Retro Gamer Official Magazine App Reviews

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Does not always show latest issue. Buggy. Does not always show latest issue. Often forces me to restore purchases. Annoying. Mag itself is ok but too many interviews with obscure developers on useless things.

Look forward to the new issue every month. Great reviews, interviews and features on all those great games and systems of yesteryear. Very high quality writing and you can tell this stuff is a labor of love for the whole staff.

No Free Preview Issue. If you just want to check out the UI and see what you can buy, then you'll love this!

Great magazine... Mediocre app. The magazine itself is really good. Well researched articles with depth. However, the app is buggy. It will not restore previous purchases despite having an option to do that. They don't see to be in much of a hurry to update it and fix the bugs either.

App startup takes a long time (if online), does not fill full ipad pro screen. PROS: This is the highest quality version of the mag, out of all the online options. Almost no noticeable compression and no formatting errors (vs Kindle, Zinio). Zinio does offer Text-to-Speech, which is great. FIXED: I can now read issues offline and it fills up the full iPad screen. It’s really fast if you are on airplane mode. I added two more stars! :-) CONS: Store take a long time to load. (updated November 2020)

The app does Not work.. Downloaded the app. And also the pc gamer app. Purchased a few issues and nothing. Nothing in my library. But. Billed. They take your money but literally give you nothing in return. Going to escalate this Apple to try and have the app removed as it doesn’t do what it says it does. Don’t bother trying to restore purchases in the app. I’ve tried that off two IPads now and it doesn’t work.

Best retro gaming magazine, decent viewer. This update to the app fixes two annoyances from the past: 1. The store loads much faster. 2. It remembers your place in the magazine. Finally. Also improved is the legibility. The previous version looked like scans of the pages. The current version seems to be PDFs from the original digital content. The text is very sharp and you can zoom into screenshots with much better detail. The app itself is cluttered and presentation unimpressive. But you can easily view and read the magazines so I can ignore the wrapper. I highly recommend a subscription, it's the best retro gaming content.

Great mag, but horribly broken app. Bought a year’s subscription in June; despite that, new issues stopped being downloadable after September- instead, they show the purchase price of buying the issue individually, which rather goes against the whole point of purchasing a year’s subscription, doesn’t it? I knew what I was getting into, though, having read the other reviews dating back two years, I just wish terrible business practices weren’t so commonplace these days; the magazine itself is great, but the online publisher should be ashamed of themselves for stealing money from consumers.

Great magazine, broken app. This is a review of the app, not the mag: broken and a ripoff if you subscribed through it, as currently you're pretty much incapable of doing anything with it.

Merely gets the job done, but that’s what’s needed. Some might bemoan the lack of bells and whistles when it comes to reading the magazine in this app, but it does exactly what I want/need: shows me the page. Going page to page is quick and simple, and the higher-level navigation is where you expect it to be, up at the top. Content wise, Retro Gamer is great, with a mix of lighter features and deeper dives into particular games/series/machines. In each issue, you will almost always learn something new. (Not doubting problems with the app that others have reported. It’s just that I haven’t encountered those problems over my years as a subscriber.)

Should be free for existing subscribers. Of the print edition or at least discounted. I subscribe to RG and I live in the USA so it tends to take a very long time to reach me. It would be nice if I could read a bit of the iPOD version while waiting for the hardcopy to show up. I also think $5 is too much for any digital mag. Other than that I have nothing bad to say about RG. It's a fantastic magazine!! *** How about giving us a table of contents listing for free? At least that would make it worth keeping the app installed. Thanks.

Great magazine, awful app. Since they updated the app, I'm not able to use itunes credits to buy magazines ( the app simply says there is not enough credits even if there is plenty ). Really do not recommend this one. It's a shame, the magazine itself is great and does not deserve this awful app.

App Still does no work. Still broken. Do not waste your money. Older issues still not available. Very bad!!!!!!

Terrible Business Model App. These guys have several magazines they are hosting thru this trash app. There's simply no excuse for the app doing what it's doing. This thing needs a refresh badly. The content is there, the delivery is highly questionable and aggravating. I refuse to believe they do not have the resources to fix what is broken.

Still broken. Do not upgrade!. Restore purchases feature is still broken. :(

Love this mag. Living in the US, would have to rely on Barnes and Noble for a ten dollar copy and sometimes miss issues. Now can never miss an issue! The interface is wonderful as well.

