Retro Gamer Bows Off, Hops Back Up Again
January 8, 2006 6:37 AM | Simon Carless
Eagle-eyed GSW readers may recall that the UK magazine Retro Gamer, which gloried in classic gaming shenanigans and "included interviews with leading 1980s programmers including Matthew Smith and Archer Maclean", closed down later last year after Live Publishing sadly went bankrupt.
However, what the less observant (especially outside the UK, such as yours truly) may have missed is that Retro Gamer was bought by Imagine Publishing, a small UK magazine publisher set up in 2005, and Retro Gamer has already relaunched, with the second new issue available this month, featuring a big Rare feature, a look at the 'underrated' Neo Geo Pocket, an in-depth analysis of Technos Japan (!), and a round-up of the best Game Boy Advance platformers. [EDIT: And here's a brief sample of the first Imagine issue, thanks to commenter 'Serious Ham' for the correction.] There's also a new forum for the magazine, which is monthly - you could often find issues of the old Retro Game in specialty bookstores like Barnes & Noble in the States, so hopefully the same is true for the new breed.
Oh, and as for the articles for the issues between the magazine going bankrupt and getting picked up again? They were compiled for Retro Survival, a special one-off "that contains the missing features from the ill-fated Issue 19 of Retro Gamer, which never made it to print. This includes all of your favourite articles, along with entirely new content, plus a specially written foreword by everyone's favourite Teletext talking head, Mr Biffo." Yay, Mr. Biffo!
Categories: Retro
4 Comments
Lovely magazine, in many ways better now than when Live published it.
Btw, a small nitpick, the issue with the Rare-feature isn't the first of the Imagine-published issues, it's the second. The first of them is issue 19, and the cover feature is a comprehensive look at the Sinclair Spectrum.
Serious Ham | January 8, 2006 1:23 PM
Sorry for double-posting, but I just noticed that the Retro Gamer site doesn't actually list the Imagine-published issue 19 right now, but you can get a sample of it here: http://www.retrogamer.net/sample.html
Serious Ham | January 8, 2006 1:26 PM
now you believe me, eh? :D
brandon s | January 8, 2006 10:46 PM
Retro Gamer was a great magazine the first time around, am I'm looking forward to getting this. We would indeed get them at Barnes and Noble in the States, with a lag of about 2 months from their initial publication in the UK.
Katrus | January 9, 2006 3:48 AM