GamePro magazine

A brief history of the 90s

The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) revived the US console industry. First launched in late 1985 to select cities, it would go on to claim 90% of the domestic market by the turn of the decade. 

Despite this success, specialist gaming magazines were hard to come by in the 80s. And the ones that did exist favoured home computers. That all changed in 1989 when two flagship publications launched - EGM and GamePro. 

Michael Meyers was there from the start. As a senior editor for GamePro from 1990 to 1993, he had front row seats to the industry's growth, its rivalries, and its trade secrets.

This is his take on the era, and an industry in transition.

Free games and flashing lights

Michael Meyer’s association with video game publications goes back further than most. He got his start writing about early 80s arcade machines for a local paper, contributed to the original Electronic Games magazine in the mid 80s, did a stint with games publisher Jaleco in the later part of the decade, and eventually landed at GamePro in 1990, when it was little more than a start-up out of Redwood City, California. 

Not that he planned any of it. As he recalls, “There were very few games writers in the 80’s, and most of us were teens that were instantly enamored with our first taste of this new technology. We didn’t have the money to buy the machines and games that we wanted, so we parlayed our limited writing abilities into mini-careers. But mainly [we were there] to get the free games.” 

Stranger Things 

Despite the rapid growth of the U.S. video game industry in the late 80s, it would take time for magazine publishers to catch-up. Both GamePro and EGM launched nationally in 1989. By that point the NES had been on the market for almost five years, and the next generation of systems - led by the the Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 - had just arrived stateside.

Most of that hesitation can be attributed to the video game crash of 1983. After the industry imploded and thousands of E.T. cartridges were buried in an Arizona landfill, people turned their attention to the calmer waters of micro computers. Michael was among them, and spent the second half of the 80s writing about software for the Apple 2 and its competitors. 

That gave him a more nuanced perspective on the second coming of gaming consoles. As he puts it, “I think many adults assumed video games were just a passing fad of the 70’s and 80’s and once the crash happened, the assumption was gaming wouldn’t be back."

“But what many people didn’t see was the gaming industry was still going, just without the console part. Computers were becoming more powerful, and machines like the Atari 800 and the Apple 2 were filling that void as the ‘home gaming machine.’ Publications were springing up dedicated to the computer platforms with large sections focused just on the games. Arcades and pinball were still going strong, as well.  

“The place where the skepticism remained strongest was with the big retailers such as Sears, JC Penneys, Toys R US, Kaybee Toys, etc., because those are the folks that took the most damage from the crash of 83.”

A new challenger appears

The growth and resurgence of the video game market in the early 90s inspired plenty of competition, but it wasn’t just Sega vs Nintendo. The growing number of magazines arriving to cover the console wars also had their own rivalries. 

According to Michael, the geographic distance between publishers helped keep things civil. “There was nothing like the rivalry between the first party gaming companies – like when Sony deflated the giant Sonic that was on top of Sega’s hotel during the Consumer Electronic Show. 

“The reality was that the key gaming publications were all located so far apart - GamePro in Northern California, Ultra GamePlayers in North Carolina, EGM in the Chicago suburbs, VG&CE in Los Angeles, and Game Informer in Minneapolis. 

“So we weren’t exactly seeing each other at the local bar at 5pm each week. If there was a rivalry, I think it was the ‘scoop’ rivalry. I ran GamePro’s ProNews section, and I always wanted to get the scoop that EGM didn’t have. But otherwise, I think we all were happy to be in that very small club of ‘gaming journalists’ in the early 90’s.”

Selling weight interstate 

That small club of writers and editors saw their pastime reach new heights in the early 90s, with a sudden rush of consoles, publishers and games flooding the market. 

With no Internet and a monthly publication cycle, magazines like GamePro found themselves with more material than they could ever hope to cover. That meant late night conversations about what would sell magazines and how to keep advertiser influence at arms length. 

As Michael recalls, “GamePro had a very specific philosophy when it came to covers, ‘Will this image cause the mother to buy the magazine because it’s recognizable enough that even they know who it is’? This philosophy actually led to one of the great internal battles between GamePro’s editorial staff and management.

“The editorial team wanted to cover this amazing new game called Sonic the Hedgehog. Management wanted to do a cover for a Gameboy title featuring Bugs Bunny – because everyone knew who Bugs Bunny was.

“The end result was a split distribution, with half the covers being Sonic the Hedgehog and other half being Bugs Bunny. Except the distribution got screwed up, and both covers showed up in a lot of retailers. People thought they were two different issues [and bought both]. I think management should have trusted us, I mean everyone knows Sonic now, and nobody remembers Bugs Bunny.”

I remember Bugs Bunny, but that’s neither here nor there. 

The Internet ruins everything

As the industry grew, and new consoles entered the market, more magazines entered the fray. But the real battle was yet to come, and would be fought online, as print publications started exploring digital frontiers in the late 90s.

As Michael puts it, “The transition from the 90’s to the 2000’s is really the seismic event in the gaming industry’s trajectory. Once the Internet started playing a major role, everything changed. It propelled this industry to heights previously unimagined.”

But it also changed the nature of business. “Things [became] much more career-like,” says Michael. “Video games no longer seemed like some flash in the pan hobby.”

The industry had grown up. So had the first generation of writers there to cover it. How that would play out over the next decade as websites consolidated, and print was pushed to the periphery is a whole other story.

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