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Complete Guide to Consoles - Review Scores

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    Complete Guide to Consoles - Review Scores

    Just got these books which I loved so much back in the day. Released by CVG just before or around the time of Mean Machines. They were basically like an annual featuring all the new and existing consoles and games. Consoles were getting more interesting at this point in time with the Megadrive, PC Engine and NeoGeo just released in Japan. Us brits were getting semi-ons.

    As promised in another thread, I'm going to post the review scores from all four editions. Starting with the first two (will do the other two later).

    Agree with these scores? Care? May update with some screens later. Did any of the scores sway you? I remember seeing the Impossible Mission score and thinking about getting a Game Gear. Ghouls 'n' Ghosts score really did it for me. Got my parents to get me a Japanese Megadrive for the xmas that followed.

    I'm only listing the detailed reviews. Book 1 had tiny reviews of another zillion games of the past at the back too.

    Complete Guide to Consoles Book 1 (Winter 1989)



    NES

    Rush 'n' Attack - 83%
    Mega Man - 92%
    Ikari Warriors - 48%
    Section 2 - 46%
    Trojan - 72%
    Ghosts 'n' Goblins - 55%


    Sega Master System

    Pro Football - 95%

    Casino Games - 49%
    Wanted - 67%
    California Games - 93%
    WonderBoy III - 92%



    Sega Megadrive


    Ghouls 'n' Ghosts - 98%

    World Cup Soccer - 83%


    PC Engine

    Rock On - 78%
    F1 Dream - 75%
    Break In - 89%
    Ordyne - 91%
    Bloody Wolf - 83%


    Complete Guide to Consoles Book 2 (Summer 1990)



    NES

    Blaster Master - 93%
    Batman - 92%

    Blades of Steel - 85%
    Simon's Quest - 85%
    Skate Or Die - 82%
    Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles - 86%
    Solomon's Key - 83%
    Bayou Billy - 79%
    Contra - 90%
    Zelda 2 - 94%


    Sega Master System

    Gauntlet - 96%

    Chase HQ - 83%
    Assault City - 70%
    World Games - 52%
    Golden Axe - 92%
    Impossible Mission - 97%

    Slapshot - 82%
    Golfmania - 89%
    Operation Wolf - 89%
    RC Grand Prix - 70%
    Battle Outrun - 79%


    Sega Megadrive

    Curse - 81%
    Tatsujin - 92%
    Super Hang-On - 95%
    Super Shinobi - 94%
    Golden Axe - 96%


    PC Engine

    Motorcycle Racing - 94%
    Digital Champ - 59%
    USA Pro Basketball - 72%
    Shinobi - 81%
    Heavy Unit - 53%
    Volfied - 96%
    PC Kid - 95%


    Atari Lynx

    Electrocop - 91%
    Gates of Zendocon - 89%
    Blue Lightening - 79%


    Complete Guide to Consoles Book 3



    NES

    Tetris - 91%
    World Wrestling - 84%
    Duck Tales - 89%
    Spy Vs Spy - 84%
    Faxanadu - 80%
    Mega Man II - 95%
    Robocop - 61%
    Adventures of Lolo - 82%
    Bionic Commando - 81%
    Double Dragon II - 84%
    Silent Service - 87%
    720 - 84%
    Fester's Quest - 63%
    Paperboy - 51%


    Sega Master System

    Indiana Jones III - 96%
    Paperboy - 94%

    Columns - 89%
    Eswat - 81%
    Alex Kidd in Shinobi World - 92%
    Super Monaco GP - 92%




    Sega Megadrive

    Super Sky Shark - 73%
    Darwin 4081 - 79%
    Columns - 90%
    Ghostbusters - 82%
    Phelios - 70%
    Eswat - 93%
    Thunderforce III - 91%

    Cyberball - 89%
    Batman - 93%


    PC Engine

    Devil Crush - 94%
    Ninja Spirit - 91%

    Super Star Soldier - 89%
    Xevious - 72%
    Rastan II - 81%
    Splatterhouse - 94%
    Image Fight - 82%
    Download - 83%
    Don Doko Don - 94%


    PC Engine CD-ROM

    Wonderboy III - 93%
    Super Darius - 92%

    Final Zone II - 63%
    Red Alert - 65%


    Game Boy

    Nemesis - 89%
    NFL Football - 68%
    Batman - 94%
    Qix - 88%
    Flippull - 88%
    Makaimura Gaiden - 78%
    Penguin Wars - 90%



    Complete Guide to Consoles Book 4



    This contained micro reviews of all game reviewed in the past.
    Last edited by hudson; 24-11-2009, 17:45.

