The long-awaited return of CVG to newsstands across the country is only weeks away.
Ruining 'complete collections' all across eBay, 'CVG Presents' will appear on April 16 in the form of a bi-monthly magazine dedicated to the biggest events in gaming. The first issue will be dedicated to Grand Theft Auto IV and they don't come much bigger than that.
The rebirth ends a four year absence from magazine land, which all began back in 1981.
Alongside all our up-to-the-minute news and article content, the new magazine enables us to document and celebrate the most important gaming events in unrivalled detail. Plus you can read it on the toilet - a difficult feat for the digital version unless you have a very small laptop.
As well as offering the odd kebab joke, each issue of CVG Presents promises to be collectable, with art direction from the award-winning Terry Stokes (of Edge fame) and editing duties taken care of by games mag veteran Steve Williams.
The first issue delivers a monster 180-page guide to Rockstar's acclaimed series from the first game in 1997, right through to IV.
With a mixture of new editorial as well as reviews and interviews from the archive, the magazine offers a complete history of GTA, capped off with 30 sumptuous pages dedicated to the truly massive GTA IV. It's not one to be missed, even if we do say so ourselves.
"I bought issue one of CVG in 1981 and I'm delighted that Future is bringing the brand back to the newsstand," said publishing director James Binns. "We will be promoting CVG Presents in store, online and across the rest of our growing games portfolio. Gamers are going absolutely nuts for the release of GTAIV, and the timing of this launch couldn't be better."
We've asked the man sitting behind us who closed the mag ("suspended" he says) for a comment, but he's gone all shy.
The first issue of GTA Presents goes on sale Wednesday, April 16, with a coverprice of £5.
Great news! Loved CVG mag! Probably why I have haunted these forums ever since it went awol.
Just do me a favour CVG. Please don't put Mazza or wrestling on the cover page. Ever. Stops me buying Gamesmaster through shame. Women would be good. Or cars. Manly stuff. Having a half-naked man on the front does nothing for me, especially if he is wearing a red cap! Just a suggestion.
So, the mag hasn't really returned? Future is just cashing in on the popularity of whatever gaming topic is big at the time each month or so. Of course, that's much easier to do using a name that's been kicking around since 1981...
I think i remember the first edition. Brought it with a mate.. must have been about 1995 or something.
It was quite a big (dimensions) magazine, loads of stuff and printed on what i thought was recycled paper, quite rough and not glossy. Anyone remember? I'd love to see it again **stares into space remembering the past**
I dunno about this. Edge will be a pretty tough mag to beat. Anyway, Edge had a huge feature on GTA in its last issue, and if I wanna know about the franchises history I'll look on Wikipedia.
What we're really missing is an irreverant, yet well-informed gaming magazine. That's what CVG used to be back in the 80's. Maybe they should bring back Mean Machines. Now that was a funny magazine!
A Fiver is abit much. The reason I started buying CVG was because of the price. I remember when it was £1.50
Also...I have my picture in the very last issue. =P I said I looked like Harry Townsend from Silent Hill. And they promised a prize for the best lookalikes. I never got a prize =[[
i loved old CVG back in the old amstrad days, but these days im too busy to read a whole mag.
dont get me wrong i love this website, but launching a mag again now is risky in my opinion. good luck any way, i might pick up the first one as it looks nice and may be a colletable on day.
Will it include programs to type in for the ZX Spectrum, BBC micro and so on like in 1981/3?
Always used to p**s me off, inputting 5 pages of code, only to find a syntax error and proof reading it five time to realize that I had input it correctly, but the program just didn’t work,
Grrrrrrr
Youth of today, don’t know how easy they have it !!
Is there money to be made in old issues by the way? I think I have some kicking around somewhere!!
Will it include programs to type in for the ZX Spectrum, BBC micro and so on like in 1981/3?
Always used to p**s me off, inputting 5 pages of code, only to find a syntax error and proof reading it five time to realize that I had input it correctly, but the program just didn’t work,
Grrrrrrr
Youth of today, don’t know how easy they have it !!
Is there money to be made in old issues by the way? I think I have some kicking around somewhere!!
all morning keying in code / proof reading 5 times coz it didnt work then only to find a thing like a floating pie you had to shoot with a twig on a blue and green screen...
Will it include programs to type in for the ZX Spectrum, BBC micro and so on like in 1981/3?
Always used to p**s me off, inputting 5 pages of code, only to find a syntax error and proof reading it five time to realize that I had input it correctly, but the program just didn’t work,
Grrrrrrr
Youth of today, don’t know how easy they have it !!
