Get a job hippie ;o) actually I did go to uni for 1 year, massive debt, learnt nothing, total waste of time. But yes, the cheap food rings a bell, didn’t do much gaming, mostly chicks and nightclubs.

Hello Breja!

My times of regularily buying and reading gaming magazines was mostly back in the 80's, especially with the one puplished from Nintendo during their NES and early SNES lineup.

I often read individual ones from friends who bought various magazines or skipped through their content in the shops, stores or discounters. One remarkable impulse-buy (without prior knowledge) became the original "Metal Gear Solid" for Playstation one - I only ever saw a tiny blue and grey peak preview picture of the player ('Snake') at Shadow Moses Island helicopter landing pad, but it was unusually intriguing at the time.

Later on when playing more on Win98 and WinXP I was more interested in the technical-oriented articles and magazines, or collections of game patches. Sometimes, I took advantage of the also included demos, and discovered some (for me) 'hidden' gems, "Trespasser", "Gothic 1" or "Red Faction" (with its impressive geomod demo) come to mind.

Scarcely, I did buy specific issues of different magazines only for their DRM-free copy of certain games, including "Tomb Raider Anniversary", "Trine", "Drakensang" & "Drakensang: The River of Time", for instance.

When first ISDL and then broadband internet connections became more affordable and readily available the magazine discs were not anymore the primary source for patches and applications/utilities. And the advent of online activation and similar DRM schemes made those included games on a magazine disc less attractive to me.
I had to research beforehand whether a game copy actually is DRM-free or requires online activation, registration or a Steam-account, or not.
(I remember searching a lot of info and others experiences on "Drakensang: The River of Time", since not every release as magazine addition was actually DRM-free. I picked it up from a magazine which I never read before, just because I got convincing proof that this specific version was free of any kind of DRM, not even a disc check nor serial key.)

When the various German magazines moved to online presence, I got quickly annoyed by their really intrusive propaganda and paywall schemes to circumvent either the propaganda or an artificial (initially only temporarly) lock away of site content (articles, reports, reviews and multi media) on recent games or industry developments.

The unfriendly to borderline hostile treatment towards customers drove me completely away from (modern) game journalism!

Kind regards,
foxgog

Massive debt... Education should never be gated by money.

If course "chicks and nightclubs" and "learnt nothing" is pretty much on you ;-)

WHAT on earth are you all on about with "was"? The big publications in Germany still come with one or more full games every month if you buy the DVD edition.

In the past I got a lot of good games in magazines. Some of them surprised me. Sometimes they were DRM free, no CD Checks, and more stable than the pevious versions. The killing of the DRM in some games made miracles.

I still use some of those versions meanwhile I do not own the GOG version. Jus because, they stil work, for now.
Anyway eventually those CD's will die or The CD reader will die or my next computer will not have any CD reader.

I remember good titles like:

-Freelancer
-King Quest Mask of eternity
-Larry saga complete
-The Black Mirror
-Silent Hunter 3
-Deus Ex
-City Building Series ( Pharaoh, Zeus etc)
-Hitman
-Fallout Tactics
-X series of Space Simulators
-Silent Storm...

Don’t come to the UK then. University means massive lifetime debt. Not that it matters as the country policy is everyone in as much debt as possible, so it’s just starting people at an earlier age.

As for learnt nothing, I give you an example, we had an hour a week course on the internet, web pages and such like. The internet was so bad it took most of the hour to load anything. So yes, waste of time. Never been one for classroom learning.

I have tons of CDs and DVDs with full version games from magazines. I haven't threw a single disc into the trash. Among them are some titles that never got released in digital form. I don't know why, but I also keep discs with demo versions. It might be interesting to launch these CDs 20 years after they were released. A truly sentimental trip to the past. :) My first full version from a gaming magazine was Stonekeep released in CD-Action in June 1999. What's interesting, I didn't have a PC back then. I had to go to my cousin for gaming sessions. These were really good times... :)

To this day I still think Joystick was the best gaming magazine ever made. I used to read all sorts of magazines from England, Spain and France... Tilt, Gen4, Micromania, PC Gamer, C+VG, etc. Joystick still remains the gold standard for me.
Interestingly of all these magazines, only two remain that I know of: PC Gamer and the spanish Micromania.

Yes, the reviews in Joystick were the most complete until mid-2000's when the magazine was sold to a new publisher with a new style and far less pages !
Regarding full games, PC Jeux was the reference in France... until 2012 with games including Steam activation and the end of its publishing.

I found this from my youth - https://twitter.com/L1nko64/status/1410635164993130497?s=20

I remember reading it constantly in school!

I don't think PC Jeux was ever sold in Portugal. At least I don't remember ever seeing an issue here. Joystick, on the other hand, was always sold here. I started buying it in 1992 and never failed an issue until it stopped being sold in 2007 (I think the magazine shut its doors not long after). Most of its older staff founded "Canard PC" which is still being sold, but unfortunately not here.

In case you don't know there's a site collecting digitized editions of these old french magazines:
https://www.abandonware-magazines.org/index.php

Yep, Gaming magazines with an accompanying CD or DVD used to be all the rage a couple of decades ago and I have a very large collection of them.

Often you would get a full or free game and several demos, plus on many occasions stacks of MODS or MAPS etc for popular games like Doom and Quake and many others.

I even have special Demo collections that came without a magazine from the same magazine companies (PCGamer and the like), that were on a long piece of folded printed cardboard, based on a category. The folded cardboard listed all the games with a brief blurb, and had pouches for one or more discs.

Many magazine discs had extra folders with bonus levels and demos etc, not mentioned in the magazine.

I also have general PC magazines that often had games and game related files or programs, some free or demos.

I used to catalog them all, and when I finally get my back room sorted out for gaming, I'll dive into what I have.

Many of the demos were beyond the power of my PC at the time, but I was forward looking.

While I paid newsagent prices for many of them, I also used to browse opportunity shops and buy secondhand ones in good condition. Back then, my web connection was very slow, not even broadband, so it was a great way to get bonus mods and levels and demos etc.

I imagine many of those demos etc are simply not available anywhere outside of personal collections, except perhaps at some Abandonware sites.

Yes, I know it and this site is a gem. Sometimes, I read reviews when "new oldies" are released on GOG.
It's better than current reviews like : "Not working on my Windows 10, great game from my childhood, nostagia forever 10/10..."

Sure,...IF you still buy them, respectively have a subscription for them...which I haven't, for like, ten years.
So, for me - it's a thing of the past. ;)