A Missing Era?

[mjkerpan]

Were there any English-language magazine coverage of the console scene between 1985 (when the original Electonic Games folded) and 1988? Is a huge chunk of the 8-bit era basically undocumented or am I missing something? Modern reviews of old games are nice, but it would be nice to know what people thought at the time.

[Sean697]

86 and 87 were pretty dry for games mags. There were of course industry newsletters like the fun club news and the Sega challenge newsletter. The pre-precursor to EGM, top score newsletter

https://www.retromags.com/magazines/category/usa/top-score/#.VwSKsfBpZCk

Delved into 8 bit gaming a bit, as did the precursor to EGM, Electronic Game Player.

https://www.retromags.com/magazines/category/usa/electronic-game-player/#.VwSJlfBpZCk

But that was I think 88 for the later maybe late 87.

Edited April 6, 2016 by Sean697

[aloram]

Were there any English-language magazine coverage of the console scene between 1985 (when the original Electonic Games folded) and 1988? Is a huge chunk of the 8-bit era basically undocumented or am I missing something? Modern reviews of old games are nice, but it would be nice to know what people thought at the time.

Funny you should ask. I just happened to watch this video last week, and it answers your question, or at least provides some insight.

EDIT: Fast forward to around 3:30 if you want to skip right to it.

[kitsunebi]

The industry in the US was too small at the time to support magazines. You could always check out UK mags like Computer and Video Games, but the 8-bit era in the UK was mostly focused on 8-bit computers, so if you're looking for coverage of early NES or Master System games, you're probably out of luck.

[VGBounceHouse]

Computer Gaming World sometimes had a section on consoles from some of the distaff Electronic Games editors, I'd have to dig into the archives to find how frequently they did it though.

[mjkerpan]

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. It's really shocking just how close to death video games came in the West after the Atari bubble popped.

[VGBounceHouse]

Thanks for confirming my suspicions. It's really shocking just how close to death video games came in the West after the Atari bubble popped.

They really didn't, though home computers weren't generating the same level of revenue they were successful enough and coin-ops were still chugging along. In terms of media, however, it was never financially viable to just cover the arcade scene and CGW was well established so the "pretenders" to the throne like Computer Play had to fight for the advertising dollar. And while they weren't no dedicated game mags you got plenty of coverage in the computer-specific magazines of the time.

Sure, in comparison to the money being raked in from 1979-mid 1982 it might look like the hobby was close to death, but I had no shortage of games on the PC and then Amiga while my friends gamed on Apple and Atari home computers. The NES took years to gain a foothold and when the Genesis hit much of its early catalog came from the Amiga and the devs were up to speed because of hardware similarity. Electronic Arts launched into this "vacuum" and had plenty of success across a broad range of home computers.