    #2
    Blimey. Lots of very high scoring distinctly average games there. Still the enthusiasm for games in C&VG and Mean Machines is something lacking from the high brow and sometimes souless, not to mention humourless, review we get these days.

    Comment


      #3
      Were they too high for the time though? Were these some of the best games around at the time?

      Comment


        #4
        I still love looking through these, Theres just something very special about the way they captured and displayed the images and the sheer enthusiam is infectious.

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by hoolak View Post
          PC Engine
          ...
          Rastan II - 81%
          ...
          Rastan II as good as the PCE version of Shinobi, eh?

          Comment


            #6
            Love seeing old magazines like these pop up myself.
            There's just something about reading through a classic video game magazine that gets me into a retro gaming mood, even more-so than normally.

            Especially when they were written by people with a real passion about videogames.
            That's what made those ones so great to me personally, even till this day.

            Really don't want to do a shameless plug, but if you love the Paul Davies era of CVG then you might want to check out the little site I'm part of this Friday when the new update goes live.
            Last edited by meppi; 25-11-2009, 07:45.

            Comment


              #7
              I think these were the ones i was watching on ebay, fell asleep for an hour and feck

              I only needed two of them aswell,good gear buddy !

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by dosucol View Post
                I think these were the ones i was watching on ebay, fell asleep for an hour and feck

                I only needed two of them aswell,good gear buddy !
                The ones I got had been up on ebay an hour and I tried a shot at emailing him to see if he'd part with them for a price. Indeed he took me up on my offer

                Comment


                  #9
                  Awesome magazines, I remember having two copies of the yellow one (because a mate had lost my first copy, and I spent my paper round wage to get a replacement because I loved the mag so much, and then he found the original one). I remember it being quite expensive, at the time, but so compulsively re-readable, and jam-packed full of screenshots and capsule reviews (great combo, that).

                  A brilliant reminder of wonderfully enthusiastic, naive British gaming journalism. I'm gonna head to my mum's on my day off and try and dig my copies out of the outhouse, I only had the first and third editions but how well-thumbed they were.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    I read the original Yellow one to death. I probably could of recited the whole magazine back in the day. Massive fan. Nice catch Hoolak.

                    Being youthful and reading about games was a special time. Saving up for one game you saw in CVG/Mean Machines/Club Nintendo and other magazines/fanzines....oh take me back! I honestly would prefer to go back to that, probably why I enjoy Wii....its retro VC and games that aren't brown looking and Sci-Fi heavy.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Probably the best magazines that ever came out, i treasured mine and i'm still mystified to why i binned them. It was probably when the PS generation hit and i thought "oh well, i'll lose interest in this old stuff soon" little did i know it would be the other way round. I'd love to get these and my full set of "zero" magazines back, that mag was a great laugh too.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Ahh Zero was an awesome magazine. I used to have a pretty healthy run of them but they all mysteriously disappeared. The only retro mags I have left are four issues of Mean Machines (including numero uno)

                        I remember reading the news section of issue one of Mean Machines and spying the article about Japanese magazines. The pic accompanying the article was a picture of an issue of Famitsu (although I didn't know it at the time) and it always looked so cool to me as a kid. Anyways, skip forward about 15 years and I find myself in a branch of Mandarake in Shibuya and I'm idly looking through the game mags when I actually come across that same issue of Famitsu that was pictured in that article in Mean Machines issue one. A big smile erupted across my face and I promptly bought the magazine. While it might not have been that hard to source the mag with the internet and all, it really did take me back to the halcyon days of Mean Machines and CVG, while being in the place that the article explained had "stuff we could only dream about" I miss those days.....

                        Comment


                          #13
                          Zero was basically a multiformat version of Your Sinclair, which was already one of the funniest, most info-packed computer magazines around at the time, consistently brilliant both were. I've got loads of Zeroes tucked away but they make me kind of sad to re-read because that quintessentially English, eccentric slant on gaming seems to have died out.

                          But ACE magazine...cack.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            Oi! I used to love ACE!!

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Ah I remember that yellow one. I memorised the states for every single machine.

                              Comment

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