E3

Jun 11, 2014 01:33

While I don't really follow E3 coverage super-closely these days (it'll probably be a year or two before I feel the need to acquire a next-gen system, and my gaming backlog is absurd besides), its annual arrival tends to always make me super-nostalgic for the gaming news source of my youth-Electronic Gaming Monthly. Back when EGM was still a thing and I was only vaguely aware of gaming message boards, the arrival of the newest issue was something I actively looked forward to each month. When it finally arrived, I'd squeal, curl up on the couch, and read the whole thing cover to cover in one sitting. And then reread it the next day.

And nothing was more exciting than the E3 issue, twice as thick as all the other issues-not only was it full of delicious coverage and previews and such, but I loved the way they managed to convey the feel of the event-giving blow-by-blow accounts of the atmosphere in the room throughout each of the major press conferences, printing "field guides" to the types of E3 attendees, a bajillion solid square inches of photos... The reporting was solid and just plain fun; I dreamed of going to E3 in person someday.

I loved the letters to the editor section and the staff's snarky replies, and I loved the quirks of the editors and mini-dramas that played out throughout each magazine's pages. The enraged letters for months when Greg Sewart gave Chrono Cross only 9.5 out of 10, thus "robbing" Chrono Cross of the platinum award. The gorgeous exclusive cover art they got for the Metal Gear Solid 2 and Final Fantasy X releases. That time they hired their first female editor and casually lol'd at all the nerdcreeps who kept sending her love letters. Various members of the office getting waaaay too serious about that whole Michigan vs Ohio State thing (as conveyed via snarky back-and-forth comments in game reviews, editor bios, editorials...). The awesome "featured letter art" section-I mean, yeah, fanart's far more ubiquitous and easy to find nowadays, but there's something kind of badass about using an envelope as your medium and sending it via standard post, hoping that the magazine might pick your envelope to print in that issue. Also, Seanbaby's quick rise to fame; I couldn't read two sentences in his "20 worst video games of all time" feature without doubling over laughing. (Wonder if the Dan and Hsu comic lives on elsewhere?)

And, gosh, their features were always great and long and so substantial; there were so many interviews I read over and over. There was an issue on how to break into the game industry, and that thing was my bible; I poured over the article more times than I can count, plotting my own glorious entrance. (In a later issue, they did an article about the increasingly-popular learn-to-make-videogames school Digipen, and when I blathered about that to my dad, he wrote to the school, asking for more info for his little prospective student. Then my hard copy of the Digipen course catalog became my bible. ilu daddy)

Hell, the magazine taught me most the swear words I know. (Most of which I didn't know were swear words, until I used them in front of my mom and saw her freak out. Then when she asked where I learned such foul language, I blamed my older brother, because that's what younger siblings do.) In middle school I emailed them (I had a classmate who was wrong about Halo 2 and I wanted an authority to correct them) and editor Shawn Elliot actually emailed back oh my God. I still have a printout of the email on my bulletin board at home.

Nowadays there are platforms for so many people and so many voices talking about these things that I can't imagine anything becoming a similarly influential platform for gaming news (particularly dead-tree gaming news), and that's cool. You can't wind back time and, even if you could, I'm not sure if you'd want to. But there was something truly exciting about the anticipation of the next issue, the month-sized chunks of gaming news, and the fun of getting to know each of the editors' personalities, with their little clannish spirit oozing through the pages-and that's all something that just can't quite be captured in 21st century media.

Gosh that magazine was special to me.

...right, I was going to talk about E3 :D;;; Stuff I cared about:

  • Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright actually has a stateside release date now! August 29th, which is not too terribly far away and I am excite.
  • Curious how Smash Bros will play on 3DS, cautiously optimistic.
  • I liked the new Zelda trailer. I mean, it was short and had no gameplay footage, so all we got was an art style, but it's a fun art style! They'll need more than Zelda to convince me to buy a WiiU, though. I still don't even have a Wii :P
  • Co-op for Assassin's Creed seems potentially really fun, even though that alone probably won't convince me to shell out for the new game. But then again I said I wasn't going to buy Assassin's Creed 4 and look how that turned out. Damn you, Ubisoft.
  • i guess people still care a lot about halo or something, sighs and rolls eyes disinterestedly
  • the last of us just came out like, what, a year ago, do we really need a remastered version already
  • who the fuck chose that font for the mgs5 phantom pain trailer (also, sigh forever, i don't really want to play a new mgs after the clusterfuck that was mgs4, buuuuut i know it's going to happen anyway)
  • sunset overdrive looks like it could be a lot of ratchet-and-clank-esque fun. insomniac produces such quality games geez
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