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Computer Gaming World, PSM, PC Gamer, and Tips and Tricks, then and now!

Computer Gaming World/Games For Windows
First Issue: November/December 1981

The oldest game publication still in regular operation, Games For Windows began life as Computer Gaming World, a title launched in 1981 that concentrated primarily on computer wargames, RPGs, and other facets of PC gaming's nerdier side. Called "The New England Journal of gaming" for its verbose, heavy-handed approach, CGW was the most mature-skewing magazine in gaming until the late 1990s, when competition from PC Gamer forced it to loosen up a bit and shift coverage to FPSes, RTSes, and hardware upgrades.

279 Issues Later:

The name change to Games For Windows in December 2006 was the culmination of two years of large-scale changes to the magazine. Late in its life, CGW experimented extensively with its insides, going for a scoreless review system for several months and publishing a series of eye-opening industry expose-type feature articles. GFW continues some of this, but doesn't take it to the extremes that late-era CGW did, instead concentrating on writing long, extensive reviews and looking darn good in the process.

PlayStation Magazine
First Issue: September 1997

PSM was launched by Imagine on the same month as Ziff Davis' Official PlayStation Magazine (RIP), and as such it stood for the opposite of nearly everything OPM did. Ziff's mag aimed for an older audience with its feature coverage; PSM skewed younger, with more strategy guides, comic-book covers, and freebies like memory-card stickers included with most early issues. The text inside was far more tongue-in-cheek than OPM, too, featuring the goofy captions and extensive reader interaction that defined Game Players, Imagine's multiplatform title at the time.

130 Issues Later:

Time, along with the demise of OPM, has changed PSM dramatically. The most recent design dropped the kid-oriented look and goofy captions entirely, replacing them with a mag squarely focused on game previews, reviews, and not a heck of a lot else.

PSM actually closes up shop with this issue, relaunching as issue 1 of PlayStation: The Official Magazine in December. How much will change? Considering the same editors will be behind the new mag, probably not a lot apart from a cleaner look and the occasional Blu-ray demo disc.

PC Gamer
First Issue: May/June 1994

PC Gamer is actually a redesigned version of Game Players PC Entertainment, a pretty obscure bimonthly title that predates the Game Players empire's bankruptcy and salvation by UK-based Future Publishing. It was a pretty dramatic shift, with a 1.44mb high-density disk included on the cover, a huge (and very "modern" in the mid-1990s sense) visual redesign, and new Edge-like columns in the rear covering everything from sims and hardware to educational games. It was a much more striking magazine that Computer Gaming World, its main competition, and by 1998 it was one of the hugest juggernauts in the business, with holiday issues bloated with advertising and spanning across almost 500 pages.

168 Issues Later:

After several redesigns over the years (including a disastrous one that divided the entire magazine into sections based on game genres for a few months), PC Gamer now looks...well...pretty much like it did in 1994, with large-size reviews, the occasional flashy preview feature, and full-page columns from assorted gaming dignitaries in the back of the book. The more things change, huh? Perhaps the most major difference is the lack of a disk (or disc, for that matter) on the cover -- something you still see in the original UK PC Gamer, but dismissed as redundant by most American magazine fans.

Tips & Tricks
First Issue: Spring 1994

After a series of disappointing circulation drops, Larry Flynt Publishing discontinued flagship game title VideoGames & Computer Entertainment in 1993 and split it into several separate mags: VideoGames, Computer Player, Tips & Tricks, and (later) Ultimate Gamer.

By 1997, only Tips & Tricks was still in publication, thanks to a degree of depth to its strategies and code lists that was unmatched by GamePro's Code Vault, the only other regular competition on the newsstand. Remarkably, the magazine went largely unchanged in style from 1994 to 2005, when an effort was made to include more original non-tips content.

152 Issues Later:

Sadly, that effort to diversity the magazine's insides failed after about a year, and LFP laid off most of Tips & Tricks staff in 2007, making the magazine bimonthly and putting its coverage back firmly in the "pages and pages of codes" department. Better for the bottom line, perhaps, but not too fun to read for you and I.


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.