Do you buy game guides? Anyone collect game magazines, or game guides?

[soera]

I have matching guides for almost every PS1 game I own. I also get guides for specific games I really enjoy such as Ni No Kuni.

I also have some magazines. I have the full Turbo Grafx magazine set and Im missing the first issue for the Challenge newsletter set.

Forgot to mention I have the entire released collection so far of the Walmart Gamecenter magazine. 32 issues and counting!

[bikingjahuty]

Yes and yes!


I love collecting them, especially RPG guides since I find them the most useful. I also have a complete set of US Dreamcast Magazines, nearly every Gamepro between 1995 and 2003, and almost every Nintendo Power between 1996 and 2001. I would really like to pick up old Game Informers mags between like 96 and 99 as well one of these days.

[dreama1]

Yes and yes!


I love collecting them, especially RPG guides since I find them the most useful. I also have a complete set of US Dreamcast Magazines, nearly every Gamepro between 1995 and 2003, and almost every Nintendo Power between 1996 and 2001. I would really like to pick up old Game Informers mags between like 96 and 99 as well one of these days.

I wonder if they'll be laughing at us in 15 years as we laugh at those magazines. Do you have any historic magazines about the history of each game and stuff?

[bikingjahuty]

Yes and yes!


I love collecting them, especially RPG guides since I find them the most useful. I also have a complete set of US Dreamcast Magazines, nearly every Gamepro between 1995 and 2003, and almost every Nintendo Power between 1996 and 2001. I would really like to pick up old Game Informers mags between like 96 and 99 as well one of these days.

I wonder if they'll be laughing at us in 15 years as we laugh at those magazines. Do you have any historic magazines about the history of each game and stuff?

What do you mean by 'Historical Magazines?"


I feel like they are all fairly historical in the sense that they are being reviewed as brand new games and not through the retro game lenses they're look at through now. Also it is a real trip seeing all the ads for those games and how they really embody the feel of that time period and the gaming industry as a whole during that time as well. I honestly get more sentimental and nostalgic going through them then I do actually playing the games they're reviewing/advertising. Hopefully that answers your question.

[topspot123]

I have matching guides for almost every PS1 game I own. I also get guides for specific games I really enjoy such as Ni No Kuni.

I also have some magazines. I have the full Turbo Grafx magazine set and Im missing the first issue for the Challenge newsletter set.

Forgot to mention I have the entire released collection so far of the Walmart Gamecenter magazine. 32 issues and counting!

Yes, yes!  I love stuff like that.  Collecting a free promo that many people wouldn't find any value in, but as a collector, you find value in having the series together!  I have only a couple of issues of Gamecenter, but I'll think of you whenever a grab a new one.

[yancakes]

I love ephemera but most places charge a premium for it. If I own a game I will buy a guide if I find it- but I don't want to spend more than a couple of dollars. I almost bought the guide for MtG Battlemage today, because I just bought the game today, but it was 8 dollars... I don't get magazines, though, not unless there's a very specific game on the cover or something. There are so many magazines out there that it's just a rabbit hole I don't want to go down.

[topspot123]

Ok, can't get pics right now but here we go. I have steel shelves in my garage like these:

3 feet wide, five shelves.  The short side is against the wall so I have mags filling every shelf on the front and back like a library stack.

Side one

Top shelf: Three feet plus of game guides, Tips and tricks magazine, and Tips and tricks code books.  Almost half of the guides are official Nintendo Player's guides.  The rest are mostly 'pennied' guides to games I own. 

Second shelf:  Sporadic issues of EGM Magazines starting Sept 92, ending Jan 09 (last issue), Then Spring 2010 (first issue of new run).  Three feet of mags, but not a full run from 1992-2009.

Third shelf:  OXM issues 001-137.  I have every demo disc.  Missing issue zero.  So many of my paid magazine subscriptions were going under at the time that I stopped renewing.  They are still being published.

Forth shelf:  PSM 1-130; Official Playstation Magazine 1-8

Bottom shelf (both sides, plus a partial shelf elsewhere:  Nintendo Power 001-285 (every issue)

Side Two

Top Shelf:  Lots of various mags including Sega Visions, Game Players, Next Gen, Incite, Dreamcast Magazine (I have every demo), Video Game Trader, Video Game Collector, Game Developer.

Second Shelf:  Various issues of GamePro beginning with Jan 93 and ending with Apr 04.

Third Shelf:  Various issues if Game Informer starting Summer 92 and ending with issue 239 (I have more issues that haven't been filed yet).;  Play magazine V6I3 through V9I1

Fourth Shelf:  Various issues of Official U.S. Playstation Magazine from Oct 98 to Jan 07(I also have every demo disc from this magazine); Playstation: The official magazine from Aug 08-Holiday 12

So that's my list of magazines.  It isn't really a growing collection anymore.  I got the greatest percentage of these as a paying subscriber, but I am no longer a subscriber to any of the few magazines still being published.   

