Super Play magazine

…and the convergence of video games, anime and imports.

“On the whole Super Play was left alone by the suits at Future publishing, so we did pretty much what we wanted.”

I spoke to Wil Overton about anime, grey imports, and the 47 Super Play magazine covers he illustrated.

Sega Pro

The magazine that launched a publishing empire.

Richard Monteiro made his name as a staff-writer for various 8bit magazines before launching his own publishing company.

Sega Pro was the first magazine he released and the start of the Paragon Publishing empire. A decade later he would cash out for cool £16 million pounds. This is that story. Abridged…

GamePro magazine

Welcome to the 90s

Launched in 1989 to cover the rapidly growing U.S. home console market, GamePro would become one of the leading video game publications of the era, eventually branching out into TV, trade shows, and this wild new thing called ‘the Internet’

Michael Meyers was there from the start. A senior editor at the magazine, this is his take on an industry in transition, and the rivalries that played out behind the scene.

Sega Power

Documenting Sega’s rise and fall in the 90s

If you were a Sega fan in the early 90s you had dozens of magazines to choose from. But what happens when a console starts to lose momentum, and you’re left with 100 pages of content to fill every month? How do you get excited about the 32X or the Mega CD when you’re privy to the grim sales forecasts?

Former Sega Power editor Dean Mortlock takes us behind the scenes.  

What happened to Hyper magazine?

Part 1.

“When I first started in games magazines, the Internet was a kind of goofy thing and advertisers were reluctant to pump dollars into it. Each issue was raking in $50,000 - $60,000 in advertising and selling tens of thousand of copies.”

“As soon as the Internet gained any momentum in gaming circles, you could watch circulation and advertising revenue falling in real time,” former editor Daniel Wilks talks us through the final days of Hyper magazine.

How Mean Machines wrote the blueprint for games media

While other publications played it safe, Mean Machines filled its pages with in-jokes and irreverent humour, gleefully slagged off terrible games, insulted its readers and, most importantly, put its staff front and centre.

In other words, it was years ahead of the curve, and laid the groundwork for what games journalism would become in the 90s.

Compute! Part 1.

Compute! captures a moment in time. That hazy late 80s period before Nintendo revived the videogame industry, and the home computer market was shifting towards a more homogenised, production line approach.

But Compute! magazine was already a relic by the time I first came across those issues from the local library in 1989. It just didn’t know it.

How to create a zine in 2023

The Forgotten World’s zine is available to purchase… here’s the awful truth

“If I sell every single copy I’ll just about break even… which is a terrible business model, but here we are.”

Ever wanted to create a zine? Here’s a deep dive into the process, costs and issues encountered while creating Forgotten World’s issue #0.

The worst reviewed game in Mean Machines history

“A shambling mockery of a sick parody of a game cartridge…”

They don’t write game reviews like they used to.

So let’s look back at this infamous review of Road Fighter for NES by Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall and Rad Automatic.

The ‘worst ever game’. Indeed…

Videogame fanzines. Part 1.

While mainstream magazines (and websites) focus on a news, previews and reviews format, the indies are free to write about whatever takes their fancy.

As videogames have become more complex, lifelike and morally ambiguous over the years, that’s given writers plenty of material to work with.