Additionally, those magazines were a good source of game hints. Nowadays, most games are developed with the assumption that players will already have the knowledge passed to them from the Internet. You don’t see nearly as many games where the emphasis is on discovering tricks and quirks. It’s now about cold optimization or just going through the motions.

That’s not to say games were better back then. But the newer generations will never know the joy of checking the mailbox every day and seeing that brand spanking new issue of Ultra Game Players Magazine, then being the only kid in the neighborhood to know about the next gen console specs, and feeling cool about it.