Paragon £3.95 100pp (14 ads) + "free" Banjo-Kazooie tips book

As the slimmest mag of the 5 on offer (just 86 editorial pages compared to N64's 120), it's a bit hopeful to imagine that anyone would actually pay £3.95 for a copy of 64 Magazine on its own. Calling the admittedly quite impressive tips book "free", then, is stretching credibility to the point of fraudulence. Otherwise, three full read-throughs failed to provide anything remarkable to note about 64 Magazine whatsoever, so let's move on.

DUBIOUS COVER CLAIM: "The First And Best Nintendo 64 Mag!" So how come N64 is three issues older than you, then? And what about NOM?

VISUAL STYLE: Macs can do this kind of thing entirely automatically these days, you know.

REVIEW AVERAGE: 74% (No guide)

ESTIMATED AGE OF TARGET READER: 16

CUTEST REGULAR COLUMN: "Saved!" - a list of games on other formats which N64 owners can be glad they'll never have to play. (This month including Heart Of Darkness, Spice World and Men In Black.)

LEAST IMPRESSIVE HYPERBOLE: "It's got more twists than a Moebius strip!" (F-Zero X, Nintendo). Since a Moebius [sic] strip has in fact precisely one twist, not quite as hearty a recommendation as 64 Magazine thinks it is.

VERDICT: Forgettable.

NINTENDO OFFICIAL MAGAZINE

EMAP £2.95 124pp (17 ads) + free Mission Impossible tips booklet

You have to feel for them. It's bad enough being hamstrung by the constraints of any "official" magazine, but when you're dealing with the N64 (official releases so far this year: ooh, about 6), you're always going to be in for a hard time. Sure enough, NOM's reviews (of which there are a paltry 5) are over and done with by page 47, leaving the unfortunate reader to plough through 70-odd pages of tips and dull "previews" of games everyone else reviewed 6 months ago before the end. (Rather than, say, using the mag's position to provide interesting and exclusively-informed features. Or indeed, /any/ features.) And even at that, despite the review section's trumpeted promise that the reviews featured "All new games out now in the UK", only three of the five actually were (so much for "official" authority). On the upside, ONM's insider status meant it was the only mag to conspicuously notice F-Zero X's second set of bonus tracks.

DUBIOUS COVER CLAIM: "Official Always First Biggest And Best!" Hmm. Punctuation notwithstanding, at least two big fat lies there.

VISUAL STYLE: Noticeably similar to Playstation Plus (very loud, very dense and very cluttered), but more restrained and less nauseating.

REVIEW AVERAGE: 77% ("Nothing too special")

ESTIMATED AGE OF TARGET READER: 11

LEAST RELEVANT COMPARISON: "It's not as addictive as Goldeneye" (Mario Kart 64, Nintendo)

LEAST SURPRISING CONSUMER ADVICE: The hardware round-up where the best device in every single category is the official Nintendo one.

VERDICT: Strangled at source.

N64 MAGAZINE

Future £2.95 132pp (14 ads) + Banjo-Kazooie tips book, Wipeout 64 booklet and £5 GAME discount voucher

First up, a criticism. N64 Magazine seems to treat features as something of an afterthought, and the ones it does include are quite often decidedly on the weak side (an ill-advised, Edge-wannabe list of the "50 Most Important People In The Nintendo Universe", for example, half of whom turned out to be game characters). I point this out for fans of balance, because otherwise I'm about to embark on some slightly embarrassing gushing. N64 is an object lesson to the entire publishing world in just how good games mags can be if you actually put any effort into them. Huge, dazzlingly comprehensive reviews, written with real style, wit and knowledge of the subject are the showpiece, but if anything the several distinct tips sections (usually acres of dull space-filler in games mags) are even more impressive, offering an unprecedented level of reader interaction via participatory regular features like "I'm The Best" and "Skill Club 64". This kind of thing represents a huge, time-consuming and thanklessly tedious unnecessary extra workload for mag teams, but creates a powerful bond with readers (illustrated on the funny, friendly letters pages), of a sort that no other games mag currently in existence comes anywhere near achieving. N64 follows the template set up by the likes of Your Sinclair, Super Play and Zero, but takes it further and does it better. It's a masterpiece of both concept and execution, and if it doesn't win Mag Of The Year at the next Indin, you all deserve to be kicked in the face.

