Q64 1997 Volume 1 (Summer)

The group behind this magazine partially came from GameFan. About 5 of them left or broke off and created a mag called Dimension-3, which covered PC and 3DO, but it only lasted 7 issues. I never liked the name “Dimension-3” but this probably came from the name of the publisher, Dimension Publishing. The group released another mag at the same time, Dimension PS-X but only released two issues, before renaming it PS Extreme, which then lasted many years. I really like this group of David Jon Winding, Greg Off, Tim Lindquist, Eric Winding, Mark Winding, and Joe Sutton. Most of this same group made another short-lived magazine, Q64. If you liked the early years of GameFan then you might want to check out any of the magazines I mentioned above. Their stuff has all been high quality from what I've seen, and I've been tracking down much of it for many years.

Highlights From this Issue: They made this as a collector's quality book for Nintendo 64 owners, with plans for three Volumes per year, but that didn't always work out. It still has reviews, previews, news, strategies and a cover story. There are reviews for Turok, Doom 64, Blast Corps, Hexen, Mario Kart 64, War Gods, and FIFA 64. The writing itself is decent, but I don't like the layout of the pages, which mostly consist of these thick colored boarders on the top and bottom of pages. I always never liked magazines that try to come up with interesting names for the different sections, because new readers wont understand these at first. Reviews are called Judgement 64, previews are called Future Play 64 in this first issue, and strategies are Strategies 64. The page backgrounds are mostly plain white, but this changes in later issues, but not by too much. This also is made by a group of people that work well together, but this means you don't see the name of the people that write the reviews or even the cover stories. I guess I expected more given the talent, but then, this magazine was more of a side project than their main publications, so just keep that in mind.