I'm not going to pretend to be an academic or historian - I'm just a guy who grew up playing video games, going to the arcades, and reading game magazines. So instead of pretending to instruct you on the history of EGM, let's just get it out of the way with this recap from a really bad IGN article on the history of the magazine:
"Steve Harris [...] pooled funds from his Video Game Masters Tournament to help begin Electronic Game Player. Though that magazine proved to be slightly ahead of its time, lasting only four issues, it was noticed by enough of the right people that Harris soon received funding for a reborn version, Electronic Gaming Monthly. The magazine debuted with a buyer's guide that sold over 100,000 copies, and its first regular issue launched in May 1989." - Origins: The History of EGM by Philip KollarI love the completely random cover choices of games: Simon's Quest, Predator (?!) and Thunder Blade. It's strange considering the game that gets the most play inside the mag by far is Double Dragon. I really do love Simon' Quest's box art though - definitely in my top 3 of that era.
It's amusing to think that at one time there was a "U.S. National Video Game Team." It sounds like a group that would be competing in the Olympics, or at least a Best of the Best-style international competition. Nowadays international competition is common in competitive video gaming, but I wonder if guys like Billy Mitchell would've been able to squash their Japanese competition as easily as he did those stateside.
At a basic level the Buyer's Guide is structured in a way and incorporates many of the elements that would later define EGM: The preview section of games yet to be released, the reviews of titles currently in stores, and feature articles between the two, in this case the buyer's guides as well as 1988 year-in-review.
This ad reminds me of those "sell stuff for prizes" company ads found in every comic book in the 80s, although I don't think a bazooka was ever a prize. This was the golden age of video game advertisements, before they were overrun by giant photographs of something gross-out or sexual, where you're lucky if you get one tiny screen shot of the actual video game. Here you get the full box art, multiple screen shots, and the rest of the ad is actually relevant to the game. Metal Gear has of course since become one of video games' premiere franchises all the way up to today, and when I was a kid this was a cartridge that EVERYONE owned, although very few in my age group actually had the patience to master. In fact it was generally considered not much fun, as you couldn't just run through each level shooting everything in sight. Also note that while now we all know that Konami is responsible for Metal Gear, back then it was released by "Ultra Games" (their first NES release), a company that became infamous for releasing the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles console game, an abrupt departure from the arcade beat 'em up that left every kid a little pissed. Today we know that Ultra was just a shell subsidiary of Konami, basically a front group that Konami set up in order to get around Nintendo's strict 3rd party policies (with Nintendo's tacit approval).
Running several pages in length, the Coming Soon... section is about 85% NES games, speaking to their dominance in the console marketplace. The Sega Master System and Atari 7800 make up the remainder in this section and in the rest of the magazine as this breakdown is reflected throughout. The Master System is still treated with respect at this point, but the 7800 is already reaping a bit of derision. I particularly like the AIRWOLF paragraph (yes, this was one of my favorite tv shows as a kid - I mean it's a helicopter that flies out of a freakin volcano!) for stating up front that the television show isn't even popular anymore, but "Besides, it's based on an Ernest Borgnine show so it can't be all bad".
The main feature of the magazine is the Player's Choice Awards. The Video Game of the Year as you can see is won by Double Dragon for the NES. There are a few things odd with this. First is that the NES version of Double Dragon doesn't allow two players to play through the game at once (the screenshot you see is of a lame "player vs. player" side mode) - which was basically the entire point of the arcade game. This is highlighted later when they give an award to the Master System port of DD, which for whatever reason does not win it the Game of the Year. Even funnier is right next to Game of the Year we have Best Arcade-To-Home Translation which they randomly give to Rampage, even though their game of the year is an arcade-to-home translation. Honestly all the of these year-end picks are pretty weak. It would be hard for me to put Double Dragon even in a top 5 NES games of the year when your other choices include Karnov, Contra, Lifeforce, RC Pro-Am, and Metal Gear.
This is a cool ad for the very first Phantasy Star, released for the Sega Master System (and which can now be played on the excellent Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection for PS3/Xbox360). I like how you get a nice piece of fantasy art, a bunch of screen shots, and text about the game. It's a far cry from the ridiculous stuff we would later see in the mid 90s.
This part of the buyer's guide highlights some titles not necessarily released in 1988. Capcom's 1942 is an arcade translation, but Wizards & Warriors and Rad Racer were two huge NES exclusives and two of my favorites from childhood. I've always wanted to see 2D update to the Wizards and Warriors series - the quasi-free-roaming nature of the game was something you didn't see much of back then.
Here you get a taste of the original iteration of the "Review Crew". At this point it's not really a crew, as only one person handles each review. Ed Semrad, who would go on to be Editor-in-Chief of EGM for many years, handles most of the reviews which are designated either Hits or Misses. Each review gets a full page although more words are spent on the description than the actual review. A very different Rambo III was released a few years later for the Sega Genesis. As a big Rambo fan I always thought there should've been more than what we got, and it's definitely another license that deserves some retro love in the current landscape.
And finally stuck in the back is a multi-page International Scoreboard. There are different listings for coin-op games and console games and I'm assuming these were all self-reported. If you scan through them you can pick out some familiar names, such as Robert Mruczek from King of Kong fame. The scoreboard is a nice little hardcore gaming touch, but it would've been nice to have an explanation of how scores were collected and/or verified.
