The most popular PC-Engine titles in Japan for 1990 are not going to shock anyone. WAIT! Yes, they are…
TOP TEN PCE GAMES 1990
- 01. Momotarou Densetsu Turbo (1,769)—RPG
- 02. Genpei Toumaden (1,543)—ACTION
- 03. Momotarou Katsugeki (1,293)—ACTION
- 04. Formation Soccer Human Cup '90 (1,114)—SPORTS
- 05. Super Star Soldier (986)—SHOOT-EM-UP
- 06. Power League 3 (961)—SPORTS
- 07. Hot Blood High School Dodgeball (829)—SPORTS
- 08. Splatterhouse (812)—ACTION
- 09. Valkyrie No Densetsu (800)—ACTION
- 10. Last Armageddon (767)—RPG
NOTE: All titles are HuCARDs, except for Last Armageddon (CD-ROM). The CD-ROM format would grow in popularity, but in 1990, the number of people with a CD-ROM upgrade was dwarfed by the installed user base of the basic PCE console. As a result, a signficiant majority of software releases were still HuCARDs.
AGHAST: Where do we even begin? Of all the CD-ROM games released in 1990, only one—Last Armageddon—made the top ten. WHAT?! Not surprisingly, HuCARDs comprise the remaining nine titles on the list. What is surprising, however, is that Taito's Genpei Toumaden is the second most popular game of 1990. HOW?! Was this a particularly popular game in the Japanese arcades, with fans eagerly waiting for a PCE port? If you have ever played this game, you can attest to its cruelty. How did Genpei Toumaden surpass the superior games occupying slots 3-9 in the rankings?
Continued below…
COVER DATE vs. ACTUAL AVAILABILITY…▲
Why did the Top 10 Games of 1990 appear so late (April 1991 issue of Gekkan PCE) and not sooner? The answer is simple—many monthly magazines, especially magazines that would appear on newsstands, were released weeks (sometimes months) before their ostensible coverdate. This allowed an issue to sit on the rack for a longer period of time before it was discarded. As a result of this retail practice, the content for monthly video game magazines was (mostly) finalized approximately 1-3 months in advance.
Therefore, the coverdate on a publication should not be confused with its actual date of availability.
So, once data from 1990 had been fully collected and analyzed by staff at Gekkan PCE (a task that could not be completed in earnest until January 1991, at the earliest), editors would have to rush to include it in the March/April issue. This hypothetical March/April issue, of course, might actually have been available in February/March. This created a lag between the moment an event occurred (for example, the 1993 Winter CES was held on January 7-10, 1993) and the moment this news appeared in monthly video game magazines (it was reported in the March 1993 issues of Gekkan PC Engine and Dengeki PC Engine).
NOTE: For the sake of this example, I have a assumed a very short "lead time" (the time a journalist is given to compose an article and make revisions—as mandated by an editor—before it is fit for publication). Lead times varied, and only the most time-sensitive stories would have short lead times.
BOTTOM LINE: Do not be fooled by the cover date of a monthly publication, for it was usually available for consumption weeks (if not months) earlier. This error has lead some contemporary commentators to overstate the lag time in print media from yesteryear. Yes, there was a lag for monthly magazines, but there is no need to exaggerate the differences between a daily publication cycle (e.g. print newspapers of yesteryear, internet media of today) with a monthly publication cycle (video game monthlies).
TIMELINE: This graphic actually made my point even more confusing…
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