Feature: The 12 Best Game Magazine Covers Ever! Subscribe to this RSS feed
Numbers 9, 8, and 7
9. Next Generation, April 1995
An American incarnation of the UK's Edge, Next Generation was one of the first mags in the nation to deliberately aim for an 18-and-over readership with far-ranging game previews and longform interviews with game dignitaries. This is the first of several covers that tackled the console wars as they stood in the mid-1990s -- Sony looking strong, Sega looking a bit flustered, Atari and 3DO already falling out of the picture, and Nintendo looking on and laughing. The main highlight inside is arguably Next Generation's finest hour: an interview with Atari head Sam Tramiel, who infamously claimed that the Jaguar was "as powerful, if not more powerful than the Saturn" and accused Sony of illegal dumping of they priced the PlayStation at $299.
8. Play, March 2006
GMR didn't technically stand for anything, but within the media industry it was often referred to as JMR -- "James Mielke Reader". That's because Mielke, the executive editor, put a lot of his own personality into the magazine, from big, bold art to extensive coverage of online RPGs and Japanese titles.
It was certainly a boon to the aesthetics of GMR that the vast majority of its circulation came through Electronics Boutique membership cards and the editors therefore didn't need to worry too much about "selling" through its covers. This resulted in some crazy experimentation on cover art -- some of which succeeded, some of which fizzled. I was always a huge fan of this piece for Need for Speed Underground 2 which adorned the third-to-last issue of GMR; it's got a perfect sense of, well, speed, and underground-ed-ness. Taking what was probably a standard marketing photo (I doubt Brooke Burke visited the GMR offices for a cover shoot) and making it into something really unique is really quite commendable. And I don't even care about racing games.
7. Xbox Nation, June 2002
Similar to the situation with GMR, the editors of Ziff Davis Media's unofficial rival to Future's Official Xbox Magazine tried their best to create a "pretty" magazine, one where the focus was less on straight video-game reporting and more on creating something pleasing on the eyes and stimulating for the mind. They were pretty successful at that, but they were never able to compete with OXM and their demo disc, so they closed down in early '05.
This cover is, in my eyes, the perfect melding of art and coverlines. The piece of art looks like it was made uniquely for this magazine, and it goes great with XBN's whitespace-heavy, modern-looking art design. It could be argued that this look was a little too avant-garde for the sort of fanbase that made the Xbox popular, but it still looked superb.
