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In The Beginning, There Were Video Game Magazines
simoniker writes "The early history of video game mags doesn't get explored much, but over at GameSetWatch, there's a new column that looks at the dawn of game magazines, from Computer & Video Games' 1981 UK launch to Electronic Games' same-year U.S. launch. The column's writer, Kevin Gifford, who also runs the Magweasel website dedicated to documenting old video games, also claims of the early days: 'Terms like easter egg, scrolling, and screenshot were originally coined by [Electronic Games editor and co-founder Bill] Kunkel.'"
Actually, in the beginning there was the Nintendo Fun Club.
Well, before Nintendo Power at least. Maybe not *THE* begining.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.
Zzap!64 was the game mag I bought more than any other, there seems to be a pretty good resource of material from the mag here
Blessed are the 1337, for they shall pwn the earth.
The two top mags were Crash and Your Sinclair, both of which are pretty much completely available online.
After 2 or 3 name changes and 2 or 3 publishers, the UK one of those still exists as "Nintendo Official Magazine"
CVG nearly exists. The paper magazine died finally in October 2004 after turning into a kiddie biased pile of toilet paper. The online version still exists at http://www.computerandvideogames.com./ I'm involved in a project to archive the entire run so we'll get back to you on that.
The article does it a dissevice. While it was close on its purchase by Future that was because Dennis (who themselves bought it from EMAP) wanted shot of it. It's circulation was half of Gamesmasters' and to call Gamesmaster kiddie compared to the CVG of the last couple of years is like calling Windows svelte compared to DOS 1.
As for "Coasted all the way to 2004", that ignores the Jaz Rignall and Paul Davies eras of the early 1990s and 1996ish which produced some of the last great games journalism before magazines were beaten to a bloody press-release filled pulp by the internet. They also had Retro coverage before any other mainstream magazine, which got countless of us into it and no doubt accounts for the success of the superb Retro Gamer magazine published by Imagine these days.
Joystick had some of the best design out there. From cover to spread the game oozed art direction by those who "got it" in the business.
It's not much of an article! OK, so it covers the very beginning, and is only a short column, but there's an awful lot it misses out. Sure, it mentions C&VG, and indeed, the whole industry read it at the time, here in the UK. But Sinclair User came along shortly afterwards and garnered a sizeable following. There's also no mention of the Newsfield publications. Crash and Zzap!64 really were the defining magazines of the 1980s computer gaming scene.
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Was that the magazine where 3 revieweres would score each game? I loved that scheme! I remember they reviewed a flight sim that specialized in realtime commercial jet flight. 2 of the reviewers found it boring as hell and gave it around 50%, but one reviewer "got it" and gave it about 97%. All 3 viewpoints were perfectly valid and rounded out the review that much more.