Many gamers of a certain age will no doubt recall those halcyon days when the only way to really get your fix of gaming news, was to await the monthly publication of your favourite magazine. The internet of the early '90s was far removed from the internet of present year, and as such watching video of new releases or flipping through hi-resolution images direct from developer on social media wasn't something you could do. Indeed, most of my early memories of using the internet to find out about new game releases involve sneaking into the school IT suite at lunchtimes to employ Alta Vista in my insatiable quest for knowledge. Oh, and using Game Sages to get cheats. Does anyone else remember Game Sages or am I just making that website up?
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| Kids these days will never know the anticipation of that illuminated N *shakes fist at cloud* |
Yes, back in the day, the magazine was king and it was through reading those printed materials that I took an interest in pursuing games journalism as a profession. Nowadays, I'm actually quite glad that I am not a professional games journalist, such is the the way online discourse has morphed, but for a period back in the late '90s and early 2000s it was all I wanted to do with my life. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in that ambition either.
Magazines of that period, and more to the point - the people who created them, were our heroes. They were the influencers of their day. Gus Swan, Marcus Hawkins, Caspar Field, Les Ellis, Jaz Rignall, Radion Automatic, Zy Nicholson, Wil Overton, Paul Davies, Keith Stuart, Simon Phillips, Ed Lomas, Tim Weaver, Mean Yob...just a few of the names I can instantly rattle off as an avid reader of a plethora of UK magazines from the 90s and 2000s. And I'm sure those in other parts of the world, and of a certain age can name the authors of their favourite magazines too.
The point I'm trying to make is that magazines were a huge part of many gamers' formative years, and the popularity of podcast Maximum Power Up's superb series of interviews with journos of yesteryear proves this. Furthermore, one website which encapsulates the magic of print media and preserving those memories is the excellent Out of Print Archive. A repository for digitised copies of print magazines of a bygone era, the Out of Print Archive has cemented itself as one of the premier online destinations for anyone who is looking to re-read those magical tomes of their childhood and take a walk down memory lane.
For this reason, we thought it would be pretty cool to speak to the people behind Out of Print Archive, ask them where the inspiration for the site came from, their digitisation process for various Dreamcast-related (and other format) magazines, and to find out what makes them - and the Archive itself - tick. Enjoy...
DCJY: Thanks so much for agreeing to speak to us about all things magazines! Could you tell us a bit about who you are, and what your roles are at Out of Print Archive?
Andy: Hello, my name is Andy (meppi64), I’m from Belgium and I’m working my way through scanning all my UK magazines, editing and restoring them. I also do all the coding and design work on the website itself and I run the Twitter account.
Neil: Hi, I'm Neil, I'm from the United Kingdom (Scotland) and I am one of the admins at Out of Print Archive. One of my initial roles when starting the project was to reach out to the UK publishers in an effort to obtain permission (officially and unofficially) to archive their back catalogue of gaming magazines.
This allowed us to archive classic video gaming magazines without the nagging feeling that a publisher might come along with a cease and desist order. I have also written the odd article on classic magazines and have caught up with a few important people from the magazines in questions for an interview or input for a feature.
What’s the origin story of the Out of Print Archive? When and why did you decide to set up the site?
Neil: I have always been a fan of classic gaming magazines which lead me to create my own digital retro gaming magazine called Retroaction in 2008. After the release of the first issue, Carl, a fellow retro gaming magazine fan commented on how the ‘zine reminded him of the classic magazine GameFan, particularly its design and layout.
He asked if he could post the news of the release with a small write up on the retro gaming forums where he was one of the admins along with Andy. This in turn introduced me to the world of magazine archiving and to Andy and his fantastic method of archiving Official Sega Saturn Magazine. I knew then that I wanted my own magazines to be archived in a similar way.
By 2009, we felt we needed to start our own archiving project. One that was totally transparent: free from ads, donations, or any other hindrance. Our main reason for this was to follow on from one of our main goals, in that to reach out to the publishers from yesteryear and get their permission to archive their back catalogue of magazines.
Andy: Originally I came across just 3 digital scans of the Official Sega Saturn magazine online, this must have been somewhere around 2004-2005. No matter how hard I looked, I couldn’t find any more. Reading through these made me remember just how incredible this magazine was and how it was seemingly lost to time, hardly 6 years after the final issue was released.
So this set things in motion for me. I started the hunt down a complete set, with the goal to scan them (in a rather poor fashion at that time) and looking for various ways to get them into peoples hands again. From here, it snowballed into collecting a lot more magazines.
I met Neil as well as Carl, who has since moved on to other projects, on a message board and after a lot of trial and error, as well as seeing how several scanning projects handled things in ways we didn’t agree with, we decided to set up our own site. Focussing on putting quality above everything else, but also doing things with respect towards not just the publishers, but also the editors, writers, designers, etc.
Basically all the people who originally created these magazines we all fell in love with at one point of our lives.
Wow, so we effectively owe the creation of the Out of Print Archive in some way to the Official Sega Saturn Magazine. Not what I was expecting! You clearly have a love of print media - what are your earliest memories of print magazines?
