Members SuperBacon Posted June 1 Author Members Posted June 1 Treated myself the other day. Bang up for the World Cup now* the World Soccer issue is superb and just brilliantly in depth. Buy it! *I'm not, I can't be arsed with it, maybe I'll just read magazines about it (a lie, I'll watch it all!) Quote
NeverYield Posted June 1 Posted June 1 52 minutes ago, SuperBacon said: Treated myself the other day. Bang up for the World Cup now* the World Soccer issue is superb and just brilliantly in depth. Buy it! *I'm not, I can't be arsed with it, maybe I'll just read magazines about it (a lie, I'll watch it all!) Yeah I might pick this up. Also had a rather sudden urge to do the World Cup sticker book 🤣 Quote
MVP RULZ Posted June 1 Posted June 1 2 hours ago, SuperBacon said: Treated myself the other day. Bang up for the World Cup now* the World Soccer issue is superb and just brilliantly in depth. Buy it! *I'm not, I can't be arsed with it, maybe I'll just read magazines about it (a lie, I'll watch it all!) I've got the World Soccer one and the Four Four Two one so far Might have to pick up WSC as well World Soccer is the wallchart that will be going up though 1 hour ago, NeverYield said: Yeah I might pick this up. Also had a rather sudden urge to do the World Cup sticker book 🤣 I've got about 200 stickers so far 😂, hard to get the damn things though always sell out quickly when we get them in at work, be it the multipack of 6 packs or the tins of packs, we don't sell them just singularly Was in Town the other day at T.G Jo... nah it always will be WH Smith to me and they had sold out, Kids stuff across from it had a stand in the doorway so managed to get a multipack and of the 3 people queuing in front of me 2 of them had stickers and nothing else One a man who was at least mid 50s with a tin and another man more early 20s with a multipack. Given the price of them these days it's definitely 75% adults that are collecting them My daughter also asked me a few hours ago whilst she poured a glass why the label of the coke zero bottle was all ripped. I showed her the Josko Gvardiol sticker that was hidden behind the label (one of 12 special stickers only found on coke bottles) and she wasn't as thrilled as I was to say the least Quote
RIDDUM_N_STYLE Posted June 1 Posted June 1 Was tempted to get the 442 World Cup issue at the weekend, will probably end up caving and buying it this weekend when I go and see the MOTU movie Finally cracked open the sticker book, only had the 6 that were in there to stick plus the Gvardiol one from the Coke bottles, nice touch of marketing from Lynx as well putting both a scratch and sniff card as well as a sticker of a can to put in the ad later in the book. Been trying to get one of the tins or multipack boxes but Amazon have like a 3/4 week delivery window on them and none in the shops, and since when was it £1.25 for a singular pack? They always used to be 30-50p when I was younger Quote
Paid Members Thunderplex Posted June 2 Paid Members Posted June 2 Bought my first mag for years today. Wargaming Illustrated. Came with a free sprue of Gladiators and a rule set to play them with. I may grow up one day…. Quote
HandsomeButchIII Posted June 2 Posted June 2 I used to get Wisden Cricket Monthly, 442, When Saturday Comes when it was a thing, and Rugby World. I fucked them all off and just get the Viz now. And I've only been getting that for 25 years as my mam just pays for an annual subscription as a xmas present. Then a sibling buys me a Viz annual every xmas anyway. SO it pretty much defeats the point. But I like it, it's nice and tradition. I'd also buy an Escort or a Club, or anything else belonging to Paul Raymond from the garage occasionally, but the internet put paid to that. Quote
Paid Members Accident Prone Posted June 2 Paid Members Posted June 2 I used to buy the occasional Retro Gamer subscription whenever there was an offer on. The last batch I bought though weren't too impressive, it seems they've replaced the lovely thick paper that could springboard a medium-sized cockroach with this thin shite paper that just hangs lethargically as you're trying to read it. No thick spine holding it altogether either. It makes for an unpleasant reading experience where I'm gripping the magazine in half with all the respect of a TV Times. I can understand the cost-cutting of all that if the content was good, but it's taken a bit of a nose dive. Everything is all "Gosh, wasn't all gaming back in the day absolutely fucking lovely?!", no matter what the subject matter. It almost reads off as a Wiki article or advert, at times even coming across as like a CV for whoever is being featured in the article. Maybe I'm misremembering, but there used to be a time when they'd go "This was a good game made by Developer Studios, but then they made this fucking atrocity, lets dig into why...". Now they tend to gloss over the warts, but its the warts that made the hobby what it is. The (retro) games gone. Quote
NeverYield Posted June 2 Posted June 2 10 hours ago, MVP RULZ said: I've got about 200 stickers so far 😂, hard to get the damn things though always sell out quickly when we get them in at work, be it the multipack of 6 packs or the tins of packs, we don't sell them just singularly Was in Town the other day at T.G Jo... nah it always will be WH Smith to me and they had sold out, Kids stuff across from it had a stand in the doorway so managed to get a multipack and of the 3 people queuing in front of me 2 of them had stickers and nothing else One a man who was at least mid 50s with a tin and another man more early 20s with a multipack. Given the price of them these days it's definitely 75% adults that are collecting them My daughter also asked me a few hours ago whilst she poured a glass why the label of the coke zero bottle was all ripped. I showed her the Josko Gvardiol sticker that was hidden behind the label (one of 12 special stickers only found on coke bottles) and she wasn't as thrilled as I was to say the least Yeah I can imagine they're pretty hard to come by 🤣It will always be WH Smith to me too, nothing else sounds right.. It's rained pretty heavily this morning so no work so I'm gonna go and have a mooch about and see what I can find, and nice one I didnt know that about the coke zero bottle, and that sound's about right my daughter would have been the same 🤣 Quote
