Offering £100 for a video game magazine?!

To celebrate 20 years (has it really been that long?!) since the SegaMags collection started, we’re putting a special time-limited bounty on issue 22 of Mega Power (the only issue of Mega Power that we’re still missing). If anyone can find a copy of this issue before the end of March 2019, we’ll buy it for £100. But be quick, because as soon as we enter April 2019, the price offered will revert back to the usual £25. So that gives you just over three weeks to rummage through your lofts (or garages, or wardrobes, or wherever you might have stashed your old video game magazines), find that issue, contact us and claim your £100 reward.

Claim £100 if you can find issue 22 of Mega Power before March 31st 2019!

This issue came with a cover-mounted TimeCop demo disc (as you can see from the cover). We already have the demo disc, so it’s just the issue itself that’s needed.

Okay, I think there’s something that really needs to be emphasised at this point: the overwhelming majority of retro video game magazines aren’t worth anywhere near the amount of money that we’re offering to pay for the issues listed on the SegaMags Quest page. We’d hate to ruin the hobby of video game magazine collecting by artificially-inflating the asking prices on the likes of eBay. A magazine is only worth what a buyer is prepared to pay, and it just so happens that I’m prepared to pay an awful lot more than most in order to finish the collection (personally, I don’t collect anything else, and I’m so close to completing the collection — now 20 years in the making — that I’m happy to offer more as an incentive for people to help out!).

Now, get cracking and see if you can grab yourself an easy £100! And be sure to check the SegaMags Quest page in case you stumble upon any of the other issues on our list.

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Oh my, Mystaria surprise!

A copy of Sega Pro issue 55 leads me to Mystaria, a relatively-unknown retro game!

Mystaria was a relatively early European Saturn release.

Mystaria: The Realms of Lore. A turn-based RPG for the Sega Saturn.

During the era of Sega’s home consoles, video game magazines were one of the main factors in deciding whether or not a game was worth buying. Many of the games in my collection were purchased on the basis of magazine reviews. One really cool thing about magazine collecting is that reading them takes you back to the time when they were brand new — and it would seem that, even in 2016 (some 20 years later), those old magazines are still capable of helping us out.


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Interview with Robert Doubtfire, UK Sega Saturn champion (1996)

There's a victorious Robert, Twix box in hand, being interviewed by Virgin Radio!

Robert Doubtfire: : The 1996 Twix Junior Gamesplayer of the Year in the Sega Saturn category.

Following our interview with Alex Lieng, we managed (with the help of Alex) to make contact with the previous year’s Twix Junior Gamesplayer of the Year in the Sega Saturn category, Robert Doubtfire. Robert became the 1996 tournament champion for his stunning performance playing Nights (in which he chained-together more links than anyone else), and he went on to feature in issue 15 of Sega Saturn Magazine. The former Sega champion took some time out to share his experiences before, during and after the tournament.


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Interview with Alex Lieng, UK Sega Saturn champion (1997)

There's Alex with one of the many Twix boxes he won for his victorious run playing Manx TT Super Bike.

Alex Lieng: The 1997 Twix Junior Gamesplayer of the Year in the Sega Saturn category.

As we said in our Video Game Market 3 round-up a few days ago, we had the good fortune of meeting Alex Lieng at the event. In 1997, Alex won the Twix Junior Gamesplayer of the Year competition for his dazzling Manx TT skills, and he was subsequently featured in a couple of issues of Sega Saturn Magazine. We caught up with Alex after the Video Game Market last weekend to chat about his experiences as a Sega video game champion.


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Video Game Market 3 round-up

What a good-looking bunch. :P

It’s the SegaMags stall! From left to right: Matt, Chris, Marc & Lindsay.

What a tremendous weekend we had at RetroCollect‘s Video Game Market 3 in Doncaster! Catching up with old friends, making new friends, helping people to complete their collections (if the guy who bought his last missing issue of N64 Magazine is reading this, please get in touch — I’d love to see a photo of your newly-completed collection!)… it was a blast. Here are a few highlights from the day.


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The SegaMags stock list

So, as we mentioned yesterday, SegaMags has a stall at RetroCollect‘s Video Game Market 3 in Doncaster today, and we’ve got over 2,000 retro video game magazines to sell. So how exactly do you go about determining whether or not we’ve got that one issue you need to complete your collection? You use Google Sheets to view our stock list, of course!

Simply click here to view the SegaMags stock-list!

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MEGA Confidential: MEGA’s subscriber-exclusive newsletter

Ever seen one of these before?

Mega Confidential (issue 14)

It’s the very first issue of MEGA Confidential — MEGA’s subscriber-only newsletter.

There’s a little bit of a story behind this one…


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Mean Machines vs Mega Machines

In all my years of collecting Sega magazines, I’ve found the name of one magazine to be particularly difficult to communicate to people: Mega Machines. There isn’t anything intrinsically challenging about the magazine’s name, but I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve asked somebody if they have any issues of Mega Machines and received a response along the lines of “yep, I’ve definitely got a few issues of that one” — only to be met with disappointment when the person produces some issues of the multi-format Mean Machines magazine. The two names do sound fairly similar, but why the consistent confusion? Well, there’s one very good reason why: Mega Machines is a relatively unknown Mega Drive magazine (that only lasted for five issues), whereas Mean Machines was at one time the king of video game magazines (commanding massive circulation figures, and a huge fan base that still exists to this day). Just about anyone who was in to video games during the early 1990s will remember Mean Machines (or its successor, Mean Machines Sega). On the other hand, hardly anybody even knows that Mega Machines existed. So when someone mentions Mega Machines, I suppose it’s perfectly understandable for it to be misunderstand it as Mean Machines.

Mean Machines vs Mega Machines

Is it fair to threaten legal action over a similar-sounding name?

However, it just so happens that back in late-1993, just before the launch of Mega Machines, something not-so-innocent happened involving Mean Machines and Mega Machines — and it had everything to do with their similar-sounding names…


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SegaMags is selling at the Video Game Market 3

Yes, it’s true. No sooner have we launched SegaMags, than we’re packing-up all of our duplicate Sega magazines (along with the vast majority of our non-Sega magazines) and heading off to Doncaster to sell them at the RetroCollect Video Game Market 3. That’s happening tomorrow, for those of you who don’t already know. And we’ll be bringing over two-thousand video game magazines from the 1980s and 1990s (and the very early 2000s) with us.

The RetroCollect Video Game Market 3

It’s happening tomorrow, and it’s going to be massive!

Fancy picking up a retro video game magazine for less than what it costs to post? Then read on.


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SegaMags is here!

Welcome to SegaMags, the website that will soon become the ultimate online resource for fans and collectors of Sega magazines (of the British variety)! The site is, admittedly, a little bit rough at the moment — the magazine pages are woefully inadequate (with nothing more than a tiny little summary for each magazine), but they’ll be fully expanded over the next few months. In the meantime, we have a couple of proper blog posts to keep you going: we talk a little bit about the confusion regarding Mean Machines and Mega Machines, and we also take a look at the first instalment of MEGA Confidential.

This blog (and the website in general) will be updated as regularly as my spare time can permit, so please check back often. In the meantime, why not connect with our Facebook and Twitter accounts to stay up-to-date with our activities?

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