Can't read any of the magazines I've paid for. Wanted to try and contact them before leaving a bad review, but after trying to figure out how to contact them I gave up. I've bought 2+ years of retrogamer from them, plus I'm still a current subscriber and I can't view any magazines since the upgrade. I've tried removing the app, reboot iPad, etc. When I try to do restore previous purchases it asks for my apple id, and then does nothing. So not only am I loosing money on my current subscription I've lost all access to previous purchases. Maybe sometimes paper is better? Please fix the app, or tell us how to get our mags.

Fixed. Now fully working with the new Retina iPad. Have 5 stars!! :)

Lol. FIRST

Ap. Very good magazine always read it.

STAY FAR AWAY FROM THIS ONE. Updating caused all of my purchases to be lost!

Overall very good. Like others have said, this app dies the job, and the magazine content itself is great.

Just kinda weird. The app is not as functional as it should be. It’s not like reading a digital book on a Kindle app, it is more like a scanned version of a print copy. Not practical as you must make an effort to zoom in and out of each page so that you can read the font. I cannot recommend this app

Lost a ton of purchased issues with the updated app. I LOVE this magazine. I've been a subscriber for over four years and purchased A TON of back issues; seriously hundreds spent on back issues. Unfortunately, with the new app update, nearly every issue I purchased outside of my subscription is now not available, as if I never purchased it. I've emailed the publisher five times in the two weeks and haven't gotten ANY response outside of the automated email. If you ever worry about buying issues that somehow you might be forced to repurchase in the future, DO NOT BUY FROM THIS PUBLISHER, because that's exactly what's happened to me.

Wow, new app is really spammy and tacky. Lots of attempts to up-sell me to unrelated digital magazines. Not appreciated. I hope the core value is still here.

It’s broken. After downloading a few issues, all I get is a loading/spinning indicator when I start the app. It spins for minutes. It’s useless to me.

Fantastic. Easy to use and gorgeous images, especially on my iPad Pro.

Other reviews are true. Broken app.. Tried 3 different iOS devices. Can't download previously purchased issues.

Worth every penny.. Great magazine. This app has seen much improvement since it's inception.

Why does it take so long to open?. I have downloaded over 100 to my iPad's storage, so why do I have to wait 4 minutes sometimes just to read the ones I have. The app takes too long to connect to your servers or time out or something. Fix it. I have a solid wifi signal and 100Mbps internet. No excuse!

Please allow library access without online connection. Twice now a bug has occurred where the app locks up trying to access the store and so I can’t access my library. I’m then forced to delete the app reinstall and redownload load all my issues. It just happened a third time prompting me to write this review. If you remove the need to access the store and allow me to just read my issues I’ve paid for I’ll change my star rating, which reflects the app and not the magazine itself, which is good.

Retina support for iPad finally working ... but magazines need higher resolution. I'm thrilled to finally have a working iPad retina update for this app. The problem is that the magazines themselves appear to be lower resolution compared to other magazine apps. You can easily see this by zooming in. Text and images are not sharp when zoomed. Hopefully this will be addressed in future issues.

Needs New iPad support. Finally, retina iPad supported and it's beautiful! It now makes a great substitute to the physical version that's expensive to import. Digital distribution at its best!

Subscription through iTunes is frequently not recognized. It frequently disregards your subscription through iTunes. I’ve tried using the restore function and it doesn’t work.

Great mag, decent viewer. Viewer works well enough. Can be a bit tough to turn pages. Magazine is fantastic, looks great on ipad even if i'd still prefer it in print. Readable on iphone but loses some of the charm of the beautiful page layouts from print edition due to being shrunk so small and having to zoom in to read the actual text. Also got 169 issues for $47, which is a phenomenal deal.

Great Magazine, Awful iPad/iPhone App. Just another PDF dump. I read the physical magazine instead, and it's absolutely wonderful. It shows great insight into the history of games.

Completely broken. Will not restore purchases on my iPad. Can't access 2+ years of subscription issues. And MONTHS with no fix?

Update stinks. I wanted to grab a new magazine before I went somewhere where I'd have to be waiting around and the store wouldn't load, so I updated. Big mistake, the update removed all my currently downloaded magazines and app restore isn't giving them all back. Plus I'm running out of time before I have to leave so I'm not going to have any to read. Hard not to be angry over this.

