Missing magazine: Electric Brain

[gingerbeardman]

This was initially hand-made but eventually it became quite popular and had a proper print run with ISSN codes, published by Space City Publishing (London), and widely distributed in game stores and newsagents around the UK. It still had the fanzine aesthetic, similar to Japanese magazines of the time like Famitsu, Gamest, Beep etc, as it was printed on newspaper style paper rather than high grade paper like EDGE might have been.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Brain

I have three issues—33, 34 and 35—previously scanned on a cheap flatbed and uploaded to archive.org

Since then I bought a Fujitsu fi-4530C and took out the staples to scan the issue again, and the results are infinitely better:

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/ygacekc82akv0/Electric_Brain (3 x ~35MB cbz)

• The name of the magazine and country of origin.
  • ELECTRIC BRAIN (UK)
  • https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/0968-8471#

• How many issues of this magazine exist?
  • 35
• What are the dates of each issue?
  • April 1989 – June 1993
  • source: issue 33 page 3; other photos

I found this additional information:

• PC Engine Fanatics: 1 to 8
• Console Ma'zine: 9 to 19
• Electric Brain: 20 to 35

This is my first submission so please be gentle.

Cheers,
matt

Edited March 12, 2019 by gingerbeardman
more information

[Ethereal Dragonz]

Huh, this is an interesting oddity. Thank you for sharing!

[gingerbeardman]

Cheers!

I have not seen any other issues in the wild, so thought it worth preserving.

[gingerbeardman]

Early share.

http://www.mediafire.com/folder/ygacekc82akv0/Electric_Brain (3 x ~35MB cbz)

Editing almost complete.

Edited January 21, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[gingerbeardman]

OK, I am done editing these 3.

I feel I am ready to upload but am unable because of the missing magazine?

Link above up contains latest cbz files 

edit: corrected size of RetroMags image

Edited January 21, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[kitsunebi]

On 12/4/2018 at 3:16 AM, gingerbeardman said:

It still had the fanzine aesthetic, similar to Japanese magazines of the time like Famitsu, Gamest, Beep etc, as it was printed on newspaper style paper rather than high grade paper like EDGE might have been.

I'm confident in saying that Famitsu was a slick and professional magazine right from the start, being a continuation of a column that appeared in Login, which at the time was Japan's most successful (computer) gaming magazine.  And I don't own any issues of Beep, but seeing as how it was published by Softbank, the 6th largest telephone company in the world (worth 75 billion USD now), I find it unlikely that it ever gave off a "fanzine aesthetic," either.

I'll grant you that Gamest's early issues are probably fairly fanzine-ish.  Very hardcore-gamer oriented and a not-very-flashy-looking design with lots of black and white pages lacking pictures.

[gingerbeardman]

Yea, wrong phrasing by me really. What I mean is that those magazines listed featured a more irreverent, haphazard graphic style and less regular page layouts. Maybe it's quintessentially Japanese, which is why Electric Brain "copied" that kind of layout?

Edited January 22, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[kitsunebi]

You might be right that Japanese video game magazine design influenced Western video game magazine design.  I'm not an expert in UK mags from the 80s (the UK was a fairly distinctly separate gaming industry from Japan/USA at that point), but so far as American mags go, I certainly remember reading that Nintendo Power was created under the directive of copying the aesthetic of Famitsu, and magazines such as EGM copied their review system.  But one reason for that is simply because those Japanese mags you mentioned predated modern (post-crash) American video game mags by a number of years.  By the time a magazine like Culture Brain came along, pretty much every video game magazine in existence had a similarly irreverent (I would say, aimed-at-a-young-audience) graphic style, so any influence from Japanese design could be strictly second-hand.

[gingerbeardman]

Good news everybody! The wikipedia page for Electric Brain has been recently reviewed and approved.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Brain

[gingerbeardman]

The Electric Brain Wikipedia page is under threat of deletion.

Any experienced wikipedians in the house?

Edited May 4, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[Phillyman]

5 hours ago, gingerbeardman said:

The Electric Brain Wikipedia page is under threat of deletion.

Any experienced wikipedians in the house?

No, but this is why we have our own Wiki-like section for these types of entries to go into.....and we wont delete them

 

 

 

[gingerbeardman]

Managed to get a feature on Nintendo Life about Electric Brain, which should hopefully be seen as a reliable source. 

[E-Day]

You should have linked to it!

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2019/05/forgotten_interview_with_miyamoto_sheds_light_on_a_classic_zelda_production

[kitsunebi]

7 hours ago, gingerbeardman said:

Managed to get a feature on Nintendo Life about Electric Brain, which should hopefully be seen as a reliable source. 

Ah, so that's why you wanted a scan of Famitsu 162.  Electric Brain copied that interview from there.  Of course, they truncated it quite a bit, as well.  The Famitsu interview goes on for 5 pages.

[gingerbeardman]

@kitsunebi77 yes indeed, the EB translation was from 1992.

A more complete translation came along in 2012 (still truncated) and the full thing in 2016.

To the Wikipedian Yobs: I say that's noteworthy! 

@E-Day yes I should have! Thanks

Edited May 7, 2019 by gingerbeardman

[gingerbeardman]

The full set of 40 issues now have a collection of their own!

https://archive.org/details/electricbrain