Sheltered upbringing

The Internet Archive is a fantastic resource, containing millions of print, digital, audio and visual documents. As something of a retro video gaming aficionado, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that a complete run of Super Play magazine is available for download from the site.

Published by Future Publishing in the picturesque English city of Bath, Super Play covered Nintendo's 16 bit video game console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. I liked this magazine because it covered both Western and Japanese game releases. Unlike some of its rivals, I felt that it was pitched at my age group at the time. I also liked the humorous writing style. At the time some of these jokes went over my head. Part of the fun of rereading issues of the magazine is to pick up on some of the humour that I didn't understand at the time.

When reviewing Japanese games, almost none of the reviewers understood the Japanese language, so they resorted to educated guesses of what these games were about. A review of a Nigel Mansell Formula 1 racing game was written in long paragraphs with no punctuation. This was deliberately done to mimic the way Mansell spoke in long sentences without pausing for breath.

The magazine lasted from November 1992 to September 1996. Towards the end of its run, the number of reviews dwindled as the console lost popularity. The massively successful
 Sony Playstation took most of Nintendo's third party support, and readers were anticipating the Nintendo 64 console. I had fond memories of reading this magazine, and am glad to be able to read it again. I now regret throwing out my collection, because they're worth a lot of money now.

https://archive.org/details/superplaymagazine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Play