Feature: The 12 Best Game Magazine Covers! Subscribe to this RSS feed
Numbers 6, 5, and 4
6. PC Accelerator, June 2000
Sometimes simple is best, isn't it? A cover like this (made to commemorate the final issue of this title, of course) is certainly a contrast to the rest of the game-mag newsstand -- hell, it's a contrast to the other 20 or so issues of PC Accelerator, most of which could easily be confused with copies of Maxim or Stuff at short-to-medium range.
It's pretty rare that an editorial department gets tipped off early enough about the demise of their magazine that they get a chance to even mention it in the pages before shipping it off to the printer, much less make it the main subject of the cover. Making a cover like this takes guts -- though I suppose that if PCXL's circulation was low enough that the mag had to be killed, they had nothing to lose messing around with the formula a bit.
5. GMR, September 2003
GMR is one of two magazines to earn two spots on this list thanks to this mind-bending cover set, a fever-dream of design that turns the magazine's name into a massive, instantly recognizable, Coca-Cola-like logo -- and breaks pretty much every rule of print design doing it.
Seriously, what kind of magazine comes up with something like this? Putting the title and coverlines all diagonal and crazy-like? Giving less than half of the cover space to the subject? It's nuts! So why does it look so incredibly striking? I find it difficult to put into words. The best way I can think of doing it is simply to say "I wish EB Games didn't kill GMR off so suddenly."
4. Computer Gaming World, January 1985
Back when CGW was a glorified newsletter with a circulation measured in the four-figures, its art and design was handled by a man named Tim Finkas, a guy who worked at a California game shop and hooked up with CGW publisher Russell Sipe through some contacts in the wargame business. Finkas' art, as you can see here, is like nothing else in game mags -- almost never devoted to a single game, but instead themed vaguely after whatever was inside the magazine. The results, like this tank battalion besieged by tentacles, were wondrously bizarre at times.
You can see more of Finkas' art from this era in this interview, which captures a lot of the feel of working for CGW during what you could call its prehistory.