[gf78]

Like Bikingjahuty, I love game magazines.  I used to have metric $hit-tons of them, but ended up throwing box after box of them out when they were just sitting out in my garage in the way.  I had an entire run of EGM from 104-the last issue, each year of the Game Buyers Guide and a few extras that were variant covers.  Had every Official Xbox magazine up until the 360 launch including the free promo issue.

Now, I pretty much only collect Game Informer and Walmart Gamecenter on a regular basis.  I have 154-current on Game Informer and a sporadic collection of Gamecenter due to the local Wally World's never having every issue.     I also have various random magazines that I picked up because they had a feature story on a game I was interested in.  I have a pretty long run of Official US PlayStation magazine.

I used to collect the hardcover strategy guides, but they cost so much money I gave up on it for the most part.  I think I only have three strategy guides right now.  Destiny hardcover, Final Fantasy Type-0 hardcover and paperback Indigo Prophecy.  Destiny I bought because I was really psyched for that game.  FF I bought because it was marked down to under 20 bucks.  Indigo Prophecy came with the game from whoever I got the game from.

[kashell]

Do you buy game guides or did you ever buy one in the past for a certain game? And why that game?

Anyone collect game magazines, or guide books? Show your collection.

Magazines? Hell no. Not anymore. I used to enjoy Game Player, Game Fan and Play. These days, I think game magazines are garbage.

Strategy guides are an entirely different story. I love collecting those. You know how some women like flipping through the pages of Cosmopolitan? That's how I feel about strategy guides. As long as I own the game for it, I'll pick it up if the price is right and just browse through it during a lazy day. Recently, I got the strategy guide for Evolution Worlds on the Game Cube. It's a game that doesn't need a guide, but I adore browsing through it, reading all of the hard work that the authors put into it and admiring the pictures.

Some personal favorite strategy guides are for Breath of Fire III, Xenogears, Tales of Destiny II (NA) and Atelier Iris 2.

[gartcat]

I like the old Super Mario All-Stars Nintendo Power related guides, especially the Game Boy & the Super Gameboy one.  Most recently I got the Super Mario Galaxy 2 guide because I didn't feel like finding all the damn green stars on my own & like not having to look at the computer guides.  The only guide I have that I really needed was Metroid Prime, because I never would have found some of that stuff, and even with the guide I still didn't get %100 because I didn't scan everything 

[gartcat]

Do you buy game guides or did you ever buy one in the past for a certain game? And why that game?

Anyone collect game magazines, or guide books? Show your collection.

Magazines? Hell no. Not anymore. I used to enjoy Game Player, Game Fan and Play. These days, I think game magazines are garbage.

I quit collecting magazines the last time I had to move them.  Never again.  The ads are fun though.

[hoshichiri]

Unfortunately, space constraints and lack of local collectors resulted in my throwing out most of my old gaming magazines a couple years ago. Mid 90s to end-of-run sets of Next Gen and Tips & Tricks, plus most of my PSMs. I opted to keep the early PSMs with the cool hand-drawn covers and Game Players (that was a special one for me, long story.) And the Dreamcast official one, because the run was short so it doesn't take much space.

My last purging uncovered my anime magazine stash- nigh complete sets of Newtype USA and Shojo Beat. Unless one of the otaku at work steps up, they will likely suffer the same fate. 

[gf78]

Unfortunately, space constraints and lack of local collectors resulted in my throwing out most of my old gaming magazines a couple years ago. Mid 90s to end-of-run sets of Next Gen and Tips & Tricks, plus most of my PSMs. I opted to keep the early PSMs with the cool hand-drawn covers and Game Players (that was a special one for me, long story.) And the Dreamcast official one, because the run was short so it doesn't take much space.

My last purging uncovered my anime magazine stash- nigh complete sets of Newtype USA and Shojo Beat. Unless one of the otaku at work steps up, they will likely suffer the same fate. 

Ugh...I had a full run of Next Gen magazine as well.  Still remember the final issue where they predicted Xbox would mop the floor with the PS2.  Well, we know how that turned out.

I got so tired of lugging around giant boxes full of magazines that I just pitched them.  EGM 104-last issue plus a few randoms?  Gone.  PSM complete set?  Gone.  Next Gen nearly complete set?  Gone.  Dreamcast magazine and Official Xbox Magazine complete runs?  Gone and gone.  XBM, GamePlayers and several other short-lived magazine series?  Yep...gone.

As for Newtype USA?  I had a huge run of those.  Sold them on eBay.  Glad USPS had flat-rate boxes.  I'm sure the mail carrier was cussin' my ass having to haul four boxes of those things to the winning bidder.  I just couldn't bring myself to pitch them.

[doafan]

I do have ten of them in fact have purchased two more this year, all of them from the Brady Games brand and like 100 from Club Nintendo but the one that was released in Mexico, they started with a pretty good quality but later the standards changed so didn't purchased them anymore.

[bast]

I have buyed some guides

Final fantasy VII
Lego Pirates of the Caribbean
Dino Crisis
Tomb Raider: Last Revelations