Last month Retro Gamer magazine teased the return of a classic ‘90s gaming mag. Making good on their word, the latest issue – #172 – comes packaged with a 52-page Super Play tribute magazine.
Super Play is regarded as one of the finest Nintendo magazines of its era, mostly due to its focus on import gaming and love of JRPGs. Indeed, it has been attributed to introducing a whole new audience to the genre, daring to put the likes of Final Fantasy III, Secret of Mana 2 and Chrono Trigger on its cover. This was during a time where most publications relied on over-hyped licensed games and movie tie-ins to fly off newsstands.
Retro Gamer’s one off special brings the original Super Play team back together, complete with a cover illustration from Wil Overton. The SNES Classic Mini is the focus, with Star Fox 2 being the cover game. The long-lost SFX shooter gets the preview treatment (no review, sadly – blame NDAs), along with a developer interview.
The remaining SNES Classic Mini games are all reviewed in full, with those only found on the Super Famicom Mini appearing in the Import Reviews section.
Even by simply flicking through the pages it’s easy to tell that an incredible amount of thought and effort has gone into this, with the colourful page layouts and jaunty ‘90s writing style mimicked to perfection. It even has a couple of pages dedicated to the anime scene – a former Super Play staple.
While we’d love to see more one offs from Retro Gamer (Future Publishing’s acquisition of Imagine has obviously opened new doors), it clearly takes an incredible amount of planning. All that hard work wasn’t for nothing – this mini mag is a delight to behold.
Retro Gamer #172 hits newsagent’s shelves tomorrow, priced £5.99.