a tribute to super play
~born November 1992, died September 1996~
I can quite honestly say that without Super Play, I would probably never have discovered the wonders of the Japanese RPG, I would never have SoulBonded Celes and Riesz - in fact, I might never have discovered SoulBonding at all, for it was Final Fantasy III that first inspired me to get online - and this webpage would undoubtedly not exist. It sounds stupid, doesn't it, to say that a games magazine was in part responsible for making you the person you are today? But I do believe that, if not for Super Play, the world of Mana, moogles and animé might have passed me by, and I could now be a Leonardo DiCaprio-worshipping college drop-out with two kids and a job cleaning out supermarket toilets. Or worse, I could have been turned to the Dark Side, and wound up one of Sony's soulless acolytes. It seems, then, that I have a hell of a lot to thank Matt Bielby, Tony Mott, Zy Nicholson, Wil Overton and everyone else who made Super Play possible for. Hence this little tribute. It isn't much in return for four years of incomparable gaming advice, Final Fantasy Forums, Wil Overton's stunning animé artwork and Neko the maltreated mascot tiger, but then again I don't think anyone can match that.
So just what was it that made Super Play great? There really isn't one single stand-out feature that set the magazine apart from the glut of other SNES mags cluttering the shelves at the time; everything about it was unique. It was the first magazine to inform rather than hype, to address its readership as equals rather than patronise and talk down to them - and it could do this because, by their own admission, its creators, reviewers and artists were just as fanatical about their games as we were, if not more so. To quote Zy Nicholson, "Nintendo gaming wasn't just a job for us, nor simply a hobby, but a way of life." Super Play was written by gamers, for gamers. Its staff refused to pander to lesser games companies who offered them exclusive coverage on condition that their games got 90% scores. They refused to be swept up in the hype that surrounded big-name licences like Star Wars, and judged every game for what it was, regardless of who it came from or what branding was on the box. They didn't throw expletives around to make themselves appear "hard" or "clever". Most importantly, they knew what they were talking about when it came to games, and talked about them as though you did too - none of this "gosh, wow, hasn't this got lovely graphics?" crap. When Super Play told you a game was worth buying, you could trust that it was - and that was important when SNES games cost as much as N64 games do now.
Of course, what most people remember Super Play for was its unparallelled coverage of what was happening on the other side of the Big Pond - namely, in the US and, most particularly, Japan. Unlike other UK (and US) mags, its style was heavily influenced by Japanese games and games mags - from the distinctive logo with the little blob by the "P" and the Japanese translation on the cover (which, due to the restrictions of the language, actually read "Super Pray"), to the wide-eyed, dramatically-posed animé characters that littered every page. And its love of Japanese gaming extended into its journalism - while most other mags devoted only the smallest amount of space to import gaming, probably fearful of Nintendo's strict anti-import stance, Super Play made sure that the slightest whiff of anything interesting happening in the Land of the Rising Sun was tracked down, thoroughly dissected and laid bare for its readership. What other magazine would dare to devote a monthly slice of its content to Final Fantasy III, a game that was never even released in the UK and never showed hope of being? Even when other mags did cover import games, particularly RPGs, it was painfully obvious just how little they knew about them. As Wil Overton put it to NMS, the UK's "official" Nintendo magazine at the time - "You can't mark a Japanese import of Seiken Densetsu 3 down because it's full of text YOU can't read. And it's GOEMON." Couldn't have said it better myself, Overton-sama.
There are many different reasons why many different people loved Super Play. But this, more than anything, is why I loved it; it introduced me to a whole new world, a world which I may never have discovered without it, and a world which I have never once desired to leave since. Tony Mott's final words upon the mag's untimely demise? "May your joypads never fail you, game-heads." To which I can only reply: straight back atcha', guys.
Other websites devoted to Super Play:
Superplay.co.uk
The Super Play Tribute Site
Articles and images from Super Play:
The SD3 class change system, as demonstrated by Riesz - part of a feature from issue 35
Contributed by Pete Jenkins
Issue 38's in-depth three-page exploration of the game - 1 | 2 | 3
Contributed by Wishworm
The Trouble With Mana 2 (text only) - a look into SD3's non-release, from issue 39
Contributed by William Ly
If anyone can contribute writeups or scans of Super Play features, previews/reviews, or other articles of interest - particularly if they're related to Seiken Densetsu 3, or Secret of Mana in general - I'd be eternally grateful. I'm still interested in scans from "The Trouble With Mana 2" from issue 39; I'd also be interested in scans of any of the subscription pages that featured Neko.
Super Play is © Future Publishing. All artwork is © Wil Overton. All quotes taken from issue 47 of Super Play. All rights reserved.