EGM is coming back--Founder STEVE HARRIS to the rescue

[Mortificator]

Dan Hsu's mentioned several times that publishers have pulled ads from EMG in retaliation for negative reviews. I imagine that, when choosing between advertising revenue and "journalistic integrity," more than one publication has padded review scores.

[Ed Oscuro]

OH. Remember that guy who got fired from Gamespot for his honest of that uh Kane and something or other game? When the website was decked out whoring the game in it's very layout? Good times.

Yeah, I followed that. To be honest, they had a good, even believable, cover story.

Even if they were above-board on that one, the other trends are enough to sink any credibility of most games "journalism."

And shit. Kane & Lynched, lol. Did that really need to be defended?

[MX7]

I read EGM a few times and it was absolute gash. The only American games magazine I ever got into was Gamefan. It was a bit wapanaese, but it proved a nice antithesis to the stern, austere presence of Edge which was also regularly strewn on my bedroom floor at this point.

Lol, just got a turbo vivid flashback of being 13 again

[BryanM]

Bah let's just read Retrogamer. The truth will eventually come out, in 30 or 40 years.

[xris]

It's good that egm is back, but it's always been thin on content. Everybody in the us gets gameinformer in the mail by now. The best game mag, hands down, is Play! C'mon, they talk about shmups!

[doctorx0079]

The best was always Next Generation, and Ultra Game Players had the best/funniest letters page, which always cracked me up. Although Game Informer is starting to remind me of NextGen. I mean they recently did stories on the secret history of Ms. Pac-Man and the history of a developer (Irrational Games). Pretty cool.

BTW Does anyone have the ASTROD letters from the old EGM? They were hilarious and I can't find them anywhere on the intarwebs.

[crithit5000]

I considered making a new topic for this one but...

Here's an interesting one I just happened upon: GameFan is coming back? I'm trying to dig for more news on this, but I'm coming up a bit empty, so who knows. Apparently Play is dead (I've heard of two editors who have quit and users at Play's forums haven't seen an issue since January), and I'm not really surprised.

Edit: Geek Monthly, which was published by the same company that published Play, has been shut down.

[Koa Zo]

users at Play's forums haven't seen an issue since January), and I'm not really surprised.

That seems to be Halverson's MO: shutter the operation, and leave subscribers in the lurch.
I would never again subscribe to one of his rags.
Would rather pay double at a retail outlet, than pay him in advance and only ever have 2 or 3 issues delivered.

[dave4shmups]

Well this time around, I certainly hope they treat their readers with more respect-which is to say some, instead of basically none. I used to get EGM a few years ago as part of my Most Valuable Player card subscription with Game Crazy, and I can't count the number of nasty, insulting responses by the staff of EGN that I read in response to reader mail. It made me sick. When I heard that the magazine was no longer in print, my first thought was "Good riddance to bad rubbish". Hsu and co. need to respect their reader's opinions; it's that simple.

[crithit5000]

Picked up both relaunch issues of GameFan and EGM last night. I haven't read through them completely, but here's some impressions:

GameFan is really, really huge. Not page count-wise, but dimension-wise. It's a tad bit bigger than Retro Gamer and unfortunately it has a really cheap paper stock for the cover, so it's flimsy as all hell. Also, it uses staples as binding.

The layouts are very nice and colorful; it's like a nice mix of old GameFan, Gamer's Republic, and Play sensibilities all wrapped into one package. There's some rough things here and there if you squint, and the poorly rendered titles for the MovieFan (ugh) sections stand out but otherwise it's pretty and sort of stands out against the rest of the US magazines and they're whole "We want to look like Edge" deal.

Content wise...it's what you'd expect if you read GF, GR, or Play. Typos (they have a copy editor and he...sleeps all day? I dunno), inflated scores (there's quite a few tens in this issue), and the usual "I <3 critters and polygon tits and hate the internet" attitude from Dave Halverson. Nothing new here.

EGM looks like the bastard child of Play and Edge, which isn't surprising at all as Play's old layout guy (among a few other Play staffers) is at EGM now. It's not as colorful or as grand feeling as new GF's stuff, but it's pretty good. I also really liked the layout for the interview with David Jaffe. Really nice photographs, and it reminded me a bit of Next Generation's (for our Euro friends, NextGen was a US magazine that shared content with Edge) old interview sections.

Some editors/contributors now have monthly columns, so it's even more Next Generation-ish now and I think that's a good move. What I think is a bad move is the Flashback feature on the history of EGM, and when you get to the 2000-2010 era it asks you to read that at EGMi. Not cool.