Members SuperBacon Posted June 2 Author Members Posted June 2 6 hours ago, HandsomeButchIII said: When Saturday Comes when it was a thing, It still is, I posted it on this very page Its still the best football read around. Quote
Fog Dude Posted June 2 Posted June 2 14 hours ago, Accident Prone said: I used to buy the occasional Retro Gamer subscription whenever there was an offer on. The last batch I bought though weren't too impressive, it seems they've replaced the lovely thick paper that could springboard a medium-sized cockroach with this thin shite paper that just hangs lethargically as you're trying to read it. No thick spine holding it altogether either. It makes for an unpleasant reading experience where I'm gripping the magazine in half with all the respect of a TV Times. I can understand the cost-cutting of all that if the content was good, but it's taken a bit of a nose dive. Everything is all "Gosh, wasn't all gaming back in the day absolutely fucking lovely?!", no matter what the subject matter. It almost reads off as a Wiki article or advert, at times even coming across as like a CV for whoever is being featured in the article. Maybe I'm misremembering, but there used to be a time when they'd go "This was a good game made by Developer Studios, but then they made this fucking atrocity, lets dig into why...". Now they tend to gloss over the warts, but its the warts that made the hobby what it is. The (retro) games gone. Agree about the lower quality of the physical material and the overly positive tone. Last month they had the Zelda 40th anniversary on the cover despite zero new relevant interviews or access to people involved in making any of those games, which felt like breaking one of their golden rules just to shift a few more copies. What's worse is those short articles they call Retro Revival, basically one big screenshot of a random game then a few paragraphs about it off to the side. The text used to be informative, but they've started taking the piss. Recent issues have seen reminiscences about growing up in the north of Ireland during the Troubles in what was meant to be a lookback at Gain Ground for the Mega Drive, an anecdote about losing a phone, glasses and wallet on a night out in London instead of enlightening readers about an obscure GBA title, and the editor himself admitting he hasn't actually tried multiplayer on Dr Mario 64 yet but has heard it's good. The first two would be fine as an aside in a big ten-page retrospective, but not when you've only got less than half a page to play with. It could just be the case that they exhausted most of the old games I either remember or would've been interested in a decade ago already. Frighteningly, the feature which began as Back to the Nineties has now reached the 2010s and I don't like to be reminded how ancient we all are these days. Quote
Paid Members Accident Prone Posted June 3 Paid Members Posted June 3 I do think that they've exhausted the pot when it comes to covering new ground, but I mean that in terms of "new ground that will sell". As you mentioned above, that feature where they just have the double-page spread of a screenshot with a little paragraph, those usually focus on a niche or obscure title, but can you imagine a 3-4 page examination of that title instead? It won't shift copies when slapped on the front page but it will keep the core readership engaged. One that sticks out is an All Japan game on the Sega Saturn that featured Wolf and Jeffrey from Virtua Fighter, it just had the double-page+little paragraph set-up, and I just wanted to know more about this game that even I as a crusty wrestling fan had little to no idea about. A few pages on the development of that title, its ups and downs, its predecessors and follow-ups, a modern day analysis, a mix of all or even one of the above, but nope we've got to crack on and heap praise on Chip & Dale Racing on the GameBoy because the developer is shopping around his new studio. Quote
Daaaaaad! Posted June 3 Posted June 3 On 6/2/2026 at 9:51 AM, SuperBacon said: It still is, I posted it on this very page Its still the best football read around. I will second this. I subscribed to the magazine just over two years ago, purely because there was an offer in the Euro 2024 Wallchart issue. I always wanted to have a magazine subscription when I was a kid and was picking up Shoot, Match or GamesMaster, but my Dad wouldn't let me, so I decided to do that adult thing you can do these days when you realise you actually have money that belongs to you and you're not behoven to anyone else's requirements. There's something just very comforting about having that bit of paper in your hands, reading about clubs you don't know much about and would never have discovered without it. I also really like that there is very little 'top 6 Premier League' coverage - there's enough other media around that only focuses on that. Plus their World Cup Wallchart is portrait instead of landscape and it means I can stick it up on my door at work instead of having to find some wide open space on a wall to place it, so it's the best one. Quote
Members SuperBacon Posted June 3 Author Members Posted June 3 @Daaaaaad! its the breadth of writing that does it for me. I once emailed the editor and pitched him an idea about how rap music/lyrics and football are, and have been for a while, intrinsically linked and have helped young people access the sport, and he wanted it, but like everything I commit to, I quickly couldn't be arsed. Quote
Paid Members Weezenal Posted June 3 Paid Members Posted June 3 On 6/1/2026 at 7:30 PM, SuperBacon said: Treated myself the other day. Bang up for the World Cup now* the World Soccer issue is superb and just brilliantly in depth. Buy it! *I'm not, I can't be arsed with it, maybe I'll just read magazines about it (a lie, I'll watch it all!) Does World Soccer have a wall chart? Quote
Members SuperBacon Posted June 3 Author Members Posted June 3 Just now, Weezenal said: Does World Soccer have a wall chart? Yes. Quote
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