Feature: The 12 Best Game Magazine Covers Ever! Subscribe to this RSS feed
The Top Three Magazine Covers!
3. Electronic Gaming Monthly, November 2003
Most of EGM's covers are of the utilitarian sort -- they show some art from a game (often the main character[s] staring right back at you), a bunch of coverlines describing what's inside, and that's about it. Nothing wrong with them, but they aren't as memorable after they exit the newsstand.
Sometimes, though, they freestyle a bit, like with this cover (distributed only on newsstands). This was actually the second of two alternate EGM covers drawn exclusively for them by Yoshitaka Amano, and they both make me wish EGM solicited original art for its covers more often. The illustration is otherworldly, the sort of thing you'd keep the mag just to say you own.
2. Next Generation, May 1997
Now this is Next Generation at its low-down, dirty, muckraking best. Thought EGM's tomato-covered PS3 cover was ballsy? Next Generation's cover is easily the most provocative I've seen from a professional game publication, and I'm amazed anyone at Nintendo talked to them afterwards. The forward inside continues with the vitriol, calling the N64's game library "a meager and often miserable collection of no-brainer sequels, out-of-date coin-up conversions, and uninspired originals." Ouch.
The 22-page feature inside goes into excruciating detail on the state of Nintendo, including a profile of Hiroshi Yamauchi, a scathing interview with then-NOA head Howard Lincoln, and a massive critique of the N64's software and Nintendo's approach with the system. Even ten years later, it's an incredibly fresh and engrossing thing to read -- the sort of thing I wish more game mags would do today instead of relying on that old standby, the preview feature.
1. Electronic Games, August 1982
I suppose choosing this cover out of the 3000 or so video-game magazines I own as number one implies that I don't think anything has improved on it in the past 25 years. I don't know if that's a fair way to put it, but you have to admit -- have you ever seen a piece of art that better personifies the feel, the amazement, the sheer excitement of the fledgling game industry as it grow into a billion-dollar business practically overnight in the early 1980s?
If there's one thing I'd like to see more of in print game media today, it's passion. I'm not talking about the too-hardcore-for-its-own-britches approach of GameFan; I'm talking about writing things you're genuinely interested in, not things you think the readers or the management expects of you. As the marketplace inevitably shrinks and the readership of print mags becomes more and more dedicated, long-term gamers, those mags which do their best to rock the boat and make their passion the most obvious are the ones that'll survive, I think.
Kevin Gifford is the author of GameSetWatch's weekly "Game Mag Weaseling" column, which covers the latest in the videogame industry's printed page. He owns more issues of videogame magazines than your dad does of Penthouse.