The writing so far has been pretty good; I like the columns I've read so far and what I've scanned of the cover feature (Super Street Fighter IV) seems cool. Reviews seem a bit dry so far.

So far, I'm enjoying both. It seems to be a good time to be a fan of video game magazines with all the US magazines trying they're damnedest to create content that eschews the old, tired "news/previews/reviews" standards that just don't work anymore thanks to the intertubes. Then you have the UK magazines being imported over, and the ones I've read so far have been fantastic. It's been a few years since I actively went out and bought magazines, but in the last two weeks I've bought four.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

For crithit5000,

Are both re-launch issues of GameFan and EGM available for purchase at Barnes and Noble or Borders bookstores? Guess that would entail a quick drive to both places and see what's available. Thanks for the heads up that they both back in print after a long hiatus break.

I sure liked it when GameFan magazine had some issues dedicated to the arcade shmup titles with the "Shooter Alley" article section back in 2000 before it went belly-up. Sure would've been nice if a Gamefan "Shooter Alley" article covering Success Corp's Psyvariar Medium Unit or even Psyvariar Revision Taito G-Cards (as both made their intial Japanese game center debuts in March 2000 for Psy-MU & September 2000 for Psy-R respectively) with a nice write up & some cool full-color screenshots but it wasn't meant to be. Of course, it was Eric Mylonas whom wrote the "Shooting Alley" articles and his professed love for arcade shmup titles that lead to that article series.

Not even the old GamePro or even EGM mags would attempt to cover the expensive arcade shmup PCB hobby with a 10 foot pole. It sure'd be nice if a modern day U.S. published video game mag would cover the niche world of arcade shmup PCB titles but that is just wishful thinking nowdays as it ain't gonna happen.

You might recall the early 1980s USA published magazines like Blip (from publisher Marvel Comics that covered the world of arcade games), Joystick, Electronic Games, etc. that covered the dizzy world of arcade games and even featured some cool full colored full page ads to draw in the potential arcade owners/operators into carrying the "latest & greatest" for their arcade joints. That era will, sadly, never be repeated ever again. Even the old Play Meter and Replay arcade insider industry mags from that era were worth reading.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[crithit5000]

Are both re-launch issues of GameFan and EGM available for purchase at Barnes and Noble or Borders bookstores? Guess that would entail a quick drive to both places and see what's available. Thanks for the heads up that they both back in print after a long hiatus break.

I grabbed both from my local B&N, and they're probably available everywhere at B&N's or Borders if they're easily found in my shithole neck of the woods. Be warned: Both cost US $6.99. Almost in-line with the US prices for Edge or Retro Gamer.

I sure liked it when GameFan magazine had some issues dedicated to the arcade shmup titles with the "Shooter Alley" article section back in 2000 before it went belly-up. Sure would've been nice if a Gamefan "Shooter Alley" article covering Success Corp's Psyvariar Medium Unit or even Psyvariar Revision Taito G-Cards (as both made their intial Japanese game center debuts in March 2000 for Psy-MU & September 2000 for Psy-R respectively) with a nice write up & some cool full-color screenshots but it wasn't meant to be. Of course, it was Eric Mylonas whom wrote the "Shooting Alley" articles and his professed love for arcade shmup titles that lead to that article series.

Even before ECM took over, GF still covered shooters pretty well. First issue I owned from '96 had a review of 19XX in it, and I recall plenty of coverage given to Thunder Force V, X2, and Raystorm before Dave Halverson left to start up Gamer's Republic. By the way, Eric now has a blog he updates quite a bit, and he's done some shooter posts and reviews. He's still the same lovable jaded troll he's always been.

You might recall the early 1980s USA published magazines like Blip (from publisher Marvel Comics that covered the world of arcade games), Joystick, Electronic Games, etc. that covered the dizzy world of arcade games and even featured some cool full colored full page ads to draw in the potential arcade owners/operators into carrying the "latest & greatest" for their arcade joints. That era will, sadly, never be repeated ever again. Even the old Play Meter and Replay arcade insider industry mags from that era were worth reading.

While I am a bit of a huge video game magazine buff (I even still have issues of incite and Game Buyer =/), that era was sadly before I got heavily into it. I have a few issues of the relaunched Electronic Games when Sendai (EGM's old publisher) owned it before it got turned into Fusion and faded away into obscurity, and that's about it. I think the only magazine that dealt with gaming in any form during the 80's was my dad's Compute! Gazette collection (we were so a Commodore family). I need to go find some pdf's or something...

