StrykerOfEnyo

The main feature is "The 100 Hottest Games of 2010," but as you would expect from the name, includes a number of games that didnt turn out very well. Not to mention, a few that NEVER came out. Like Lead and Gold, a wild west online-only shooter that only came to the PS3, Postal III (yes, it was planned for consoles back then), and Half-Life Episode Three. You'll see games that turned out to be absolute jokes after release, like Deadliest Warrior: The Game, Homefront, Brink, Kane & Lynch 2, Quantum Theory and more. It's fun seeing all these games that we once we excited about. Several did become popular. You get reviews of several XBLA games, including The Misadventures of PB Winterbottom, a game that STILL goes on sale for under $2 a few times a year. Reviews for: Serious Sam HD, Matt Hazard: Blood Bath and Beyond, Puzzelgeddon, Fret Nice, 0 Day Attack of Earth, and the first Alien Breed game. With only 3 reviews for 360 games, with Divinity II being the only memorable one (6.5). There's a nice look at BioShock 2, along with some good artwork, but not much else for reviews and previews. This issue is more about the main article and a few side-features.

I like your assessment as well here. "Cheesecake" is a very polite way of describing it. I was honestly trying to be more positive with this mag. I had one of the Video Gaming versions of the mag and I remember it felt "juvenile" to read back in 1999, but when looking at this PC Gaming version it seemed to not be as bad. Looking back, I found out several people from GameFan worked on the Video Gaming one, so I hope those show up down the road. Thanks for editing this one, I still appreciate being able to see these again -- it's fun seeing what didn't work sometimes:)

MegaFan was planned as a 6-issues a year publication. It started as a 32-page supplement in GameFan, then it released separately with Issue #1 being a small-format booklet, like the size of a TV Guide or Reader's Digest, with 196-pages. Volume 1 Issue #2 changed to a standard-sized magazine at 116-pages, but it didn't come out until 8 months later, now with David S.J. Hodgson as editor-in-chief and he mentions that its mostly a whole new crew putting the mag together now. Dave Halverson is now just listed as "founder" and Nick Des Barres joins as an editor from GameFan, along with some others. The layouts and page designs were MUCH improved over the original preview issue and the first standard issue. Game coverage was much better varied, they added a codes section, and most games had 10-pages each. Volume 1 Issue #3 took several more months to come out, with this third issue releasing ONE YEAR after the first issue was published. This third and final issue has even fewer recognizable members from GameFan than the last issue. We do have some nice layouts and colors -- this does look a lot better than previous efforts. There are a number of Avatars, like Blinky the Clown, Prince Ratt, and Nightmare. Arcade coverage returns in the Fighting Retro Arcade feature of Yie Ar Kung Fu. Marvel Super Heroes gets 24-pages of content, but it covers the arcade and console versions and has a move-list for many characters. Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha gets 20-pages, and Tekken 3 gets a lot of coverage too, but fighting games were huge at this time, so this is perfectly justifiable. We get some strategies for PlayStation titles, like Treasures of the Deep, Ace Combat 2, Castlevania SOTN, Wild Arms, and Ogre Battle. Fighting game fans get around 60-pages, but PlayStation then gets a number of big games. Good content, with lots of profiles for the fighting game characters, some additional articles to read, and more personality in the writing. It's a MUCH better effort than Issue #2, but this is the last one published. They had 1-year subscriptions for 6-issues in the pages of GameFan, but I would be upset if I had paid for 6 issues right at the start, then waited a full year, to only see three instalments release.

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.