Great magazine, app needs help. Latest version still doesn't support the large screen iPad Pro. At least downloads seem to work now. It's difficult to turn pages, though.

Great but could be better. Love the content. Pages are very clear and easy to read. Only complaint is offline viewing & library are annoyingly slow. Would like to see significantly better performance here.

Love the magazine, but the app is subpar.. There are several areas for improvement with the app, and I really hope the developers will address some of the many complaints over time. The performance is pretty terrible. The library section still has tons of screen space consumed by store, sub, and sign-in. There is a separate store section, so taking up real estate for the library view seems like overkill. There are so few options for organizing the library. Just adding the ability to manually adjust the order would be a huge plus. Anyway, I love the magazine enough to tolerate the issues with the application, but things good be so much better.

The magazine is great, the app is terrible. I subscribed a few months ago and ended up buying the back catalogue of issues and enjoyed reading them until I’d discovered some of the apps quirks: no reading issues offline, no reading issues until the publishers store loads, the publishers store won’t always load, loading the publishers store often causes the app to crash. It is at a point where I can longer read the magazines, instead I watch the app load and then crash out. Don’t download this app, if you want to read Retro Gamer, get the physical subscription.

Too expensive. The magazine is great, but $5 for old issues? Way too expensive. Although do an issue on Cinemaware and I'll buy it for sure. Especially with the Wings Directors Cut campaign on Kickstarter.

I love Retro Gamer but the app killed it. My favorite magazine ever. Unfortunately the experience is garbage. I bought the deal to get all of the back issues. I downloaded some of them. I went back to the app a day later and it just spins on loading the store and is completely frozen. This is garbage. I wasted my money on the deal because I can't use the app to read them. Complete trash.

Awesome magazine. Lousy app. I love love love Retro Gamer the magazine- by all means read it! But the app is INCREDIBLY SLOW and doesn't save your progress within a magazine so every single time you want to use it you have to wait a ridiculously long time for it to load and then find your place within the magazine all over again. Buy the printed magazine by all means, but avoid the app until these issues are fixed.

Doesn’t fully support 12.9” iPad. It doesn’t fully utilize the 12.9” iPad which is disappointing for a magazine app. This makes the app look slightly fuzzy.

Love it. Love the mag, love the app....add move retro video content into the articles plz

Retro gamer. Love the mag. Takes me back to the days of the ZX spectrum and c64.

App locks up and crashes.. I purchased and downloaded all the back issues and now all I see are two busy icons when I launch this crappy joke of an app. If I minimize the app then bring back to front, then the app usually crashes. It has been like this for months. I am using the latest iPad Pro. Obviously I am unable to be read the content I have purchased. No excuse for this.

Amazing. Previews of every issue & page are available. I can't believe how much content they have every issue on games of the past. Everything is well written by people who are obviously very passionate about games. For the fools that write poor reviews due to their own shortcomings, there is not only a preview of every single issue, but you can see thumbnails of literally every page of every issue. Just tap the issue's thumbnail and swipe.

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Crashes, won't connect to store, can't access purchased content. Dear developer, Can I have a refund on all of my purchases because this app is broken. - It crashes - It won't connect to the store - I can't access my library (AKA content I've already purchased). Unless of course I've misunderstood and "Buy" actually means "Rent", in which case, congratulations because you suckered me good. I would rate zero stars, but one is the minimum. App Store users: DO NOT BUY CONTENT FROM THIS APP!!!

Great magazine, but the app …. The issue downloads are a needlessly huge. Please offer smaller downloads so I can have more issues on my iPad at once.

Great magazine. Bad app. I love the content but would be happier if it was in a better made app

Over charged then zero customer support.uncontactable.Dodgy. I was offered a supposed discount of approx $80 to have all the back issues,which I bought.Then a day or 2 later they offered again the whole back issue for approx $12 . I’m unemployed have less money and given the close proximity of the 2 offers emailed them if they could just refund the difference.And hoped they would do that in good faith. I was completely ignored.And approx 4 weeks and counting have passed.Thanks Retro gamer for ripping me off then ignoring me,great company you run there.Others be warned.