DUBIOUS COVER CLAIM: "Official!...The UK's Best-Selling N64 Magazine". Cunningly ambiguous wording.

VISUAL STYLE: Packed with detail, yet extraordinarily clear. Frankly, lovely.

REVIEW AVERAGE: 68% ("Perfectly playable, but just isn't special in any way")

ESTIMATED AGE OF TARGET READER: 20

ODDEST SPECULATION: "If there is a god, he's - as I write - probably chuckling wildly as he balances a bucket of custard precariously above Einstein's bedroom door." (Buck Bumble, Ubi Soft)

MOST DISGRACEFUL PUN: "Two bee do bee do." (Box-out on Buck Bumble's two-player modes)

VERDICT: Probably the best videogames magazine in the world.

TOTAL 64

Rapide £2.95 100pp (11.5 ads) + free Mortal Kombat 4 tips booklet, Banjo-Kazooie poster and £5 GAME discount voucher

Of all the mags here, Total 64 took by far the longest to cover, not because it's especially big (in fact it's the second-thinnest) or particularly densely-packed, but because the designers have plumped for a bizarre huge spacing/weird font combination for all the text that actually makes you feel quite ill after you've been looking at it for five minutes or so, like when you try to read a book on a bumpy car ride. If you can keep your lunch down long enough, you'll find some enthusiastic, if not stupendously entertaining, writing, but since there's nothing in Total 64 that isn't done better elsewhere, it's not really worth the physical anguish.

DUBIOUS COVER CLAIM: "The No.1 Best Selling Unofficial N64 Magazine" Not according to the ABCs it isn't.

VISUAL STYLE: Bleeurgh.

REVIEW AVERAGE: 67% (Good to average")

ESTIMATED AGE OF TARGET READER: 15

MOST INEXPLICABLE REVIEW FEATURE: All the reviews have the game's name printed upside-down beside a tiny right-way-up screenshot near the top of the first right-hand page of the review.

BEST CHARACTER: "Cheaty Monkey", the tips chimp.

MOST INCONGRUOUS REVIEW/SCORE: "The worst game on the N64... 72%" (Wild Choppers, Seta)

VERDICT: Actually, I think I'm going to be sick again. Excuse me.

N64 PRO

IDG £2.99 100pp (7 ads) + free games challenge booklet

There's lots going right here - kicking off by setting just about the right level of editorial personality, N64 Pro moves quickly to a reviews section with a fair few good new ideas in it. You get multiple opinions on every game, including a reader's view, and the main reviewer's email address is printed beside the verdict "for instant reader response". The Software House Leagues are cute too, with publishers awarded points for game quality and rated in tables with promotion and relegation, and the game directory section at the back takes the bold step of listing not only the mag's own review scores, but those of its four competitors as well. Sadly, though, once into the actual text, the standard of both writing and game analysis is desperate, so nearly all the good work is wasted. And with only a single, 2-page, feature to be found (and even that's about a new steering wheel), there's little else to hold the reader's interest.

DUBIOUS COVER CLAIM: "Every N64 Game Reviewed" Just about vague enough to get away with. Well done.

VISUAL STYLE: Rudimentary.

REVIEW AVERAGE: 78% ("Good")

ESTIMATED AGE OF TARGET READER: 17

BEST PUN: "I'm so Disney my head is spinning" (Toy Story 2, Activision)

WORST GRASP OF MATHEMATICAL CONCEPTS: "It's most notable that we think almost 60% of all games released have been above average!" Someone buy them a dictionary.

1. All information based on the issue which was current as of 3/10/98.

2. In this instance, review average was calculated by discounting only the single highest and lowest scores (rather than the two highest and lowest), as otherwise NOM would have had its average calculated from a single review.

3. The world of the N64 must be an extraordinarily dull and uneventful one, as only a staggeringly low /five/ pages (out of a total of 556) were devoted to features of any kind whatsoever.

4. Then again, absolutely no-one felt the need to share their retarded views on breasts or lager with us, which was a blissful relief after last month's Playstation titles.