I always thought this magazine was low-quality, with the covers given to celebrities or hot women, and other pics of women throughout the mag -- but it's really not as extreme as I once thought. The reviews are multiple pages with a good amount of text written for most games themselves. I've gone through a lot of gaming mags, and you can tell when a reviewer seems like they couldn't be bothered to type much when you have one paragraph of text on a page, but that's not really the case here. Indiana Jones has 4 pages and it gets a 4/5, which is a higher score than the new Tomb Raider, but that makes sense. Ultima: Ascension gets a 2/5 but the reviewer backs up this score. Its nice to see the PC review for Omikron: The Nomad Soul (4/5). I owned the Dreamcast version, but I always wondered how it played on another platform. Test Drive 6 is the only game to get a 1/5 in the issue! the strategies for Half Life: Opposing Force are decent, and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine has several color maps to use. The layout uses a "three columns and one half-column" which is a nice design for providing a few good chunks of text, but still having some flexibility to put in a few bigger images. I prefer this design -- using "four columns" per page just wastes too much space in your margins. This isnt a bad mag, but I dont believe it lasted beyond 10 issues. I belive you had a good number of respected PC magazine at this time, so maybe there wasnt room for more.

Dave Halverson started GameFan, but then left not to long after it was bought out by Metropolis Media. Halverson created a new company, Millennium Publications, and launched Gamers' Republic and produced a number of strategy guides. Gamers' Republic would eventually have trouble keeping up a regular schedule and there seemed to be some strife with the staff. At the time, Prima Publishing and Versus Books had a virtual monopoly on the strategy-guide marketplace, so Millennium had a hard time licensing new games. Around 1999, most of Millennium's senior staff (including co-publisher Dave Rau, Greg Han, and editors Dave Rees, Dan Jevons, and Ryan Lockhart, alone with Hodgson) left after a falling-out with Halverson. I dont know the details, but this isnt the place to discuss rumors anyway. Several of them would end up at Computec Media, a German tech-publishing giant that was trying to establish a foothold in the US magazine business. They would end up launching two magazines, Incite Video Gaming and Incite PC Gaming on US newsstands simultaneously on October 26, 1999. Both premiere issues were priced at a loss to get them circulated as much as possible (Video Gaming at 99 cents, and PC Gaming at $1.99 with CD-ROM). Most of the editorial staff was headhunted from other game magazines (especially Gamers' Republic), and supposedly they had a $12 million ad campaign that was prepared to launch alongside the magazines on TV, in print, and on outdoor media like billboards and kiosks. I was in the military at the time, so I have no knowledge of seeing ads or if the budget was even finalized. So that's were Incite came from, an interesting background, but I didn't see many issues from both (Incite Video Gaming has at least 8 issues, and I've only seen Incite PC Gaming have 8 issues available. Incite Video Gaming is the mag that has several of the GameFan staff behind it, but I don't know how well the mag reads because I just can't find many issues out there.

[Forgive these details if earlier issues for the mag exist, this was the first issue on Retromags of this writing.] GameFan magazine had been purchased by Metropolis Media around 1996, and the experience for the staff wasn't pleasant. By 1998, Dave Halverson invited several of the staff over to his home and mentioned his plan to launch a new magazine, which would become Gamers' Republic. After 35 issues, the magazine would come to an end, but Dave would start another mag, Play Magazine, which would last 97 issues before Fusion Publishing would go bankrupt. Mollie Patterson would later mention that they believed that Play was the "closest we’ve ever gotten to a true successor to GameFan. It was the biggest concentration of ex-GF staff that’s ever happened after the death of GameFan, with it having Dave, myself, Nick Des Barres, Casey Loe, Mike Griffin, and Michael Hobbs." So, if you loved GameFan back in the day, then Play Magazine was the best modern version that we would ever see. Highlights from this Issue: A big feature on Metroid Prime (6 pages), and coverage from Tokyo Game Show 2002. There's an Anime section, DVD Reviews, and an interview with Sam Rami and his producer on the Spider-Man movie. There's even a spot for toys, but they are sculpted and painted from Lord of the Rings characters and space marines from Warhammer 40K. I don't like the page layouts in these earlier issues. They would get better, but here the titles to segments and games are very small, with the same style text. Many pages have a HUGE image or two across them, but then the article would only have 300-400 words on the page, to the point where it seemed like they didn't have a whole lot to say about a game, but they got some great images to use. Designs would get better, but I did grow to love this mag later.

