i was reminiscing about old pc gaming magazines recently and it dawned on me that most of the magazines i loved were by the same publisher (imagine/future). i used to get them from the grocery store and i can recall getting the first issue of cdrom today. cdrom today came with a disc full of demos. the magazine wasn’t dedicated to games, but nonetheless a lot of coverage was about games. this was during the era of the early 90’s when a cdrom drive in a PC was still a cutting-edge type of thing. it was an excellent magazine and i played the heck out of the demos.

not long after that i came across the first issue of pc gamer. the first couple of issues came with floppy disks that contained a single game demo. later on they adopted the cdrom today demo cd idea. pc gamer was a really high quality magazine in my opinion. again i would play the game demos over and over (usually the demo only contained one level of a particular game). i had a subscription to pc gamer for a year or two i believe. my only complaint about the magazine was that during the mid 90’s you’d get these really big deluxe issues (i feel like they were 2x or 3x the size of a normal issue). anyways, a huge issue sounds like something really awesome, but it wasn’t because they were full of advertisements…some were like 5 pages dedicated to a single game ad. i generally like game ads, but they were a bit out of control during that time period.

i did have a few issues of other gaming magazines at the time such as computer gaming world and gamepro (and maybe some others), but in my opinion they were generally of much lesser quality than pc gamer. i’ve already stated my adoration for nintendo power of the late 80’s and early-mid 90’s previously. it’s interesting that future publishing actually became the maintainer of the later nintendo power issues. i have never seen any of the future published nintendo power issues, but i can’t think of a worthier maintainer.

in the early 2000’s i subscribed to maximum pc…another excellent future publication. i have no complaints about the quality of maximum pc really. the content was heavily based on pc-modding…and that was a subject i became less and less interested as time went on. so i eventually did not renew the subscription based on my changing interests.

and finally in the mid-2000’s i was subscribed to the official xbox magazine (also a future pub). also a good magazine and i imagine it was hard to write for because there weren’t that many great xbox games. this magazine also shipped with a demo disc for the xbox which i played extensively (somewhat of a flashback to my pc gamer days).

that’s all the future publications that i grew up with and every one of them were top notch. i wish i could find an archive of some of the older issues.

some non-future mags that i also really loved were wizard (for comics) and inquest/inquest gamer (for rpgs and ccgs). the retro gamer magazines from the UK were pretty nice as well.

i picked up the game 10million for 99 cents in a google play summer sale. i can’t recall what the original price of the game was, but i had seen it around prior to the sale. anyways, it’s a retro styled fast-paced RPG. i hate to use the word “retro”, but i’m going to for lack of a better term. the graphics look like a marriage of old PC DOS games and the atari 2600. there’s nice old school music too. i jumped right in and started playing it and kept playing until i finished the game 4 hours later. one reason for playing it straight through was because i was unaware if the game saved your progress between exits (it does) and i definitely didn’t want to lose my progress. the other reason was because it was really fun and addicting. my total game playing time was 4 hours but i technically could have finished the game at 3.5 hours. i wanted to make sure i had the best of each items before completing the game however, so that’s where the 4 hours comes in.

like i said the gameplay is like a fast-paced RPG but with no NPCs or towns, no overworld, etc. you simply explore dungeons and fight monsters and discover treasure. the end goal is ultimately to gain your freedom from the dungeons. after exploring you can level up your equipment and skills. the outcome of battles and exploration is determined by what i would describe as an extra-interactive slot machine. there’s randomly generated tiles for the slot machine and you have to match 3 like tiles. the type of tiles determines the end result such as gain resources or an item, fight with melee or magic, or open a treasure chest/door. sometimes there’s natural matches, but most of the time you’ll need to intervene and move the tiles around to create matches. some google play reviews labeled this a puzzle game. i’d be hard pressed to describe the tile matching system as a puzzle. it’s not like a tetris or anything, but there is some limited strategy involved. for instance, you want to create multiple matches for bonuses and maximum effect. early on it can become frustrating because there is a time limit in the dungeons that kicks you out if you reach it. however, the time limit becomes much less of an issue when you level up your equipment and skills and stock up on items.

it’s definitely one of the more fun and engaging games i’ve played on a smartphone. if there’s ever a sequel i’ll definitely get it. the 99 cents price seems to fit well, though i’d be willing to pay up to $2.50 for this game. beyond that price it would be hard justifying buying a game with such limited play time.