[Obiwanshinobi]

Let's face it - printed mags are like wine. 10+ year old issues are the shit: Voodoo 2 tests, Unreal previews...

[ECM]

By the way, Eric now has a blog he updates quite a bit, and he's done some shooter posts and reviews. He's still the same lovable jaded troll he's always been.

Personally, I prefer "lovable jaded elf" but I guess beggars can't be choosers

[Stormwatch]

Let's face it - printed mags are like wine. 10+ year old issues are the shit: Voodoo 2 tests, Unreal previews...

Beyond definition. Beyond comprehension. Beyond imagination. Unreal is reality. Unreal is the future.

[crithit5000]

Personally, I prefer "lovable jaded elf" but I guess beggars can't be choosers

Duly noted, ECM. Good to see your sense of humor is still intact after all these years, as most of the other gaming 'journalists' that we accidentally summon here would have written a thousand word scathing missive about how we all don't really understand gaming or real journalism, and that we all want to secretly copulate with our mothers or something.

[Kiken]

GameFan is really, really huge. Not page count-wise, but dimension-wise. It's a tad bit bigger than Retro Gamer and unfortunately it has a really cheap paper stock for the cover, so it's flimsy as all hell. Also, it uses staples as binding.

The layouts are very nice and colorful; it's like a nice mix of old GameFan, Gamer's Republic, and Play sensibilities all wrapped into one package. There's some rough things here and there if you squint, and the poorly rendered titles for the MovieFan (ugh) sections stand out but otherwise it's pretty and sort of stands out against the rest of the US magazines and they're whole "We want to look like Edge" deal.

Content wise...it's what you'd expect if you read GF, GR, or Play. Typos (they have a copy editor and he...sleeps all day? I dunno), inflated scores (there's quite a few tens in this issue), and the usual "I <3 critters and polygon tits and hate the internet" attitude from Dave Halverson. Nothing new here.

I picked up the new GF a week or so ago and I pretty much agree with everything here. Halvy's hyperbole is off the charts.

[Cthulhu]

Huh, I had no idea that GameFan was coming back. I'll keep an eye out for it. Halverson's stuff is always amusing, even if everything gets a 10/10. I saw the new EGM and was pretty pleased. I might subscribe to it for old times' sake (I actually subscribed to EGM from the very first issue ... man, I was like 7 and begged my parents for it. Okay, I feel old now). I stopped by their webpage and the flash-zine that they have there is actually pretty nice too. It's the first time I've seen that done in a way that didn't make me want to punch my monitor.

[No_not_like_Quake]

For a new Gamefan, I'd rather see ex-editors (like ECM above) and writers get together and do a mag. Halverson is ethically unsound: owing your staff money and subscribers magazines by ditching it all THRICE is just something I cannot support. I'm not one to pretend to have high values or anything but come on, what he has done just fucking stinks.

[crithit5000]

Unexpected GameFan bonus lulz which slightly reminds me of the whole jap bastards debacle: On page 43, Senior Editor Kyle B. Stiff's (>.<) name is misspelled as Kyke B. Stiff.

I must say, I quite like the new EGM format despite how hokey and stiff some of the writing is.

[Jockel]

Unexpected GameFan bonus lulz which slightly reminds me of the whole jap bastards debacle: On page 43, Senior Editor Kyle B. Stiff's (>.<) name is misspelled as Kyke B. Stiff.

Is he jewish?

[Jon]

I must say, I quite like the new EGM format despite how hokey and stiff some of the writing is.

Received my copy in the mail late last week and I would have to agree on the writing comment. I kinda felt like I was reading Nintendo Power or something I hope it improves.

[The Coop]

A part of me wanted to to give the new GameFan a try, but GameFan was not Dave Halverson. It was everyone who worked there. Now GameFan is pretty much just Dave and thus, not GameFan. I'll pass.

The relaunched EGM shows a lot of promise. Good paper stock, interesting articles and people who know how to make a nice layout. For a first issue after a hiatus that's filled with fresh and old faces, it's pretty good.

[No_not_like_Quake]

The Coop - That's the way I feel. Nick Rox, ECM, Shidoshi, Eggo ect. were decent writers with a passion for games I could relate to, coupled with the great screen shots and unique art of metal head Terry Wolfinger. These are the reasons I liked Gamefan.