I did grow to love this mag later, but the page layouts really lacked style in the early years. I think they were just playing it safe. I hope more of these show up:)

[Forgive these details if earlier issues for the mag exist, this was the first issue on Retromags of this writing.] GameFan magazine had been purchased by Metropolis Media around 1996, and the experience for the staff wasn't pleasant. By 1998, Dave Halverson invited several of the staff over to his home and mentioned his plan to launch a new magazine, which would become Gamers' Republic. He would leave GameFan later that year, and several staff members would join him. You may remember David S.J. Hodgson, Ryan Lockhart, Michael Hobbs, Mike Griffin, Eric Mylonas, and art and design from Gary Harrod and Gregory Han. Some would stay at GameFan, others would contribute. Gamers' Republic would go on for 35 issues, but Halverson's next mag, Play Magazine, would last 97 issues. Highlights from this Issue: Dark Vengeance gets a 3-page preview, Castlevania 64 gets 4 pages. We get reviews for Brave Fencer Musashi, Bushido Blade 2, Crash 3, Destrega, Duke Nukem A Time to Kill, and the great Metal Gear Solid, and Xenogears. So many fantastic reviews. Halverson gave the reigns of design over to Gary Harrod and Gregory Han for the magazine, and it looks very clean and very modern. Is has some nice little touches in the design. All reviews now use letter reviews, there are no avatars, and all the previews seem to have the name of the writer clearly labeled. This is awesome and a great change. There is a good-sized import section, 5 pages of anime, and an interview with From Software and the creators of King's Field of the time. There's even music album reviews, like the soundtrack to Metal Gear Solid and Echo Night, but also a Marilyn Manson album. A good issue, lots of content.

This magazine makes a lot of sense since you may remember from my looks at GameFan on this site, many issues had 12-pages of sports game coverage. Dave Halverson is listed as the "founder" but he is not listed as part of the staff. Rustin Lee is the Editor-in-Chief, with the well-known author Bill Kunkel as executive editor. Unfortunately, this is still owned and published by Metropolis Media, who ultimately mistreated the staff of GameFan to the point of Dave leaving with several others to make Gamers' Republic. Highlights of this Issue: (Volume 1 Issue 1, Summer 1997) We start with a 5-page article on how baseball stadiums have changed over the years. An interview with Frank Thomas, followed by a review on the sequel to Big Hurt Baseball. We have reviews of TriplePlay 98, VR Baseball, Grand Slam Baseball, and a few more on PC and Mac. You easily have 10 reviews of PC sports games overall. Bill Kunkel interviews Don Daglow, a man that worked on the two first seminal electronic baseball games. Some of these articles or interviews might seem a little dry, but they are for the really hardcore sports gamers, and a magazine like this has the room for this content that other big magazine just wouldn't have the room for. You get more reviews for mixed-martial arts, fishing, bowling, and racing games. And 20 pages of previews. This really is a great first issue, but I honestly just dont see the fanbase being big enough to support a "sports only" magazine, even with the expansion to racing, fishing, boxing and bowling. But this was released around the time that consoles saw the release of 7 baseball games in one year, so this was probably a viable option for 2-3 years.

This is just a collection of codes and cheats for a variety of games, along with a sizable GameShark codes section. You don't have any articles or previews, and there's just one page with a short write-up from three of the GameFan editors of the time. One of them does mention the end of MegaFan, a spin-off mag that I've been interested in finding more info on. This is brought to you from a few that have been doing several GameFan Strategy Guides. Fun fact: This was published by Shinno Media, and the president is Jay Puryear, a long-time editor on the original DieHard GameFan. This book is from late 1999, possibly early 2000 since the copyright covers both years.

