FunFactor

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/1eeeedc8-3737-4c48-894c-cd7950503a5a/pdf?token=70ff7124-8104-4ed1-bdd3-bdfb536b8177&length=167296037

OLD GLORY GAMING/MUSIC/SPORTS APPAREL, USE PROMO CODE “FUESDAY” FOR 15 PERCENT OFF: https://oldglory.com/

With just a handful of active consoles, and a dearth of post-launch games for both XBox and GameCube, 2002 might have been the most difficult year in gaming history to completely miss the release of a first-party critical darling.

Yet that’s just what happened to Ty with Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus—which despite leading the reviews section of this issue of Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine with a perfect 5.0 score, is basically not mentioned anywhere else in a mag stuffed full of exclusive Grand Theft Auto III: Vice City content, S.O.C.O.M: Navy Seal mentions for some reason, and John Scalzi columns??

Aidan and Ty start off with a discussion of “discoverability crises” current and past, and find so much to talk about in this issue they literally can’t get into it all!

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/51f1d648-0b56-44d4-bb79-24f453cbfa0e

“What Happened to Hyper Magazine” at Forgotten Worlds: https://www.forgottenworlds.net/hyper-magazine-part-1

Alice Ruppert on Bluesky starting a Romance novel/Visual Novel discussion: https://bsky.app/profile/malicedafirenze.bsky.social/post/3mvac2sw6b22q

Tube Cody’s “Defying Gravity” in Roller Coaster Tycoon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNty2y0DQN8 

Aussie Aussie Aussie, Oi Oi Oi—we finally review an issue of the decades-long-running Australian games magazine, Hyper!

Don’t judge the mag by the cover of issue 110, which featured a very young Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, a Ford Escort World Rally Car, and a bunch of other stuff that’s not really video games. Hyper had art design and editorial content that stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the best mags on any continent. 

But Ty and Aidan were, um, more than a little surprised with the treatment the Xbox port of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind got in their review section.

Our opening discussion? Why, it’s about PC/console crossover and cross-pollination—and we genuinely had one of our best opening chats ever.

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/51f1d648-0b56-44d4-bb79-24f453cbfa0e

RAVNIR “VIKING MUSIC:” https://ravnirmusic.com/

TALES FROM THE BACKLOG’S QUEST 64 EPISODE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcoIOr8n8Ow

TALES FROM THE BACKLOG’S “DO GAMES ‘HOLD UP’” EPISODE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WIYcO82qRA

Are critical re-evaluations “overlooked hidden gems,” or revisionist history? Super Mario Sunshine got a rave review from GamePro in this issue—but the 3D Mario game almost universally remembered as the bad one got rave reviews from almost everyone else, too.

Aidan and Ty start off with a discussion of how critical narratives morph over time, and how younger gamers growing up to decide the grown-ups got it wrong the first time happens, well, all the time. Then they get in to GamePro issue 170, and find several really cool interesting features amid the middling art direction (and a ludicrous amount of ads).

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!

NICK’S PATREON: PandaMonium | creating a Sega Saturn documentary series. | Patreon 
GREG’S PATREON: Greg Sewart | creating Generation 16 | Let's Read Videos | Retro Game Streams | Patreon 

Free ULTRA Review Crew bonus episode?! That's right: Aidan and Ty had holiday and start-of-school stuff get in the way of recording last week, so we decided to re-start our content pipelines by giving everyone a taste of what our top-tier members get: An awesome deep-dive into the disastrous 1995 surprise launch of the Sega Saturn in North America.

We’re joined by two *incredible* guests: Greg “Stewy” Sewart, a former editor at EGM, and Nick “PandaMonium,” perhaps the Internet’s foremost Sega Saturn documentarian. We ask all the hard questions: What went wrong? Who’s fault was it? And–perhaps most importantly–could Sonic X-Treme have saved everything?

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/28f939d8-b160-47f0-92c6-e885159b5156

THE KINGDOM HEARTS GOOGLE DOC: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vQgJT19xfHJtEnIiZ-c55ClvAXn95ODUQBDYFtWF8GtPzHvTUTQhbH3brFk290zaQ/pub

THE KINGDOM HEARTS PRACTICAL COMPLETE ORDER (by Jackson from Abnormal Mapping): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eQpUmDR18WWFRpzyPjh8Ivv8gAE4IzVdxY1bgbm7YgM/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.iqj61wtvro5d

Kingdom Hearts! Grand Theft Auto! This episode’s issue of PSM is stuffed with incredibly topical retro games, and Aidan and Ty dig right in to a preview and review of two very different games that had very, very different expectations and receptions—but mutually enormous commercial and creative legacies.

But first, they expand on last episode’s discussion about IP tie-in games, and the best ones throughout the years. Plus, as always, answer your questions in the Letters section!

