Ever since the world’s first two videogame magazines, Great Britain’s Computer and Video Games and the United States’ Electronic Games, debuted two weeks apart in November 1981, printed videogame magazines have basically come in four flavors.
General: The majority of gaming magazines fell under this category and covered all aspects of gaming, including handhelds, and in many cases, computer games. Some of the most popular magazines, including Electronic Games, Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), and the aforementioned Game Informer, fall into this category.
Company-specific: This is a magazine that is basically propagan- da for the hardware manufacturer and focuses primarily on the games and systems that the company has to offer. Nintendo Power, which was for the most part published by Nintendo, is probably the most well-known example of a company-specific magazine.
Console-specific: This type of magazine was usually printed by an independent publisher but was supported in part by the console’s manufacturer. As the name implies, it usually focused on news and reviews for games and peripherals for the specific console that it covered. Some console-specific magazines were even packaged with discs that contained playable samples of upcoming games. The most popular of the console-specific magazines was the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine.
Retro Gaming: This is basically a subset of the general format except that it only covers consoles and games that are usually more than 25 years old. Some general magazines, including Game Informer and GamesTM offered monthly retro sections. The new kid on theblock, Old School Gamer Magazine, falls into this category. The number of retro gaming magazines that have appeared can be counted on one hand.
The first magazine that was devoted strictly to retro gaming wasn’t even a professional magazine at all. Classic Gamer Magazine, which debuted in the Fall of 1999, was the self-pub- lished brainchild of Chris Cavanaugh, a long-time fan of the original Electronic Games magazine and its editors, Bill Kunkel, Arnie Katz and Joyce Worley.