By this point, Dave Halverson had left to start Gamers' Republic. Metropolis Media owned the GameFan magazine and through its mismanagement, several employees would follow Dave to the next magazine. We now have Eric Mylonas as the editorial director, but he doesn't leave a good impression when (in his Editorial) he refers to all these people that write in to the mag, calling themselves hard-core gamers, but he considers them "hard-core-lite" ONLY because they don't buy imports. Sorry, but I can play games for countless hours, spend all my extra money on games when I can, wait outside an arcade for 40 mins for it to open, but I'm not considered "hardcore" until I pay $75 for a Japanese version of a game that I can't understand the language and won't work naturally on my console anyway. Sorry, but I think this idea is ridiculous because the man that created this magazine also created an import videogame store first, and was reported to be overly positive about most games because they needed to move inventory at the store. I dont believe a gamer can be called hardcore by the amount of money he spends. It should be based on the amount of time you spend playing games, or researching and watching other games or the gaming industry as a whole. Moving on. Highlights from this issue: (Volume 7 Issue 05) We have a special, Games That Get No Respect, a 2-page look at several editors' choices. If you are limited to the mags only available on Retromags, then you will see a big jump in the layout designs. A lot of the "boxy" or "cubed" designs from before have changed. You dont really have screenshots coving the borders of the page like before -- it much more modern, but you often have a single image or artwork for a game in the background. Like for Croc 2 or G-Police. We have reviews on Gex 3, the Next Tetris, Shadow Madness, and the Dungeons & Dragons Collection (sat) that eventually made its way to the PS3 and X360. we got reviews for Dreamcast as well, House of the Dead 2, Power Stone, and Psychic Force 2012. They cover Outcast on PC, plus reviews for Roller Coster Tycoon and Aliens vs Predator. The anime section has 6 pages, which makes sense, since it was becoming bigger as the 2000s approached. And there's 4 pages of arcade machines. A decent size issue considering Christmas is far away, and E3 isn't here yet.

I don't know if more issues will ever be added for GameFan, so excuse me if there is a new section or team member that to a particular issue. Right now, most are spread around, so I cant comment on small changes from one to the next since they are not all in order. Highlights of the issue: (Volume 5 Issue 07) The Viewpoint section probably has the smallest text we've seen yet. Its' great, because that means we get more words from the reviewer. we have an article, "Games That Need Sequels" that has several people chiming in on there own lists. We have interviews with people behind Final Fantasy VII and Nuclear Strike, an early look at Pitfall 3D, and the first look at a M2 game. There's a 4-page preview of Gex: Enter the Gecko, plus Croc, Ace Combat 2, Time Crisis, One, Armored Core, Machine Hunter, MDK and more. Interview with those behind Batman & Robin, but the text is hard to read for one of the pages. The other side uses thicker text and is bold, but someone didn't apply it on the other page. We got reviews of International Superstar Soccer 64, Shining the Holy Ark (sat), Herc's Adventure, Swagman, and a import review of Gamera 2000 (ps1), among a few more. We see a preview of Resident Evil on Saturn as well. Anime reviews still have 2 pages, and an interview with the team behind Spawn on PS1. All the small text ensures you will be reading this one for a while. Good issue.

Enter is a fantastic look at computer and electronic game right during the 1983 Video Game Crash on North America, and up to 1985. It was published by the Children's Television Workshop, the same American nonprofit organization that was responsible for the production of Sesame Street (though today they're called Sesame Workshop). You have a lot of coverage of computer systems of the day, like Apple, IBM, Atari, Commadore 64; but you do get a little on the consoles that were still around, like the Atari 5200. You also get articles talking about how computers are used in movies, some practical applications for them, and if movies like War Games are real in any way. The page layouts are old and basic, but they are very professional for their time. You will find a lot of interesting articles and ads from an interesting time in history. Enter Issue 01 Highlights: You have a Buyers Guide for the top 11 computers around at the time, like the Vic 20, Apple IIe, Atari 1200XL, and more. There are articles on how they make computer chips, how computers don't make sense as being a villain in movies (like Superman III), and how Matthew Broderick prepared for the War Games movie. In keeping with there children-friendly origins, you can also find games and puzzles to play, like Data Path in this issue, which has a game board and is made for 2 or more players (all you need is two dice). Or even tips in programming on how to make a basic face.

