Renault on 29/6/2016 at 13:58
One thing though, even through I realize it's not as good as "free," magazines are still pretty cheap for a subscription, mostly because they want you to subscribe to up their circulation numbers for advertising. And there is something nice about a actual product in your hand that doesn't need power to function. I get PC Gamer, Men's Health, Men's Journal, The Week - all good bathroom material. But with something like PC Gamer, I do find a lot of the stuff I read there I've already seen elsewhere on the web by the time I get to it.
I'll have to check out Retro Gamer.
scumble on 29/6/2016 at 14:21
I think the most satisfying magazines may be ones that contain deeper features and not just news. Like National Geographic for example. The Internet has made print a bit redundant for news in general unless you prefer actual paper.
icemann on 29/6/2016 at 16:19
Well to speak on Retro Gamer again. In the case with that one, they get their journalists to do vast research on the games in question, often track down the original developers and do Q&A's and often reveal info unavailable elsewhere in great detail.
Highlights in my time reading it:
* Doom issue with John Romero acting as a guest journalist for the mag. So you not only get him talking about Doom, Wolfenstein and Quake, but also get his thoughts on non ID Software stuff.
* The collectors corner issues of the mag that had complete guides on a specific console with lists given of all of the games released for it + their rarity in todays Ebay market.
* One of the early issues which covered how to restore an 80s/90s arcade cabinet back to it's former glory.
* Interview with the makers of Shadowrun on the SNES where a secret in the game was revealed that had never been discovered up to that point (access to a developers room within it).
That's going into specifics, but for me, it's the magazines that go that extra mile and show their passion for what their magazine is about that stand out and worthy of my attention.
Renault on 29/6/2016 at 22:00
OK, well forget what I said about magazines subs being cheap. It's over $100 to get a year of Retro Gamer if you live in the U.S. I think I'm better off just looking for it at a local Barnes and Noble.
dj_ivocha on 29/6/2016 at 22:23
I don't have a subscription, mostly because of the cost (which is fair actually, but I'm on an austerity package currently), but I like to read (
http://www.ct.de/) c't Magazin. It has some news, which is actually mostly news to me, but the most value I get from it is from the editorials and feature articles.
For example in each issue there is an article called "Vorsicht, Kunde!" (Heads up, customer!), where they investigate reports by readers about various companies with anti-consumer practices. Quite often the various Telcos (O2, Deutsche Telekom, etc.), Ebay or PayPal are featured, where the company has made some error and disconnected a customer's internet, or debited more than they were owed and so on. The customer then tries to fix that via the usual channels, but without success, even after many months or a year, and then writes to c't. They investigate the his claim and if they turn out to be true (which they always do), they get in contact with the company in question to get a comment. This is usually enough to get the gears working again and the problem gets fixed in days.
They also write reviews about various appliances (TVs, notebooks, IoT stuff, phones, etc.) and most of the time they test several different models and compare them to each other.
There are often articles about various current topics, where they investigate something and then present the results. In the latest issue they wrote about several different internet connected alarm systems and how they are often incredibly easy to find with port scanners and other shady tools, then it's equally easy to log in and take control, due to standardized factory default credentials ("user"/"password1234" or "admin"/"admin1234"). A couple of years ago they demonstrated a proof of concept to hacking chip cards used for payment in student canteens and other venues. Another time they "decrypted" some other chip card by grinding down the chip cover and then the underlying silicone layers, while photographing each one with an electron microscope. In the end the got the complete schematics of the chip that way and showed that it's not nearly as secure as advertised. It's always interesting, though, because they also describe the process step by step, before presenting the final results.
It's my favourite magazine by far. If you can read German I'd suggest grabbing an issue and giving it a try. Or Dutch or Russian, because apparently it's also published in the Netherlands and Russia nowadays, though I can't vouch for the quality of those issues, since they are separate from the German one.
