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.'"

Comments

Dragon Warrior & Nintendo Power

[Anonymous Coward]

Did anyone else subscribe to Nintendo Power to get a Dragon Warrior game cartridge?

I sure did.

I remember buying Video Game mags in the 90's

[Spy der Mann]

Around 1992 or so. My favorite was Computer Game Review.
I loved the reviews. Each reviewer (with different videogame tastes) would give his own opinion about certain videogame, and they would all give a certain opinion and I just loved the screenshots of all the games. There were dozens, hundreds of new games I'd like to try out.

Unfortunately, this golden era of videogames came to an end with consoles. Not only you had to pay suborbital prices for the consoles, the games were much more expensive. And my fascination for videogames was gone.

And for the Sinclair owners...

[Hambone.dk]

The two top mags were Crash and Your Sinclair, both of which are pretty much completely available online.

Newsfield - more influential than C&VG

[payndz]

I'd say that in the UK, Newsfield's mags (Crash for the Spectrum, Zzap!64 for the C64... oh, and Amtix for the Amstrad CPC as well, I guess) defined games magazines far more than C&VG. They were the first mags to make game reviews the core of the title - C&VG and the other mags of the time 'reviewed' games in a couple of paragraphs (often not even with screenshots) while concentrating on type-in program listings. Crash et al did double-page, full-colour reviews for the biggest games.

Nearly all of the modern UK games mags follow the 'format' Newsfield devised. It's a format that works, because magazines that try to do something radically different tend not to last very long. Newsfield was also the direct ancestor of the major UK games magazine publishers - Future was founded by an ex-Newsfield guy, Paragon was founded by ex-Future staffers, and now Imagine was set up by ex-Paragon types. (In fact, one of Imagine's bosses worked at Newsfield, so the games rag Kevin Bacon game is very easy...)