gamer - Issue 170

[Crusty Starfish]

Not sure about the cover but a good issue. C64 and StarCraft are the best articles in there this month.

Oh! and I'm in the 'from the forum' section

[flatapex]

46 and 47 look a mess which is a shame because 48 and 49 look a fair amount better (probably exactly as intended)

agreed that nearly every issue there are a couple of pages suffering bad print quality

[deKay]

I'm compelled to complain too. The articles with black backgrounds are unreadable. I don't know what happened with the printing in this issue but I hope it's the last time it occurs. Poor show.

This has come up with readers on rllmuk as well. It looks like the plates have moved or something on the images I've seen, so I'll try and get some information.

Hello!

[Darran@Retro Gamer]

Thanks Dekay. We've already been discussing this and it looks like the magenta plate has slipped. There's still some stuff we can do our end as well so leave it with us.

[deKay]

Anyway. As for the content, there's not a lot of stuff to interest me this month. Mega Drive modem games was good, Dizzy stuff too. I'm not a Final Fantasy fan but I don't mind it being in the magazine.

Keystone Kapers is one of my favourite 2600 games though! Top three are Adventure, Frostbite and then Keystone Kapers.

[RichL]

My issue is perfect - I'm gonna go stick it on eBay now...

£100 starting price...

[Tom_Baker]

Pah..Starglider on the mighty 128K Spectrum beat the lowly ST and Amiga versions.

A rear view, super missiles, power packs and better speech than the ST and all in 128K.

Thunderhawk on Sega CD pushed the system to it's limits did it, hmmnnn......by the bobbles on my scarf it did...

Battlecorps and Soulstar pushed the hardware further.

Still Platoon on C64...

Hmmn...indeed...

Jelly Baby anyone?.

[paranoid marvin]

16 pages is way too much for Final Fantasy in my opinion; in fact 16 pages on any one topic is too much ; minus ads it's about 20% of the mag. As for the rest, yeah there's some good stuff; some obscure stuff, but obsure is good - whenever else would you read about Tronix or Obsidian? Much rather have stuff like this than more well known stuff like PS2 etc.

As for the print, only a couple of pages borderline unreadable, but (as I've said before) white text on blue or black backgrounds isn't pleasant reading. Pretty much the whole Final Fantasy article is black text on white background, which is absolutely fine to read, then we have lots of pages of white text against blue or black backgrounds which can be a real pain to read. I get that you want to make the mag as attractive as possible, but this could still be done with black text on white backgrounds , surrounded by boxouts and other art; the priority has to be that the mag is readable ?

[Muddyfunster]

I can turn a blind eye to the odd printing error when it doesn't spoil my enjoyment of the magazine.

Last month I got a copy with a tear on the cover.

This latest edition has 14 pages affected by blurred or text too dark to read. That's like 10% of the magazine.

I've emailed the support email address noted earlier in this thread twice with no reply, including examples each time.

I guess the easiest thing would be to cancel my subscription and go to a local Smiths for my copy, at least I can check it's undamaged and readable before I buy it.

[Darran@Retro Gamer]

I've emailed the support email address noted earlier in this thread twice with no reply, including examples each time.

Send me an email at darran.jones@futurenet.com and I'll look into this. There's absolutely no reason why your emails aren't being answered, unless they're been posted after Friday's working hours.

[PostieDoc]

Also had issues with some of the pages being unreadable (couldn't make out one word on page 12).

On the plus side I loved the C64 article. I'm not even a C64 guy but the way the article was written and laid out was excellent, I particularly liked the game boxouts.

[The Laird]

Tronix are even more obscure than Bally whatnot from last month - surely if these companies had released anything good we'd have heard of them.

Told you that you'd love it

[walrus]

I think I must have an especially bad issue as I have problems on pages 7,12,36,46,47 and 55. I'll drop an email to subscriptions.

It is a shame that the Obsidian article has come out of this so badly as I was really looking forward to article as I enjoyed that game and its sequel.

[DPrinny]

Its already a censored for us that pay for the downloads of it
the Quality is always all over the place and no legit way to read it on Windows devices without being online

Seeing a modern game on the front cover is wrong on so meany levels, its called "Retro gamer*" at least have one of the classic ones on the cover (not 7/8)
Every month it feels like im reading less and less, ill probably end up cancelling my sub at one point (been buying since the start)

16 pages is way too much for Final Fantasy in my opinion; i

Bloody hell, I know its a long series with an ironic name, but 16 pages of it is overkill

Might as well just make a "Special" mag just for it

[Bub&Bob]

Not withstanding my printing issues can honestly say that this has been the worst ever issue for me.

Echo what everyone has already said about Final Fantasy & Codemasters.

The worst thing though for me is the C64 article. Bearing in mind that I'm a C64 fanboy I found the article almost pointless. Absolutely nothing new, the same old story, the same old games and the same contributors. I get that some new readers might not know about the C64 but honestly, what was the point and why is 35 years even worth marking?

As for the rest of the mag, don't mind obscure stuff but not when the games from that software house are clearly crap - defining games section must have been a laugh.

The only 2 things I bothered to read were Platoon & Ninja Warriors.

The rest I have no interest in and I do accept that's how it goes sometimes but only 2 articles of interest is an all time low.

Dunno if you can consider any of that constructive but it's the way I feel about 170.

I will certainly consider my future subscription if the paper quality doesn't improve, I feel that there's too much recycled content and if less and less articles appeal to me