Highlights for this issue: (Volume 4 Issue 09) An interview with Naughty Dog, and an interview with Eidetic, the developer of Bubsy 3D that I found interesting to read. The review for Super Mario 64 gets 12-pages, and PilotWings 64 gets a 8-page preview. we see a beautiful layout for the review of Legend of Oasis (sat), an update for Legacy of Kain (ps1), and Tekken 2 gets an 8-page review. we get reviews of several PS1 games, Gunship, Strike Point, Space Hulk, and Ridge Racer Revolution. RPG fansa with love the previews of Lunar Silver Star Story, Langrisser III, on the Saturn. Plus, a review of the import version of what would end up being "Lunacy" (sat). The AnimeFan section is back, which covers several new anime for the time. Oh My Goddess!, Burn Up W, Neon Genesis Evangelion, MD Geist II, Power Dolls, and a few more. I feel the page layouts are much better than during the 16-bit game coverage. There not as garish as they sometimes were back then, with a flood of oranges and reds that sometimes were a bit much. But here, there's a lot better blending, like with the coverage on Destruction Derby, which takes some of the lighter colors from some screenshots and blurs them into a background with hints of smoke and dark spots of debris. It looks good. I think it helps that the consoles themselves are using way more colors. Some new people are also added to the crew. Mike Griffin (aka Jacques Strap) heads up GF Sport now, and Gary Harrod from London. There's more talk about launching MegaFan, another publication meant to be an arcade/strategy mag, and you can find the order form for it here as well (6 issues a year for $15). Im not sure if it came out. There was a GameFan 32 also planned, but then they just inserted the first issue INTO the pages of GameFan itself.

The magazine started off called Die Hard Game Fan, which would be modified into DieHard GameFan as time went on. Dave Halverson created an impot game store called Die Hard Super Store in 1989. He says he "left" the store to create the magazine. They dropped the "diehard" from the front cover on issue Vol 4 Issue 01 but they would still be called DieHard GameFan on the Editorial page, and published by DieHard Publishing until Gamefan Vol 4 Issue 06. GameFan was then purchased by Metropolis Media, which was owned by David Bergstein. starting with Gamefan Vol 4 Issue 07 they were now published by Metropolis Media (though the address was the same as the previous, so the offices didn't change. This is technically when the "DieHard" was removed from the magazine's pages internally. The import game store was called Diehard Gamers Club by this point, and it continued to have an ad in the mag for now. Metropolis Media was a shady business, taking profits from GameFan and putting them into other projects, not to mention employees having multiple issues getting paid on time. It would get so bad the Halverson would conduct a meeting at his house in 1998 about starting a new magazine. This is when he started Gamers' Republic a bit later, and there came a point when he was just gone from the GF offices. With some of his stuff still there. He would later create the US version of Play Magazine. Magazine Highlights (Volume 4 Issue 08) I still enjoy these issues on Retromags. I have seen many other issues of Game Fan have the edges of the pages cut off, but these done by Retromags always have the full-frame of the page, so thanks for that. we got previews for Burning Road, Tomb Raider, Disruptor, Street Racer, Legacy of Kain, NiGHTS, Virtua Fighter Kids. PowerSlave and more. And reviews for DarkStalkers, Fade to Black, MotorToon 2, and a handful of import RPGs (like Treasure Hunter G on snes, and Sword & Sorcery on Saturn). Plus 11 pages of sports, a great issue.

Is there a certain issue # that these rescans will end at? I figured the first 100 issues could be redone, but I cant remember when the hi-res scans first came out. Thanks for ALL of those involved with these.

