GameFan Issue 02 (June 2010)

I'm so glad to finally read some of these issues from the GameFan 2010 relaunch. I have been looking for them for a long time, but I could never find any on other sites. I left more of a history of this magazine on my Issue #1 comment, so go there for more info. This relaunch only saw 11 issues total be published over the course of 5 years (April 2010 to June 2015). The first 5 issues came out on-time on a bi-monthly schedule, but Issue #6 took eight months. Issue $7 was put together by three people; Dave Halverson, managing editor James Bacon, and art director Rob Duenas. I don't know if we will ever see all 11 issues here on RetroMags (two were digital-only), but I am thankful for those that took the time to donate and scan these. Join me as we look at each one that finds its way here, thanks dablais.

Highlights From this Issue: Rob Duenas is the new art director and art designer, and I absolutely love the way these new issues look. It takes the idea of having several high-quality images like in the original magazine, and updates it to a more modern standard. You'll notice that there's a main screenshot or a background image that becomes the color palette for an entire 2-page spread. Like for Super Mario Galaxy 2, the green in Yoshi's nose shows up in some of the columns on other pages of the coverage. In Issue #1 you had the Viewpoint section, which had scores from two people each, but then you had the proper Review section with full-page content, but not every game had a score. I never understood this design -- isn't the Viewpoint the review? Why did some games not have a score? I like the full-page reviews better, but sometimes it was a different person, and sometimes it was the same as the viewpoint look at the game. I understood not every game needed a full page or two for a review, but some repeated. I'd rather see a game get reviewed once, in the same location. Apparently, many readers had comments on this as well, so changes were made. The MovieFan section was dropped early, with many readers preferring PC games and an Anime section. There are little things, like I wish the scores themselves were bigger, but they do fill the page out with words, which I'd rather see more written content on the page in the end anyway. It looks good, and there is a good emphasis on indie or the smaller arcade games found on XBLA or PSN.