This was often the best possible experience, because the games themselves were terrible. Games are better now, but are they better than the games you imagined while looking at the grainy screenshots? That's tough to say.
Mathematician | Making a strategy game | Maybe writing a murder mystery
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in reply to @mogwai-poet's post:
I spent so much time as a kid, reading through magazines and catalogues, and imagining what it would be like to actually own the game/product in question. Unquestionably, my imagination was always more spectacular than the reality.
I get the same way with box art. Evocative box art works on me even when I know the game it's selling sucks.
Sid Meier addressed this (sort of) in his GDC keynote. By having random events happen in text form, it would sort of push the player to imagine wild things happening in the world, without having to go through the trouble of rendering this scene for a fraction of the payoff. The player's headspace will always produce something more fantastical. Kinda tell don't show.
Okay, but what got me into modern PC gaming was a Wired article about an upcoming game called "Portal" which did in fact live up to the article and screenshots. So I'm just going to assume that magazine coverage of video games peaked in 2007.
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