Some highlights are: previews of StarFighter and Defcon 5. Blade Force has more coverage, a game I bought and was impressive-looking for its time. And we have Primal Rage, which also made its way to Saturn and PS1. Pheonix 3 has a 4-page preview and it looks good, but I do not remember seeing this on store shelves much once it would come out. I never bought it, so either I had switched to PS1 by the time it came out, or perhaps not many copies were pressed. The review for Scramble Cobra looks amazing, first-person helicopter combat with fast action. I remember I bought VR Stalker, but it was a weak flight combat game for it time. Lost Eden also looks good, and I hope to play it one day. Far Reaches Kingdom looks decent. The next issue has a number of game reviews that I ended up buying, POed, Killing Time, Wolfenstien 3D, and BladeForce. If we keep seeing this issues release at some point, I will update with my thoughts on every issue and the games I bought (there's only 12 issues I believe). I loved my 3DO at the time, but it all ended by the end of 1996. Most all the good games showed up on Saturn and PS1 so there's not much reason to own a 3DO today. The Sega Saturn was a better console -- more exclusives, including games you can't find on any other platform still today.

Issue 03 starts with an ad in the inside cover for Computer Exchange, featuring Road Rash. I've seen these full-color comic page ads in other UK magazines, and I always loved them. This issue has the first interview with Randy Scott, CEO of Art Data Interactive who is best known for promising the BEST version of Doom on the 3DO for over a year, and then had to have one programmer port the entire game in record time just to get it out. He had NO understanding of how games were made, yet he apparently raised funds for his company from members of his church at the time (seriously). The only other games they published was Rise of the Robots and Chess Wars. Randy Scott has several great lines -- just know that he exaggerates and embellishes a lot about his accomplishments, so its rather funny that they treat him like a rockstar for publishing Rise of the Robots. Randy Scott would later be arrested and charged for "lewd conduct" involving children, but I cant find any updates on the case, so I dont know what the verdict ultimately was. There are some awesome previews of Immercenary, Killing Time, Blade Force, and Syndicate, then we have a nice 3-page review of Gex.

Issue 02 start by showing Magic Carpet was coming to 3DO, and I spent a few years following this game. I dont remember a UK version of Magic Carpet being reviewed on Dreamcast, and I remembered it looked so cool. Then I found out it came out on PS1 in the US, and the Saturn, I believe. The DC review made it seem like it was so cool, but the other reviews were only 6s or 7s at best. I just bought Magic Carpet 1 & 2 on Gog.com on sale for around $5. We got reviews for Demolition Man, Rebel Assault, and Iron Angel. I was even excited for 3D Atlus. Return Fire was freaking awesome for the day, and it was 2-player local only -- no AI or bots to play against. It was so awesome to be playing 32-bit games throughout all of 1995 well before the Saturn and PS1 came out. Some of the best of 3DO didn't show up on PS1 until later in 1996, and it was all over shortly after that. But I still remember it. I got my 3DO for $400 at an Electronics' Boutique (Software Etc.).

The Viewpoint Section has had some much-needed changes since the April issue, four months ago. They look a lot better, with all the numbers in one column, and a text box next to it. They have cut back the number of reviewers to three instead of four. It gives each one more room for their thoughts. We get to see reviews for Battle Corps (sega cd), Flink (sega cd), Brain Lord (snes), Stunt Race FX (snes), and we get Road Rash (3do), ShockWave (3do) and Brutal Football on the Jaguar. Battle Corps gets 2 pages of pics, and Flink gets 3 pages of beautiful screenshots. You get a 4-page look at an import of Crusade of Centy (the us version). We get 5 pages of screens for Stunt Race FX, which seems a bit much, and Brain Lord gets more coverage. They are doing a better job of having more content for the games being reviewed. Right now, its still only one more page of writing, with 2-3 pages of just more screenshots. We still get a lot of games from snes and genesis, but then we get some good coverage of 3DO -- Way of the Warrior, Road Rash, Shock Wave, Seal of the Pharoh, Burning Soldier. We get one more game for the FM Towns Marty (it was only on the market for 7 months, so don't expect much). We have 11-pages of sports games, and the arcade versions of Primal Rage and Battletoads. We also have several pages of ads for 3DO and Jaguar games as well as the consoles. This is a solid issue. There is small text in several places talking about previews, so you should have a good amount of content to read.

