"Read All About It?"
The Publication Holocaust
You see, there was a time before all of this. Life was just fine without that internet thing. For us up-and-coming gents of the mid 80's, we got our kicks in the form of video games. Be it playing them, talking and reading about them, whatever. I lived for video games, and not much else. Heck, I didn't even start listening to music until 9th grade. NINTH GRADE. Jesus, what was wrong with me? Anywho.
Magazines were the source of all my knowledge, I kept tabs on pretty much all the publications, and tried to stay a couple steps ahead of my fellow peers at all times, I was like an insider of the industry (or so I thought) in fifth grade. People turned to me for all sorts of information, regarding cheats, boss fights, 32-bit processing power, whatever! I KNEW IT ALL. Jaguar, I played it. Yeah, Aliens vs. Predator was awesome, changed my life. I told many a story in elementary school. Not all of them were true, but what did they care? To be a successful rumor-monger you have to throw out a couple sour apples once in a while, to clear the channel. Everyone totally believed that there was a Super Saiyan 6 with blue hair. Suckers. But back on topic here.
When I'd go to the Great Skate and approach the Mortal Kombat II machine, I could feel the stares. Little did they know they were about to get stomped by an eight year-old. I memorized all the fatalities, I read the cheat sections every month, after all. "I can totally beat Noob Saibot," I'd tell them (despite the fact that I never could). My point of all this rhetoric? Video game magazines were the bomb, and in a time before the entire world was connected, everyone believed you could fight a dude named "Sheng Long," or unlock Simon Belmont in Contra. Times were definitely simpler then.
When you think about how GamePro can come up with a numerical value for "Fun Factor," it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. But I somehow understood it in 1996. Go figure. Man, Bubonic the Blowfrog, what's a blowfrog anyway? Sushi-X, I had thought I cracked the code. It was Duke Nukem all along, wasn't it? EGM told me Doom 3 was coming out for the SNES, what a bunch of crap. Tips & Tricks was somehow culturally relevant, since it was actually useful then! It was like an encyclopedia of awesome! "EGM2" was always useless in my eyes, though they did convince me that Spider for the Playstation was good. Boy were they ever wrong! Back then, an eye patch showed how raw and "independent" of a magazine that you were, and Bill Donohue always looked like an old man to me. I was even convinced that the 3DO was the second coming of Jesus, I still have that issue, and it still smells like cat piss (barrel aged at this point). Game Informer used to be respectable, and also very thin. So many great memories, yet almost all of them come with an unhappy ending attached.
EGM is just the bookend of this era, which for all intensive purposes, is at an end. GI can continue to sell based on pre-orders from GameStop, Future (inc) publications can continue to sell because of their official corporate tie-ins (with no disrespect to Nintendo Power, which has the genius Chris Slate of PSM at the mast of the ship), but c'mon. The convenience of the internet (and FREE-ness) can't be undermined by an age-old tradition. I guess it's time to hang up my hat and coat, and call it a night. If you like you can join me in a collective sigh, as I mutter this old-horse phrase, "those were the days."
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