132pp (15 ads, plus 4 house ads)

Unlike its Playstation equivalent, ODM’s coverdisc doesn’t justify buying the magazine on its own. Usually offering just two or three playable demos, often of rather second-division games, the disc is a reasonable enough bonus for the two extra quid you pay, but it’s what’s on the pages that really has to sell ODM. Luckily, then, this is a superb magazine in its own right. Loaded with features, most of them with some kind of interactive element (readers regularly getting to put tough questions to Sega and game publishers, both by letter and, impressively, face-to-face), and striking a near-perfect balance between news, reviews, previews, tips and other content, ODM is made even more readable by the cleanest, crispest design ever seen in games magazine publishing. Happily, it’s also ditched the ridiculous "fashion" content that blighted early issues. All this and the lowest (by a significant distance) average review score out of all the DC mags into the bargain. You can’t ask for much more than that.

REAL EDITORIAL PAGES: 95

PAGES OF FEATURE CONTENT: 22

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE: 53.75% (8 games)

GOOD FOR: Balance, independence.

BAD FOR: Occasionally slightly glib.

VERDICT: Without a doubt the best "official" games mag ever.

DC-UK (Future, £2.95)

124pp (10 ads, plus 5 house ads)

A little less dense and more welcoming than when it was launched, but also a little more run-of-the mill and less interesting, DC-UK remains one of Future’s better magazines – intelligent, enthusiastic, well-written and with a perfectly-judged level of personality. The main victim of the dumbing-down has been feature content, with just one very lightweight main feature contributing to the page count of eight, compared to a monstrous 32 in the last issue reviewed in CTW. Also gone are innovative ideas like having all the reviews right at the front, but on the plus side the design in now brighter and more accessible. The writing isn’t quite as consistent as ODM’s, but the high points are higher, and it’s really only the comparative lack of scope that leaves DC-UK in second place.

REAL EDITORIAL PAGES: 91

PAGES OF FEATURE CONTENT: 8

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE: 60.1% (11 games)

GOOD FOR: The basics – news, previews, reviews.

BAD FOR: Anything fancy.

VERDICT: Sad to see invention and originality so ruthlessly crushed, but still an excellent mag.

DREAMCAST MAGAZINE (Paragon, £2.99 with tips book)

132pp (30 ads, plus 1 house ad)

"It’s not often we get excited about a driving game," opens Dreamcast Magazine’s preview of Colin McRae Rally 2.0, "Let alone a rally game". According to the mag’s own reviews directory, though, the average DM score for a driving game is 84%, with rally games managing an average 89%. Don’t you just hate that? The cynical Stalinist rewriting of cowardly history is the worst thing about Dreamcast Magazine, though (well, apart from the name). This is a bright, readable mag, which does nothing particularly well and nothing particularly badly, and the writing is a lot more restrained than Paragon’s other titles (oddly, since it shares most of its writers with Nintendo Pro). Anything really interesting I can tell you about it? Don’t think so.

REAL EDITORIAL PAGES: 79

PAGES OF FEATURE CONTENT: 6

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE: 74.5% (6 games)

GOOD FOR: Not being crap.

BAD FOR: Comparing with other DC mags.

VERDICT: The Coventry City of Dreamcast magazines – no immediate danger of relegation, little prospect of major honours-challenging.

DREAMCAST MONTHLY (Quay, £2.99)

116pp (8 ads, plus 1 house ad)

If there’s one thing you can say about Dreamcast Monthly, it’s that they’ve got a way with a turn of phrase. Samba de Amigo, for example, is charmingly announced on the news pages as "Enough to intrigue our cheap little minds. How futile our resistance is becoming", and later on, Time Stalkers gets the elegant callout "a lazily-executed collection of uneasy compromises". The mag’s also not afraid to kick off its review section with a game scoring 3/10, which is always an encouraging sign. Sadly, the standards throughout the mag as a whole are uneven, with every perceptive and considered review usually being followed by one that recounts the game’s plot for three pages and then goes "...and it’s great/mediocre/crap!" at the end. And similarly, despite the bold 3/10 lead review, a glance at the directory section reveals that it’s the first such low score ever awarded – of the 76 DC games previously reviewed, just 6 score lower than 5/10, and none lower than 4/10. (The only 10/10, incidentally, goes laughably to Tomb Raider 4, scoring higher even than Soul Calibur.) But then again, the directory section is content-wise easily one of the best I’ve seen anywhere. And so on. If the Jekyll side of DM can overcome the Hyde, they could have something really good on their hands.

REAL EDITORIAL PAGES: 93

PAGES OF FEATURE CONTENT: 4

AVERAGE REVIEW SCORE: 65% (4 games)

GOOD FOR: Intermittently excellent writing.

BAD FOR: Dodgy scoring and few reviews.

READ-ME-FIRST NOTES:

"Real editorial pages" means just that – pages which contain new original content. Not included, then, are ads (obviously), directory sections (vastly the same every month), or tips (lazy-arsed space-filling as often as not nicked off the Internet or sent out to everyone by the publisher).

"Feature content" means real features about some actual subject, ie not previews by another name.

WHO’S THE BEST?

Coo. Why is it only Dreamcast owners who magazine publishers seem to think deserve clean, readable layouts and restrained, intelligent copy?

1. OFFICIAL DREAMCAST MAGAZINE – gorgeous design, tons of features, lots of reader interaction.

2. DC-UK – second-best, but not by far. Probably the best individual writing, but slightly limited in scope.

3. DREAMCAST MONTHLY – also following pretty close behind, but lacks the consistency to take second place.