Latest Edit : July 30, 2012. Update works fine! Phew!. The current update ( ver. 2.5.5 ) has corrected the crash bug, thank goodness! When I downloaded the previous version, I thought it might be the so-called 'App-Store glitch / bug' that was the cause. . . . Luckily, because I own multiple iDevices ( 6 iPad's & 4 iPod Touches - all with different iOS versions installed ) my collection(s) of downloaded issues of 'Retro Gamer' were unaffected - I always update to iDevices which have 'Retro Gamer' App, but contain NO downloaded issues, just in case. . . . I notice that the 30th Anniversary Commodore 64/ ZX Spectrum Double-Sided Special Issue is STILL NOT available from within the 'Retro Gamer' App. I simply cannot understand why not. If, for some reason it is not possible to include it within 'RG', then perhaps it could be placed on either PixelMags' Dev. Page on iTunes, or the Imagine Publishing Developers Page - not JUST on the Imagine Shop where ( unfortunately ), I am unable to purchase it - due to lack of credit cards etc. In this largely digital age of iPad's / iPhone's et al, I really DO think it should be on iTunes. Thanx 4 fix.

Treacle. With every new update, Pixel Mags seem to be unable to fix the basic problem with their apps; they seem to have developed the slowest e-reader on the planet. Turn a page, wait a second, a pixelly page appears, wait a second, the page pops full resolution. It's appalling, and I'll never buy a magazine fronted with this limp technology. Zinio is about 1000x better.

Broken, again. The app says it can't connect to the iTunes Store. Ok, so I can stream videos from Netflix and download new apps but you can't make an app that is basically a glorified PDF reader download a file. Fix it guys. This is sloppy.

Good mag. This is a great mag I get it for my boyfriend he loves it

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Retro Reflection. Great magazine to relive the retro years of gaming!

Stop with the updates. Everytime this app gets updated, i am forced to redownload all of the magazines i purchased. A few gigs of download everytime and it always ends up crashing during the download process and then restarts part of the download. Is is really ridiculous, seriously stop with the updates if you cant do it right. Yur magazine is great, bup this app is bad

Great magazine but a terrible app. First off the two stars is because the app is so bloody slow to load you library, the magazine is great and I always look forward to the next issue. The app wasn’t that big a problem as you could always copy the magazine off your iPad and read them on my computer but now they are encrypted so I can’t do it that way. Just to give you an idea, it takes close to 5 minutes for my library to load (I have every issue) and this is on a 2018 iPad So in short great read, terrible app

A great read. I thoroughly enjoy this magazine every month. Deals with all kinds of old school video games. + you can go back and enjoy all the previous editions with no fear of them being out of date! Highly recommended for gamers.

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Craptastic. Apple. Zero stars is a rating!! Deletes your existing library so you have to download everything again. But can't do that as the restore function doesn't work. So now I have nothing. Total rip off. If it doesn't work don't release it. It's updates like this that make you regret the app auto update feature in IOS 7!! Fix this mess. *** As a workaround if you download the old stand alone app (not the news store one) you can still get your mags and all your old issues restored in that. Unfortunately you still have to download them again but at least you can still read them. Look in your app purchased history as well if you're struggling to find it in the app store *** Magazine is great, this version of the app is used toilet paper.

Stick with the print version.. This app has been a nightmare. Over a year ago, they sent out a update which prevented many users, me included, from accessing their previously purchased content. It also, like every other update, erased everything already downloaded, meaning you had no choice but to download everything again. Over a year later, they send out a code to supposedly restore those purchases. After finally getting the code, which I had to email customer service for, I'm still missing over a year's worth of purchases. Luckily, I have receipts, which I've emailed them twice, to no avail. I've just about given up because I don't know what else I can do. It's infuriating to have to write off $60+ of purchases, but it seems as far as they are concerned the matter is settled. I guess I should be thankful that I finally have access to some of my purchases again, even if it took them over a year to make that happen. Still, I can't express the frustration and disappointment I've had with this app. I'm extremely leery of updating this app ever again now that it's somewhat working, but needless to say I won't be renewing when my subscription runs out and I'd encourage anyone thinking of going in Retro Gamer to steer clear of this digital version.

iPad 1 not getting new issues. For some reason the news stand stopped updating at issue 122. Not sure if this is because of their update of the software to iOS 7, but I'm not getting new issues. Love the magazine, but this is upsetting.

Broken. Ever since the update to get ready for iOS 7 I haven't been able to open the app. It slowly updates database then closes itself out after a few minutes. Update for GamesTM worked fine, Retro Gamer just won't update. Please fix, have deleted app an reinstalled, new issue out and I can't read it. :/