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It's messy and artibitrary. Why the WuTang controller and no CharacteriSticks? Both are novelty shapes that did nothing to advance the state of the art. Why no mention of the Konix SpeedKing, the first home computer stick that I'm aware of to face the reality of living room gaming, and get rid of the sit-on-computer-desk design (although the later Cheetah bug was much better)? And then there's huge gaps in the heredity, implying the joystick was invented independently several times.

I'm stuck in the past so Retro Gamer is the perfect magazine for me then. Check out their site at http://www.retrogamer.net/.

The magazine has the most researched content I have seen in ages, and not just run of the mill reviews that you will find similar copies of in your avarage gaming magazine.

It is also a magazine which is strongly interacting with its readership through the forum. Well worth checking out.

Check out Retrogamer, and compare it to the American equivalent. Wait, what American equivalent?

I read Retro Gamer. It's from England so it's kind of spendy, but I did see an ad for Video Game Collector. It's an American mag of the same ilk, so it ought to be cheaper.

Retro Gamer gets all the interviews of the old-timey developers from UK and the rest of Europe. I'm an old time ST user, so most of the games I used to play originate from that part of the world.

CVG nearly exists. The paper magazine died finally in October 2004 after turning into a kiddie biased pile of toilet paper. The online version still exists at http://www.computerandvideogames.com./ I'm involved in a project to archive the entire run so we'll get back to you on that.

The article does it a dissevice. While it was close on its purchase by Future that was because Dennis (who themselves bought it from EMAP) wanted shot of it. It's circulation was half of Gamesmasters' and to call Gamesmaster kiddie compared to the CVG of the last couple of years is like calling Windows svelte compared to DOS 1.

As for "Coasted all the way to 2004", that ignores the Jaz Rignall and Paul Davies eras of the early 1990s and 1996ish which produced some of the last great games journalism before magazines were beaten to a bloody press-release filled pulp by the internet. They also had Retro coverage before any other mainstream magazine, which got countless of us into it and no doubt accounts for the success of the superb Retro Gamer magazine published by Imagine these days.

Worth mentioning because uk users may not have seen it. There's actually a newsstand magazine specifically for Retro gaming here going under the incredibly imaginative moniker of "Retro Gamer" magazine. They even have a pretty good forum if you're willing to do some chav dodging and can stand huge picture sigs.

There's also Retro Fusion which is only avaliable in Gamestation.

I completely agree with the earlier comment that gameplay is most important - not the graphics.

Also, perhaps it's my age - I'm now 30 and honestly have less time to play games. I can afford the fifteen minutes needed to play Qix - but something like Final Fantasy X needs to be played in hour sittings!

The NYT article just brushes the surface. For more info on the on-line classic gaming community, check out some of these sites:
AtariAge
Retrogaming Radio
Classic gaming

Magazines:
Armchair Arcade
Classic Gamer
Manci Games
Retrogamer

Also, there are quite a few gaming conventions, most notably Philly Classic and Classic Gaming Expo.

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jason