Is there money to be made in old issues by the way? I think I have some kicking around somewhere!!
all morning keying in code / proof reading 5 times coz it didnt work then only to find a thing like a floating pie you had to shoot with a twig on a blue and green screen...
Those were the days
Plus, Correct me if in fact I am wrong, but I don’t think so, but was the original Magazine not called C&VG?
Pedantic I know, but us gaming fossil like to have things accurate!!
Let's hope they pay more care and attention to proofreading the mag than they do for the site.
Half the articles on here appear to have been created by a monkey banging about on a keyboard.
And £5? Far, far too dear.
Exactly what I was going to say.
most of the articles are ripped from the pages of other future mags. i just hope the new mag isn't just a rehash of what been put on this site. CVG was by far the best multi-platform mag out there many moons ago and i'll at least pick up the first new issue. lets just hope that radion automatics back and maybe gaz as well. doubt it though. can we bring back mean machines next?
Great news! Loved CVG mag! Probably why I have haunted these forums ever since it went awol.
Just do me a favour CVG. Please don't put Mazza or wrestling on the cover page. Ever. Stops me buying Gamesmaster through shame. Women would be good. Or cars. Manly stuff. Having a half-naked man on the front does nothing for me, especially if he is wearing a red cap! Just a suggestion.
Yes you better be careful or you may catch the gay...
I quite liked CVG when it was a magazine though it was quite poor near the end of it's life. I'll probably pick it up to see what it's like now and I'm quite interested to hear about GTA IV's multiplayer.
Used to love all the old mags, C&VG and Mean Machines were my favs, though bring back GamesX a weekly games magazine again! Oh and give me some more free holograms C&VG!
I remember collecting every CVG mag from around 1996 to 2000. Well the first issue I bought was a preview of Supermario RPG on the SNES.Was the best games mag ever ( with the high five rating system anyway - remember that? ). I still read CVG everyday, but on this website I'll get my fix.
I can't remember what my first Issue of C&VG i got, though it was around 1989 time, deciding between a Master System, the about to be released Megadrive or spanking great Amstrad GX4000! lol I've got Issue one of Edge somewhere, also C&VG is the Issue one of Go! supplement still selling for £50 in your offices!?
1 : occurring every two months 2 : occurring twice a month
every definition site says it can mean both - every 2 months or twice a month. so which is it?! must be every 2 months as something that comes out every 2 weeks isnt collectable!
Typical! It could be anything then.
Maybe it will be every 2 months to see how popular it is before they commit to monthly or more often?
Did CVG once come with stickers for tamagotchis or was that something else?
As long as it isn't like the last two or three years of pathetic drivel that made up C&VG magazine before. It was aimed at the lowest common denominator audience of gamers with useless trite like the Tips Nurse, it was very garish and childish in its approach.
The team who wrote that magazine were arrogant in their letters pages, then the readership dwindled and they all got sacked.
The original C&VG was, to put it mildly, rubbish IMO, so it didn't surprise me when it disappeared off the shelves. It was cheap though if I remember so asking £5 for the revamped one is just not the way to fight your way back into an overcrowded market that already has gamesTM and Edge.
To be honest, video games magazines are less and less useful anyway seeing as they're usually out of date before they even hit the shops and can get everything you need to know about games from the internet.
Good luck, CVG, I think you're going to need it...
Oh and £5 is a standard price of magazines today. Edge, Games TM (give or take 50pence.)
Edit: Mind you bi-monthly, I like the idea of keeping up to date with the news, but that's £10 a month and yes that is too pricey.
Errrm, Bi-Monthly is every 2 months, meaning £30 a year...
Hmm.... it appears you are (sort of) right:
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bimonthly
Does bimonthly mean 'twice a month' or 'every two months'? Printer Friendly Version
I'm afraid it means both! But in the publishing industry, it is used fairly consistently to mean 'every two months'. The same ambiguity affects biweekly and biyearly. If you want to be absolutely clear, use a phrase such as 'twice a week' or 'every two years'.
So it's not entirely clear - if it is once every two months then £5 quid is cheap as frites!
Get Mr Biffo on board, he's not doing Edge anymore. Please please make it funny, a funny games mag is the future! we have enough 'oh-so-serious' mags
Definitely agreed. In fact, stick in a 'Digitiser' section, use all the old graphics, same contributers etc... and i'll be happy.
Anyway, if it is once every two months then it would seem up-to-date news is for the website only, so it could compliment the website nicely by providing decent interviews and features only.
