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That time Ultra Game Players printed a "preview" of Super Mario 64 2 with a fake screenshot of playable Luigi

ZeoVGM

ZeoVGM

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Oct 25, 2017
76,091
Providence, RI
The thread showing off old previews of the original FFVII got me thinking about 90s gaming magazines. I have a lot of nostalgia for them, as many of us do, but they were largely absolutely awful. Poor writing, bad information and literally making shit up.

One of my favorite examples of this is an image that I obsessed over as a child: Luigi in Super Mario 64 2.

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From what I know, Super Mario 64 2 was in development for a short amount of time and there were plans to have Luigi playable but was cancelled very early in development.

In a 1997 issue of Ultra Game Players, they literally faked a screen shot in their "preview" of the basically non-existent game. There clearly was not enough information to even write a preview of the game as shown by deep dive commentary such as, "And what Mario game would be complete without water? Why, water is practically a Mario trademark!"

I remember being so excited for this as a kid, not knowing it was a lie. I mean, the magazine didn't even bother to state in tiny text somewhere that the screen shot was concept art that they created. They just... made shit up.
 

Deleted member 5028

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Magazines had to make money somehow. The world was much smaller than it is today when it came to sourcing info. If they knew a game was coming they'd be able to get some obvious nods towards what to expect. It was all to sell copies of the mag tho.
 
Imran

Imran

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Oct 24, 2017
6,559
UGP was largely a jokey magazine. Their whole thing was game coverage with comedy. I recall they did fake previews for other hypothetical games, too.
 
CypherSignal

CypherSignal

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Oct 25, 2017
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SlipperyFishes said:
Magazines had to make money somehow. The world was much smaller than it is today when it came to sourcing info. If they knew a game was coming they'd be able to get some obvious nods towards what to expect. It was all to sell copies of the mag tho.
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In all fairness, it's not that different from a lot of low-quality blogs and youtubers that you'd see these days. Either straight-up fabrications, or making long-winded content over the faintest whisper of third-hand knowledge.
 
skeezx

skeezx

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Oct 27, 2017
20,128
lol i remember this like yesterday. i knew it was fake as hell but that kind of stuff was nbd back then.

which is funny imagine Kotaku or whatever writing an article about "half life 3" with a bunch of fan mockup inserts
 
Imran

Imran

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Oct 24, 2017
6,559
Game Players was honestly probably the reason I got into games writing. I wanted so desperately to put out funny and interesting gaming content like that.
 
Psxphile

Psxphile

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Oct 27, 2017
6,526
Wasn't that their April issue?

UGP was big on April Fool's pranks after EGM popularized it with the Sheng Long controversy.

EDIT: nope, "holiday '97" issue #105
 
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big_z

big_z

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Nov 2, 2017
7,794
GamePlayers/Ultra GamePlayers was the best magazine by far. It was personality based much like how sites like giantbomb are today and so far ahead of their time. Chris Slate, Bill Donahue, Mike, Fran, Slippy, Micheal Jordan, Dead horse, etc great staffing with tons of in jokes... they even hid stuff in the tiny copyright print. It's a shame their parent company killed them by trying to sterilize what they had built.

All hail Gazuga!


I knew the mario 64-2 image was fake even back in the day. It was fun to imagine what we could have gotten though. They also reported Nintendo was prototyping a CD attachment around the same time they were fiddling with the DD. Maybe one day that prototype will surface in some way.
 
Lindsay

Lindsay

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Nov 4, 2017
3,131
Ya I remember something like that, among other goofy things they did. UGP was a stepdown from GP but they'd still have some good silly stuffs like this an I loved 'em for it!

big_z said:
GamePlayers/Ultra GamePlayers was the best magazine by far. It was personality based much like how sites like giantbomb are today and so far ahead of their time. Chris Slate, Bill Donahue, Mike, Fran, Slippy, Micheal Jordan, Dead horse, etc great staffing with tons of in jokes... they even hid stuff in the tiny copyright print. It's a shame their parent company killed them by trying to sterilize what they had built.
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Ohhhh so thats what happened. How crappy! Sterile certainly describes the UGP era well compared to what came before.
 
Thera

Thera

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Did you saw the UK PlayStation magazine which just released a "what to expect" of Ghost of tsushima based on old stuff. And beacause of that, some of what they said aren't true anymore...
 
Border

Border

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Oct 25, 2017
14,859
I think their comments about water were meant to be a kind of facetious joke. "There isn't much to say about this fairly bland screenshot, so we will comment on the water."
 
big_z

big_z

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Nov 2, 2017
7,794
Lindsay said:
Ya I remember something like that, among other goofy things they did. UGP was a stepdown from GP but they'd still have some good silly stuffs like this an I loved 'em for it!


Ohhhh so thats what happened. How crappy! Sterile certainly describes the UGP era well compared to what came before.
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Bill Donahue told the story of what happened. Not sure if it's still online or not. The owners wanted a cleaner magazine with more coverage which is why they became UGP, they added pc coverage and cleaned up the look to make it easier for newcomers to digest. The humour took a hit in the process but did come back after a couple issues.
Then the parent company wanted them to change into a professional magazine and they became game buyer but it alienated fans and failed. Bill believes if given more time the humour would have returned like when they became UGP but they weren't given that chance.

It's super shitty what happened to them. Still my favourite group of games journalists and I loved getting the next issue simply for the antics. Felt like talking games and jokes with friends. If they had made it to the online era they would have killed it.
 
Kemal86

Kemal86

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Oct 25, 2017
3,401
I remember reading this while sitting on the floor of the magazine aisle in a Kmart. The 90s, y'all.
 
Brazil

Brazil

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Oct 24, 2017
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São Paulo, Brazil
Just the other day I stumbled upon EGM shittalking the original GBA announcement because "its screen was smaller than the Game Boy Color's".

They just straight up didn't know the correct GBC screen size and went off of that.

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Gaming magazines were wack.
 
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