Mission Statement

I love old video game magazines. I loved reading them then and I love reading them now. I grew up in a household that always had a video game console in it. First was the Atari 2600, then the Commodore 64, then NES and Sega Genesis. There was no collecting back then - no thoughts of keeping the boxes or making sure the labels stayed in good condition. Just a video game system hooked up right in front of the television via r/f switch and a bunch of carts strewn around it. Back then I would be able to get two new games a year: one on my birthday, and one on Christmas. This had the negative effect of missing out on a host of great titles, games you hoped your friends had picked up so you could experience at their house, but also the positive effect of making you focus on the games at hand, learning everything about their gameplay quirks, level layouts, and secrets. Of course, if you got stuck with an awful NES game because you picked it out primarily because of the awesome box art, well...it was a long wait until you could rectify that mistake.

 This is where video game magazines came in. It is an understatement to say that I lived vicariously through video game magazines. Every game I couldn't play, every console system I had no hope of buying was at my fingertips in the pages of Electronics Gaming Monthly or GamePro. I was fascinated by the exotic non-Nintendo/Sega systems like the Turbo Grafx-16 or the Phillips CD-I. I would pore over the current and coming soon releases for the system I did have, making lists of games I wanted and reading their reviews so often I almost had them memorized. Video game magazines were a way to experience at least of taste of everything in gaming that I couldn't afford and would probably never come my way. This would all eventually change thanks to the internet, ebay, and the growth of classic gaming as a culture which allowed me to go back and acquire the systems and games I lusted after in the pages of the gaming mags. The internet has also allowed me to go back and rebuild my collection of said magazines, as the originals were lost or trashed a decade and a half ago during my transition to college.

 This blog is a celebration of the video game magazines from my youth. I will be re-reading each magazine, providing commentary, scans, and tidbits that tie into my gaming experiences at the time and current thoughts as a classic gamer. I am very much against emulation, against mame, preferring to play classic games on real systems hooked up to CRT's like they were meant to be. This same philosophy guides this blog as each issue I review will be an actual physical magazine that I own - no pdf's downloaded from the internet.

 We will begin with Electronic Gaming Monthly, which was my flagship magazine growing up. The plan is to go in order from the beginning, and end around issue #170, right before the PS3/Xbox360 generation rolls out. Other magazines on the dock are Next Generation, Game Fan, P.S.X., and EGM2. It's possible I will begin peppering these other magazines in from the beginning, so that we can see how different magazines handled the same time periods. I also own a bunch of other fun gaming-related publications that I will highlight: from offbeat stuff like Game Room Gallery to interesting hint books, etc. It should be fun.