I'll probably but the first one just to take a look and see if i like it or not. and Yeah, 5 pounds seems standard price to me, PSM3 has just gone up to 4.99 and OPM sells for 5.99.. they had one with a 'free gift' in that was 6.99, ludicrous.
£5! it had better be as in depth as GamesTM for that price. I loved the old c&vg as it was cheap and a quick read. This puts you right in competition with Edge and GamesTM, and as GamesTM is the best games magazine on the market (in my opinion), you are going to have to do something very special.
They must have sucked some serious corporate c+ck to get this passed through. Can't have been on merit. unless recycling other people's better features and fanboy-baiting is the way to go these days? Looks like a nice big fat advertorial to me - way to go to sell your soul's guys ££££.
Being bi-monthly won't help it make a dent, and £5.00 an issue is too much. Monthly at £3.99 would have been better. Total PC Gaming was able to launch at a £3.99 price point by the simple expedient of leaving off a cover disc, which was considered irrelevant, and you get a lot of content for your money.
I've gotta well fact collection of CVG mags spanning about 12 years. Don't know why I kept them all, probably OCD. Anyway this isn't the return of CVG if it only features one game/topic per issue. I'd love to see future ditch Gamesmaster for proper CVG at a decent price.
In the hope that it is funny and has some interesting articles (and a page or two on the forum) i'll buy it.
A fiver is standard price now, i pay that for Retro Gamer, and more for the Official Playstation Magazine when i can be bothered to get it. Once every 2 months means it isn't expensive (unless it does mean twice a month ).
I just hope i'm not reading everything i have already read here and they have a bit extra. There is tough competition though, Edge is a decent Magazine whenever i buy it.
No joke. as a kid the first magazine i ever bought was C&VG. Since then I must have spent between 5- 10 grand on magazine crapola!
I have fond feelings of nostalgia for C&VG and regret selling my collection on eBay a couple of years ago. Looking at 8-bit screenshots of games i used to drool over makes me tearful.
£5 quid is a lot. I will buy the first issue, and as long as you have a lot of editorial pages and quality content then I will be back for more! Good luck.
Oh and £5 is a standard price of magazines today. Edge, Games TM (give or take 50pence.)
Edit: Mind you bi-monthly, I like the idea of keeping up to date with the news, but that's £10 a month and yes that is too pricey.
Errrm, Bi-Monthly is every 2 months, meaning £30 a year...
Actually it means both. It an ambiguous bugger, same as biennial. but it probably is once every two months though, else they would have said fortnightly.
All I'll say is welcome back, although I don't buy mags anymore hopefully they can get back on track and return to the quality they had during the Lomas days and put the hell they endured during the mags last days behind them.
No-one seems to have mentioned the fact that its only featuring ONE game. Thats a joke and renders it almost pointless to buy. GTA4 is out on the 29th, save your fiver and put it towards the game which you will all be playing shortly.
CVG Staff - Glad you want to bring out the mag again but just featuring one game with a price of a fiver is pointless. Go the whole hog and just release the mag again and report on all the latest games. I can tell you now that you won't make much money selling a mag featuring just one game.
No-one seems to have mentioned the fact that its only featuring ONE game. Thats a joke and renders it almost pointless to buy. GTA4 is out on the 29th, save your fiver and put it towards the game which you will all be playing shortly.
CVG Staff - Glad you want to bring out the mag again but just featuring one game with a price of a fiver is pointless. Go the whole hog and just release the mag again and report on all the latest games. I can tell you now that you won't make much money selling a mag featuring just one game.
Hmm i think you're right. it does only mention one game and a bunch of out of date news articles from their website. I guess it'll be like an Edge special or something...shame really, i was quite looking forward to it.
MMMMMmmm. Either a collection of articles robbed from the rest of Future's mags, or, a collection of articles not included in Future's mags so you have to buy the f**ker if you want to read about the next AAA title.
I'll stick to the internet, and a monthly PC mag to read on the bog
argh c@vg,cant wait its been a few years,way bk when i was a lad reading the mag at school,i had the c64,most of my mates had a specky 48k those were the days,£5 bit harsh ill expect some porn in it 4 that price.
The thing is, the game itself wont be out too long after the mag, so i guess ( abit like GT prolouge) this for the GTA fans is more a question of wether you can wait or not and how excited about this game you are.
The thing is, the game itself wont be out too long after the mag, so i guess ( abit like GT prolouge) this for the GTA fans is more a question of wether you can wait or not and how excited about this game you are.
well the magazine went down hill at the end, and the website is just made up of other magazines so i hope theres something in the mag that stands out and recaptures what it used to be like that sense of being a part of something, unlike these forums lol.
