Charon121: I still own a collection of issues of my local gaming magazine which stopped existing in the early 2000s. I think it was launched in 1994. It's a good complement to games from GOG as
it offers a glimpse into what people thought about games in the year of their release. It's funny how they praised "realistic graphics", which today looks more like a blurry jumble of pixels than anything photorealistic, but back then it was a cutting-edge engine. The CD that came with the magazine was just about the only source of demos back then, and demos were even more important than views when deciding what games to get next. Nowadays, of course, there's no need for monthly gaming magazines. By the time the next issue hits the newsagent's, the newly released games reviewed in them are old news.
That's why from time to time I dig out my stack of old gaming magazines from the back of my closet :) It's so cool reading about those old games as if they were new. One of my favorites is a PC Format review of Half Life in the list of pros and cons there was only a single entry under cons which read:
"Nadda, zippo, zilch"
Another favorite of mine is a very old preview article about Warcraft 3, from before it was turned into an rts. It actually sounded pretty cool. Can't help but wonder what it would've been like.
Navagon: Most of the good ones are gone. What's left tends to be mostly about the website side of things now (like PC Gamer). It's kind of sad, but I was one of the ones that moved on when the internet became fast enough to be a viable alternative. So I can only blame myself as much as anyone.
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Oh it's definitely sad. It's the end of an awesome era. I used to buy PC Format religiously for some years, and last year they released their final issue over here :(