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.org/details/Edge_Gaming/Edge%20Gaming%20Magazine%20113/mode/2up

PIXELS & POLYGONS QUARTERLY + ANNUAL COLLECTION: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/darrenhupke/pixels-and-polygons-quarterly-2026-q4-and-annual-collection?ref=3opks3

LIE OF CAELUM: SPIRIT KICKSTARTER: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lieofcaelumspirit/lie-of-caelum-spirit

BEL’S FANFARE KICKSTARTER: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/chibig/bels-fanfare/

RETRO GAME FORGE KICKSTARTER: https://popgeeks.com/retro-game-forge-a-potentially-all-in-one-homebrew-development-kit-launches-kickstarter/
Edge was doing it like no one else in 2002, and so we had to go longer than we ever have to talk about all of it!

Before we review Edge magazine’s eyebrow-raising review of King of Fighters EX for the Game Boy Advance, we looked through all 130 pages of neutron-star-dense levels of thoughtful editorial—perhaps most notably so, an interview with Tecmo director Tomonobu Itagaki about pet project, Dead or Alive 3: Xtreme Beach Volleyball. 

Edge rightfully presses Itagaki on why he didn’t include any of the male characters, how much care and consideration was given to volleyball game mechanics, how it compares to other volleyball games, etc., and Itagaki just keeps artfully rephrasing the same admission: he just really wanted to make a boobie game to look at boobies.

We also brought back our Letters section, answering questions from our awesome Discord members! GET ON THE DISCORD so you can join in next time!

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at  millenniumfalck.com!

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/ebc34b2b-4088-4e7c-bc69-12e3a7a9f129

Stop Skeletons From Fighting’s “My 2 Year Journey to Solve the 30-Year Myth of Faceball 2000” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2AG-gAuS-U&t=6058s 

Aidan’s back in the saddle, and he’s got takes about what Ty talked about with last episode’s guest-host Jess Voidburger–but not Sonic the Hedgehog, handheld games!

Aidan talks about how well portable systems fit into his life as a tween and teen, and this issue of Ziff-Davis’s Pocket Games magazine shows just how deep and rich Nintendo’s handheld scene was in the spring of 2002, even while the AAA console tides had gone way, way out between Christmas 2001 and the following summer.

In an issue full of reviews and previews of absolute bangers, we looked at Pocket Games’ review of Mario Kart Super Circuit–what it does well, what it doesn’t, and whether we agree. 

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/a8041ebf-095f-4bb9-b2bd-57702a22aff0

SONIC ON THE COVER OF NINTENDO POWER??

Special guest host Jess VoidBurger joins Ty to revisit Nintendo’s legendary in-house publication during its awkward tween years: still clinging to some of the looks and features of its 16-bit glory days, but starting to evolve to compete with the super-professional, grownuppy output of the Ziff-Davis and Future/IGN publications.

With Sonic the Hedgehog on the cover and longtime “Publisher” (Nintendo of America president Minoru Arakawa) announcing his departure in the News section, Ty and Jess get whiplashed by the old-school/new-school dichotomy–and flummoxed by just how few games there are being released in spring of 2002.

They discuss how it’s much like today, with AA and AAA publishers constantly scaling back release schedules and focusing on key franchises. But unlike today, reviewers back then didn’t have a robust indie scene to cover.

And speaking of reviews, have Nintendo Power’s reviews gotten any more ‘independent’ or ‘unbiased’ since the last time we looked?

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/ac4194d5-23d7-46fe-b6e2-0f364600532a

Super Smash Bros. Melee is Nintendo’s tightest, deepest, most technically rewarding fighting game of all time, with an active playerbase and tournament scene still uncovering its secrets.

But what did reviewers make of it in 2002, when “lets put all the characters and properties we own in one game” wasn’t an obligatory and trite cash grab, but a novelty?

Aidan and Ty checked it out in “GameNOW,” an unfamiliar title for what turns out to be a familiar editorial crew. We kick the whole thing off with a discussion on whether selling our old games was an obvious thing to do, or *~breaching a sacred bond between player and game~*.

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!

ISSUE LINK: https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/69555def-0cd8-4b5a-b4d2-3d324c7863f4

Console exclusivity was the talk of this recent Summer Game Fest, and Aidan and Ty start off the episode with a discussion of their most badly missed-out-on exclusives from platforms they didn't have.

And then, the issue: With Future Publishing/Imagine Media getting the "official" XBox magazine tag, Ziff-Davis launched an "independent" one--and they poached Simon Cox from Future/Imagine to lead it!

The result was an ambitious, artistic, NEXT Generation/EDGE-looking publication that (perhaps a decade or two too early) pivoted towards a quarterly launch schedule, more original art and photography, and more rare and in-depth features and interviews--like the one anchoring their massive preview of Panzer Dragoon Orta, the capper of Aidan and Ty's discussion.

And then...a review of World Series Baseball from actual-factual baseball writer of the time, Jeff Pearlman?? Of Sports Illustrated?? Who since written a ton of book and the Amazon series "Winning Time??" How would this non-games-writer do writing about games in 2002??

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Sources include the Video Game History Foundation, the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!