Will it have Yob writing the letters page????? first got C&VG back in 1990 loved it..... BRING BACK AMSTRAD ACTION with cover cassette ahhhh those where the days......
Yes no more games master, I finally get to read the oldest games magazine yet again.
Whereabouts in Cornwall are you from?
I live in The Lake District.....
Bugger, too far away for me to steal your copy.
Why cornish_pasty as a username?
Yeah sorry this is a late post (too much course work) but my name is cornish pasty because I love them. The best British food in my opinion.
Best British food?? I know each to their own and all that but the best British food is not something that looks like one of my gran's (RIP) old slippers stitched up and filled with cat sick, and that tastes even worse...christ..i'd even take an Iceland sausage roll over those detestable creations.
lookin forward to it, cvg was such a good read back in the day and it was damn funny. i dont mind £5 if its a good read and is funny. also i dont mind a multiformat mag rather than payin £4 for ps3 one and than £4 for a 360 one as well.
Will it have Yob writing the letters page????? first got C&VG back in 1990 loved it..... BRING BACK AMSTRAD ACTION with cover cassette ahhhh those where the days......
perhaps the finest mag that ever existed. I can only dream of its return. the pink pages, the music info, the reviews and postmodern formating that enforced reading forward then backwards.
The best issue of cvg included a cassette with the music from outrun and 720 degrees. Although none of the computer game music nowadays would compare to the awesome outrun soundtrack, you should still do the same but with a cd of music from the latest games.
I got half way through the second page and had to comment on how miserable some of you lot are.
Fecks sake, it's only a couple of quid. CVG the mag was quality way back when. It may have gotten a bit s**te towards the end but it's the reason I'm here on this site. If it did nothing else, it spawned the CVG forums which have given us all a good laugh.
I'll certainly buy it. Bring back Mean Machines and I'll be your best friend.
OOh I'm not sure about this. I used to worship CVG mag. It was so amazing esp right around the time when the Saturn and PS1 where introduced. So many classic issues came out in those years, until it had THAT disastrous 'revamp'. Thats when I (and everyone else I suspect) stopped reading, in disgust, after about 10 years.
This is a very brave move, seeing as print media is on it's bottom these days. Good luck!
Yes no more games master, I finally get to read the oldest games magazine yet again.
Whereabouts in Cornwall are you from?
I live in The Lake District.....
Bugger, too far away for me to steal your copy.
Why cornish_pasty as a username?
Yeah sorry this is a late post (too much course work) but my name is cornish pasty because I love them. The best British food in my opinion.
Best British food?? I know each to their own and all that but the best British food is not something that looks like one of my gran's (RIP) old slippers stitched up and filled with cat sick, and that tastes even worse...christ..i'd even take an Iceland sausage roll over those detestable creations.
At least we know that you like to eat lips and assholes...
That is all that's in sausage rolls, no matter how tasty they appear to be. A pasty is better for you than most of the stuff that's available from iceland. Hell, at least a pasty has some form of vegetables and meat in it.
What no demo discs or anthing like that? £5? f**k off.
What? it's an 180 page special, other specials are £6-7 esp retro specials, so go and get a job, it's only 30-45 mins of work for a few hours of reading stop bloody moaning!
Five quid? that's way too expensive guys, from your description of the mag ( 180 pages, "collectors editon" type covers) you are just adding to the already heavily catered market of GamesTM ( what happened to the writing and page design in that mag since the mid to late 40s issues?) and the woefully self righteous oh so underwhelming , and frankly immensley dull,Edge.
£3.00 should be the benchmark of a magazine, and it should have NO developer interviews at all, contain masses of game news, lots of reviews, very few previews, and well designed game solutions.
Five quid? that's way too expensive guys, from your description of the mag ( 180 pages, "collectors editon" type covers) you are just adding to the already heavily catered market of GamesTM ( what happened to the writing and page design in that mag since the mid to late 40s issues?) and the woefully self righteous oh so underwhelming , and frankly immensley dull,Edge.
£3.00 should be the benchmark of a magazine, and it should have NO developer interviews at all, contain masses of game news, lots of reviews, very few previews, and well designed game solutions.
Oh well, that's obviously a pipe dream.
Of course it's a pipe dream, you can't just make games out of thin air for the magazine to review. Also i love previews, otherwise how would learn about a game??
Bought it today.. all about GTA IV (or GTA 13 depending how you look at it) ... great stuff! The original gaming mag is back and I love it!!!! Thanks CVG!
Copyright 2006 - 2009 Future Publishing Limited, Beauford Court, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath, UK BA1 2BW England and Wales company registration number 2008885