MegaFan Volume 1 Issue 1 (November 1996)

This is the first official spin-off from GameFan that received a separate publication, and it seemed to last for only 3 issues. Dave really brings out the used-car salesman in him to sell you on the mag. After you've bought a game, "there's now a publication that goes to the next level with you." And he insists that "MegaFan is a completely new concept." The mag focuses on four categories: strategies, tips and tricks, behind the scenes/interviews, and arcade. So, yeah. it has tips and strategies --which a number of mags started out doing around 1987-1990 and then they ADDED editorial content and became their own publications. EGM2 started in 1994, and they had some additional content along with their strategies and codes, so this really wasn't a NEW concept.

If you loved GameFan then nearly all the names are recognizable -- Dave Halverson is Editor-in-Chief, you got Greg Rau, David S.J. Hodgson, Casey Loe, Andrew Cockburn, Mike Griffin, Kei Kuboki, Ryan Lockhart, Jody Seltzer, Terry Wolfinger, Jay Puryear and a few more. So what went wrong? With this first issue, things are a bit underwhelming. NiGHTS into Dreams has a strategy section, but a lot of text is oversized, like they didn't really have much to say. Then there's grammar like, "Below are the scores you'll need to score in a in each dream." A few page layouts are a little weak, like Mario 64 and Toshinden 2, but they get better. There are text boxes where there is a lot of empty room, where normally the designer should resize the boxes so the text fits. Crash gets 38-pages of coverage, Final Doom (ps1) gets 30 pages of nice maps and highlights covering the first 13 maps, and Legend of Oasis (sat) get an impressive 36-pages of location screenshots. There's an interview with David Perry from Shiny Entertainment, with 10 pages filled with concept art and cool stuff. And they cover one arcade game, Batman Forever with 4 pages. And then its done. It's a 194-page mag, but 100 pages are devoted to just three games. Ive gone through a number of EGM2, SWATPro, and Expert Gamer mags and most strategy sections never went over 12-pages for one game in the same issue, if I remember correctly. There's also NO code section, or tips for one specific part of a game readers are having trouble with. Follow me over to the other issues and we will see what didnt work.