Andy: My earliest memories of a print magazine has to be Club Nintendo. Not quite sure how I found out about it, but I believe there was some kind of postcard included with certain NES games, which you could send in to Nintendo to request a subscription. Once you were signed up, every 2 months you would receive a free copy of Club Nintendo magazine, which lasted from 1989 to 1993.
Neil: My earliest memory of print magazine is picking up C+VG in 1988. I was fairly late to notice magazines, considering I had been playing games for at least three years up until that point, but C+VG opened my eyes to the wonders that were out there. I eventually reserved a copy of C+VG and continued to receive a copy of it until the early 2000s. My other earliest memory is of grabbing a copy of Amstrad Action in 1989. It was an anniversary issue where they gave away a cover-mounted cassette tape with demos and freeware stuff. This issue also reviewed one of my favourite computer games of all time, Laser Squad.
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| Bernie delivering the Dreamcast keynote at GDC 1999 |
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| Early Dreamcast concept designs |
Last month, the Junkyard office was abuzz with excitement when we caught wind of the news that Fragmented Almanac, a compilation of two eerie narrative-based puzzle games, was soon due to be released by fledgling indie studio ANTIRUINS on our beloved Sega Dreamcast. Alas, we don't actually have an office (yet), but the flurry of activity on our Discord and WhatsApp channels did a commendable job of emulating an exuberant water cooler experience nonetheless.
The duo of games contained within the Fragmented Almanac wrapper, The Hideout and Summoning Signals, have been in gestation for many years now, and whenever we had the opportunity to sample the work-in-development, our appetites for more only grew. At times it looked like the projects were sadly destined to join the extensive list of cancelled Dreamcast games, and so it was particularly sweet to hear that they are in fact now complete, and due for both physical and digital release in March of 2024.
Of course, after a lengthy session ogling the artsy ANTIRUINS website, I only wanted to learn more. Fortunately, lead developer Roby Provost has been kind enough to spill the beans in the following interview that covers everything from the conceptual foundations of Fragmented Almanac, down to the nuts and bolts of the game's printing and distribution. To put the cherry on top, Roby also provided us with a new teaser trailer that we are delighted to reveal for the first time here on the Junkyard.
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DCJY: Thanks for taking the time to speak with us Roby. To kick things off, can you tell us what players should expect from The Hideout and Summoning Signals, the two games that are being released together as Fragmented Almanac?
Roby: They are quite unique games. They're not shmups, that's for sure! I honestly think that Fragmented Almanac might be one of the most polished indie Dreamcast releases we've seen so far. As I tried to explain on our website, it is at the intersection of video game, art and alchemy. It's a game that makes you dream, or at the very least, makes you think. We wanted to make a project that lingers in the back of your mind, trying to decode the meaning of "scroll". The whole release is designed like a puzzle: full of secrets, truths and symbols.
This being said, they are not long games. We wished we could have made the full version of Reaperi Cycle, a game which The Hideout was initially a demo of, but it was way too ambitious - especially when we first started back in 2016. Still, we think that people who enjoy strange, narrative-driven games with some puzzles will enjoy Fragmented Almanac. It's definitely a unique proposition, as games like Seaman or Seventh Cross Evolution were. Of course, I really think Seventh Cross Evolution could have been way better. Maybe we'll have to make Eighth Cross Evolution one day 😉.
And if you had to categorise them by genre, would it be fair to say they are "point-and-click" adventures, or is that too restrictive?
I honestly struggle to find the proper term for these games! You don't even click to move around, so perhaps it's more like a cursor adventure? But even that doesn't have a great ring to it. Maybe they are puzzle games? Strange, narrative-based puzzle games?
Whatever they are, they have a distinctive eerie and mysterious style. What is the inspiration behind that?
I think eerie and mysterious is just in our DNA! More seriously, most of the inspiration for our games is drawn either from ideas of the past, or visions of the future - and in particular, things that have been forgotten or that are not bound to happen. The concept of the almanac, a book or document that predicts the time, felt like a great starting point. It's interesting to think about what motivated the creation of almanacs. Were their authors trying to create a system to anticipate the future? Were they trying to provide a guide, a sense of security? Some almanacs are based on the words of religious texts while others get their predictions from the stars. It was interesting to research the many forms that almanacs take, both visually and in the information we provide.
For us, the Almanac is used to somewhat guide and inform the player. As you play the game, you'll unlock fragments and access more lore and art from the game. Muet (Simon Chiasson Greffard), one of our team members, is the one who infused The Hideout with most of its alchemical philosophies. We dug deep within alchemical imagery and symbols and tried to craft something out of it.
In the dog days of the Dreamcast's reign, it became somewhat obvious and inevitable that Sega would take many of its most beloved franchises and port them to other systems. The pivot into becoming a major third party publisher was pretty much written in the stars, and Sega had the catalogue to pull off such a previously unthinkable task. The Sega of 2001 had a glittering array of first party gems that were screaming out to be unleashed onto the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Gamecube (and beyond), and nobody can deny that those first few years after the Dreamcast bit the dust were truly epic for Sega, as it left the hardware business and forged ahead as a major publisher.
