A Quick Retrospective on Tips & Tricks Magazine

Hey everyone! I'm here for a quick post for the week, and I decided that I would take this as an opportunity to bring some attention to a subject that isn't talked about too much anymore: physical-copy video game magazines. Specifically, I wanted to talk about Tips & Tricks Magazine, which is in my opinion the greatest gaming publication of all time. This isn't meant to be a long or in-depth feature about Tips & Tricks, but rather just a moment for me to give some props to a bygone era of gaming journalism, as well as perhaps introduce some of my readers to T&T if they've never seen it before. :)

A sample Tips & Tricks cover, showcasing some awesome games.

Tips & Tricks was a magazine that ran between 1993 and 2007. Unlike most gaming-related publications, Tips & Tricks didn't produce reviews or anything like that. Their main focus was on providing readers with gameplay help and lots of cheat codes. The magazine was famous for its cheats, which were featured in huge, alphabetized lists in the back of each issue. They also had huge features and walkthroughs at the front of the magazine that provided plenty of assistance to those that might purchase the games they covered.

T&T had something special, though, and it wasn't just the cheat codes. Where as most gaming magazines even then functioned as hype-and-review machines or specialized newspapers, T&T was always about playing the games you already had :) It had an interesting perspective and was an invaluable tool in the pre-Game FAQs era. Tips & Tricks also had numerous columns throughout the magazine that focused on specific gaming communities (Halo, Final Fantasy) or on peripheral aspects of video games (such as Japanese imports or game collecting). In short, Tips & Tricks was the ultimate hobbyist video game publication, and was, for me personally, an amazingly enriching lifeline into the broader gaming community, especially before the internet got into full swing.

A selection from my own Tips & Tricks collection. I had lots more as
a kid, but I'm slowly building back up :)

 
But, alas, all good things must come to an end. Like many magazines, Tips & Tricks wasn't able to handle the oncoming of digital media very well. The aforementioned Game FAQs site largely made their walkthroughs pointless, and it wasn't long before huge catalogues of cheat codes sprang up around the internet as well. In 2007, T&T made the switch from a monthly magazine to a quarterly (then semi-annually) "Codebook," or simple collection of cheat codes. Even this was not enough to save them, however. The Codebooks themselves ceased publication in 2011, and just like that Tips & Tricks passed with the wind into the realm of history.

Nowadays, Tips & Tricks doesn't get much remembrance. There is an excellent in-depth history of the publication on GameLosers.net, which features interviews with several staff members. There are also a few scans of some early issues available from the Internet Archive. Chris Bieniek, Editor-In-Chief of T&T and the mastermind behind much of the magazine's greatness, runs a site called Video Game Ephemera, where he showcases some of the items in his jaw-droppingly huge collection of gaming paraphernalia (he also gave a really cool interview to Atari HQ many years ago where he talked about his early career and gave some insight into T&T's predecessors and founding. Worth a read!). And... that's pretty much it! Like much print media before the internet era, it isn't new, so it isn't tended to.  

Tips & Tricks magazine is something of a relic at this point, but its pages still brim with a wealth of information for anyone courageous enough to brave a paper-cut :) It was a huge part of my childhood, and in many ways, I wish that it or something like it were still around. I have yet to find a game-playing-focused publication either physically or digitally that truly recaptures the sense of pure hobbyist enjoyment that T&T had. Maybe that doesn't exist anymore, but in this era of rampant clickbait, multi-year-long hype that ends in bitter disappointment, acidic reviews, and constant gamer infighting, the peaceable world of Tips & Tricks, where games are just about having some fun, is something I personally can't help but long for.

Whew! :) That's about all I have to say this week. I promise next week will be more on topic of my usual fare, such my upcoming game Chroma Road. See you then!