/vr/ - Retro Games

>>9140502

They don’t even do that now

>>9140502
Those that stayed employed at gaming publications for more than three reviews at least played for more than 5 minutes before giving up without clearing the tutorial back then.

>>9140502
game journalists were always shills but they probably better at games back in the 90s

Most of the reviews were shallow, but I was kind of impressed by sandy peterson writing, it was too good for game magazines, he took this kind of thing seriously unlike everyone else

>>9140581
what did Sandy write for, a particular game mag? Didn't know he was in the industry beyond doomin

Depends on the magazine, game and reviewer, but I believe a lot did. If you check late 80's,early 90's (up to gen5) magazines, you will constantly see things such as "lastivity score" which means "how hard is the game, how long will it take you to beat it". Back then the harder the game, the better was seen, at least in the west.
With this kind of mentality coming both from devs and players, the reviewers had to be decent players at least. The question however remains, did they have time to beat the game before moving on to another one, and that's a different story.

>>9140502
I know they didn't

>>9140502
God no. They were literally just boomers doing paid advertisements. Publishers would send out reps to treat the writers to a paid night out if they wanted an extra good piece.

>>9140502
No.

>>9140528
this implies that people today have higher standards

Im willing to bet that there was a lot of game genie use.

>>9141668
There's no way it was otherwise. Tons of old games require massive amounts of time and practice to beat.

>>9141383
> mr gimmick
> difficulty that's geared towards wee sprites
haaaaaa. god that makes me irrationally angry. just throwing your god damn star consistantly properly is a god damn kaizo level

>>9141668
Didn't a lot of review copies usually come with some sort of debug mode anyways? With things like freeze frame (for magazine screenshots), invincibility, stage select, etc.

>>9140502
More likely than modern reviewers that work for any establishment type publication.

>>9142368
Never heard of anything like that existing. The Freeze Frame stuff was special Camera's and more specifically special contraptions for camera's to take pictures of CRT images with.

>>9140502
In the 1990s they did.

>>9141383
This has to be British.

>>9141017
I could see reviewers in the 90s making tactical judgement-call usage of cheat codes and devices in their reviews in order to get through the game before a deadline.

Dunno about amerilards, but our game reviewers were serious players. Now you just have to be a troon to review games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Rignall

>>9140502
Game reviewers back in the day were real players who knew how to play first and learned how to write after. The magazines employed literal children to try the games.

I can't speak for other publications, but always trusted the PC Powerplay fellas to give me the real scoop.

>>9142368

If this existed i think theyd be circulating as ROM dumps??

I can tell you from experience the big games yes, they did play to completion, but those little quarter page reviews for random licensed games? Played for thirty minutes in the office

>>9140502
The ones that wrote the walkthroughs for egm/gp/etc. did

>>9142368
Put simply, no

>>9142468
The opposite is true really, old school game magazine writers often came from other hobby mags and went to others after, typically having an interest in games was a requirement but it’s not like they were all “gamers” and this was a dream come true, they’d move on to a fishing magazine when the Nintendo mag folded, I doubt the people employed by modern game websites are like this, they all seem to only have gaming and mainstream media as their only interests

>>9142368
No.
But reviewers were told the cheat codes to enable these things sometimes.

>>9143036
>reviewers were told the cheat codes
This plus long lead times of print media meant that reviewers often played games while still in development.
Those experiences plus press kit info was enough to write a decent review.

>>9142368
No. I's like to say someone lied to you, but that's just some bullshit fantasy you pulled out of your ass.

Imagine thinking game reviewers have ever been anything other than hack journos writing paid ads

We literally didn't start getting honest game reviews until YouTube became a thing (and that only lasted a couple years before the exact same thing happened there.).

>>9144131
>Imagine thinking any journos have ever been anything other than hack journos writing paid ads

>>9140502
the push to modernise speedrunning is an attempt to appease modern gayming journalists so that their prime focus is on gameplay instead of everything else that actually makes the games good.

>>9140502
when i reviewed games i only played them for about 2 hours, if games aren't fun immediately they're bad games.

>>9140502
Yes. Debug builds were often sent to journos as review copies in the 80's and 90's.

>>9140502
Any of you guys think that a SNES with two controllers, Megaman X, LTTP, SF2 turbo, and UN squadron is a good buy for 150 CAD?