This is when the updated the Viewpoint Section, instead of each reviewer getting room for text box on each game, they now have 5 scoring categories, each out of 10. Each reviewer now gets room for about 15 words max on each game -- that's it! Imagine having to play and beat a game and all you get to do is put a number in 5 categories, and then you get one sentance to some up hours of playing. This exact format didn't last long, but they tried to modify it a bit here and there. Some highlights include: Soul Star, Vay, BattleCorps on Sega CD. Super Metroid, Speed Racer, Equinox, King Dragon, and Battle Cars on SNES. you do get to see an early look at Final Fantasy VI (sfam). Atari Jaguar doesn't have much yet, just 2 pages of Alien vs Predator, some screens of Doom, Wolfinstien and one other game. You get a few early screens of 3DO Road Rash and Shock Wave. You have one game for the Pioneer LaserActive machine, and a small look at the Phillips CD-i, but we do get a full page on 7th Guest. I've gone through all the GameFan magazines years ago, but I still am getting a little excited as we are getting close to this mag exploding with content from 3DO, Jag, more Sega CD, and eventually Saturn and PS1. I hope we can see more of this magazine in the future.

When the Editor-in-Chief of GameFan, Dave Halverson, says "when you see the games in our new Jaguar’s Domain section, you are going to want a Jaguar....... bad." We all listened! Actually, I didnt always read the editorials in my gaming magazines back then, but he says that here. He also tells us, "and to all you kids out there who are wondering what to do for a career. WERE GONNA NEED MORE PRO¬GRAMMERS!!" And yes, he even spells "gamers" wrong. We have an interview with Treasure, GameFan Sports section has 14 pages of football, baseball, tennis and more. I wonder if "Taiko" is David Winding because he is credited as the sports editor. We finally see some 3DO, like Crash 'N Burn, the only launch title. There are a number of shooters covered, StarFox, Silpheed, Steel Empire, Super Nova, Alexey, Lightning Force, and a few more. A lot of games are covered but most seem to be previews. No 3DO, NeoGeo or Jag games reviewed yet. Still a big issue, but not as much new or interesting content.

This is the issue where they cover Super Back to the Future (snes), but it got scores of 30, 25, 15, 12. Yes, thats out of 100. Even Yoshi's Safari got 40s and a 52. That Ex-Ranza game returns, but now it's called Ranger-X, and it would go on to be one of the best shooters for the Genesis at the time. This is a massive 176-page issue packed with reviews and previews. There's a GameFan Sports section with 14 pages of football, soccer, baseball and some driving games. the PC Engine has a review of Mystic Formula that is very short, but has some gorgeous screenshots. (it looks familiar, but I don't remember what its official name is.) The FM Towns Marty get two more reviews, Turbo Outrun and Last Survivor. We get more imports, like 3x3 Eyes, the highly detailed LandStalker, and something called Mandara II. A very big issue, not to be missed.

The magazine declares its own Final Issue. "Game On! USA has been such an experiment, and in many ways the response has been good," says Jason Thompson in the Editorial. "The link between manga and games has been proven," which we never doubted, but the lack of focus is most likely the reason this is the Final Issue. I like how Mr Thompson is almost declaring a win, despite being cancelled. "Possibly too many comics," he declares after almost HALF his editorial is done. He admits to a "seesaw between game coverage and manga." Really? Since when was a seesaw a 25/75 percent split? You could've even covered a wide range of manga, but instead we got four parts from the Cammy manga, and then five parts from another manga. He talks about how "we'd like nothing better than to release a new magazine: one with twice as much game information, with more reviews, more previews, more color art, more interviews with developers in Japan." That sounds great, but why couldn't we have gotten that from the beginning? I'm being a bit harsh on Mr. Thopson, he's probably just an editor that they threw in front of the editorial page to welcome people to the mag. He's not the Editor-in-Chief which is normally the one that does the editorial. The way he talks makes it seem like he was just doing what he was told, the Japanese branch most likely made the decisions, so there's no fault for that. Good interviews, but 4 game reviews per issue is ridiculous for this time in gamming.