"Sega is a company that has always dared to innovate and push this industry forward. Sega will continue to do so with its new strategy, and the result for consumers will be what you would always expect from a 'rules-breaker' like Sega - a library of pioneering, jaw-dropping content now available any way you want to play."
- Peter Moore speaking to IGN, February 2001
As well as arcade ports and first party games that were originally destined for the little white box, Sega took many of the Dreamcast's most iconic titles and either ported them to other platforms in-house, or farmed out responsibility to third parties. For the most part, this worked out pretty well for Sega and the games that made the leap often ended up having extra features imbued upon them. Sonic Adventure and its sequel, Skies of Arcadia, Ferrari F355, Crazy Taxi, Sega GT, Shenmue II, Rez, The House of the Dead, Space Channel 5...the list reads like a veritable smorgasbord of 'triple A' (Jim Sterling voice optional) experiences and franchises. Of course, this could also be said of the myriad third party releases that debuted on the Dreamcast; with esteemed titles such as Dead or Alive 2, Soul Calibur, MDK2, Headhunter and Resident Evil Code: Veronica all being ported. In the case of the latter, ported to death...which is ironic.
What I'm getting at is this - if you were a Dreamcast owner when the power cord was pulled from the console on that fateful day back in early 2001, you could quite easily have gone and bought a competing platform from any of the other major manufacturers and continued the Dreamcast party like it was 1999 (or 1998 if you were, y'know, in Japan). But what about the Dreamcast titles not only from Sega, but from third parties, that never made the leap from the sinking ship like so many digital rats? The titles that still to this day have never been ported to alternative platforms and can still only really be played on a Dreamcast, or an emulated Dreamcast, at the very least? Let's take a little look at 10 titles (in no particular order) that are effectively trapped on the Dreamcast, and never left for pastures new...
1. Seventh Cross: Evolution
We covered this little oddity a while back here at the Junkyard, so if you'd like to read a more in-depth analysis please feel free to check it out here. For brevity though, Seventh Cross is a game quite unlike anything else on the Dreamcast, in that you begin the game as a helpless organism that must adapt to survive the harsh alien landscape it is born into.
From slopping about in a primordial pool trying not to become lunch for other lifeforms, to escaping the aquatic cradle and embracing a more land-lubber-esque (yep, just made that term up) approach to this crazy little thing called life, Seventh Cross is a truly bizarre experience. The game was localised in English but never received a PAL release, and it's not really very difficult to see why. I can't imagine many people would have been champing at the bit to give this a go during the early years of the Dreamcast's life when stuff like Pen Pen TriIcelon was vying for attention on store shelves. Um.
2. Gundam Side Story 0079: Rise from the Ashes
The Dreamcast isn't lacking when it comes to games featuring mechs head butting each other after spilling each other's pints, and Gundam Side Story is one of the better 'simulation' style offerings. Unlike the arcade brawlers like Tech Romancer, and the battle arena shenanigans of Virtual On and Frame Gride (see below), Gundam Side Story allows the player to slip inside the cockpit of a building-sized mech and take part in a first person tactical battle against enemy units on sprawling maps.
Cast your mind back to stuff like Iron Soldier on the Atari Jaguar, but add vastly superior graphics and a really quite engaging storyline and you're on the right track. While Gundam Side Story may look like a pretty basic military shooter, there's a huge amount of tactical play involved, and giving orders to your fellow mechs on the battlefield is an integral part of proceedings. Add to the mix a healthy dose of ranged combat and hand-to-hand mech fisticuffs and this is about as close to Pacific Rim as you can get on Dreamcast. Sort of.
3. Armada
Armada is a game that's quite difficult to categorise. In some ways it's an arcade shoot 'em up, in other ways it's almost an RPG, while in others it could be classed as a multiplayer couch co-op experience. Either way, it is an intriguing title that never experienced much in the way of success due to the fact that it was only released in the United States. A PAL release was scheduled and cancelled, as was the planned sequel. We have looked at Armada briefly in the past, check out our article featuring it here.
Essentially a top down space opera style adventure, in Armada you spend your time traversing the vast distances of the cosmos, plotting courses with co-ordinates and battling marauding alien fleets on the way. You can hire allies to help you fight off the alien threats you encounter throughout your journey and the game is playable by up to four people on one Dreamcast. It's almost like a couch co-op forerunner to stuff like Helldivers, where having some human comrades to assist you will make the game much more manageable (and enjoyable). It's also worth mentioning that Armada was originally conceived as an online multiplayer experience, but that option appears to have been removed during development. Still, it's an interesting and ambitious title that could have been way more popular had it been released with an online component as originally intended.
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| The hallmark of Exeter's finest export |
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| Yep - LJN returned from the grave for one last troll on the Dreamcast |
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| Aw, what the hell, I don't got that long a lifespan anyway... |
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| It's surprisingly difficult to find photographic evidence of a glorious Japanese Saturn and Dreamcast retail display from the late '90s (or maybe my google-fu is lacking) |
