Haha yes I think I have that one too. It was like HOLY SHIT, REAL TIME EVENTS IN A GAME???? and I remember being pretty excited about the prospect of it coming to North America.

Man EGM also had some pretty elaborate April Fools jokes too. There was one years ago about a system called the Phantom which would allow you to buy and download games to the console via the internet. This was like 9 or 10 years ago, and it's kind of neat because you can actually do that now, and in fact it's a massive and growing market (XBOX Live Arcade, Steam, etc). They had a massive "press release" about it I think, and even photoshopped pictures of the Phantom booth at some electronics expo.

That issue is one of the few issues I still have because sometimes I like to read old game magazines and try to remember how exciting they were back then 

Also do you guys remember the Hsu and Chan comics because back then I thought they were the funniest thing but if I read them now I feel like they wouldn't be as good (in our world of video game webcomics that are so bad....)

edit: woah hsu and chan still exist?

I'm surprised that they still even have game magazines. I used to collect a ton of them every month as a kid but that all stopped instantly when I had internet access at home. Why bother spending $10 to read last month's news and reviews when you can just get up to the minute information for free on the net?

I was saying a while back how I loved the old old Nintendo Powers because it had a feel like a comic book or something back then. Now they're all like WEBSITE ON PAPER anyway like Nester was sort of a webcomic that you might've bothered to read because it was omg a cartoon in the middle of a gaming magazine

That issue is one of the few issues I still have because sometimes I like to read old game magazines and try to remember how exciting they were back then 

Also do you guys remember the Hsu and Chan comics because back then I thought they were the funniest thing but if I read them now I feel like they wouldn't be as good (in our world of video game webcomics that are so bad....)

edit: woah hsu and chan still exist?

Hsu and Chan was always pretty good.  It usually had these really funny little details that you would miss if you just read straight through.  You could definitely still enjoy it now because it is not COMPLETELY AWFUL like every other video game comic.

remember those april fools jokes?

those were actually really great.

this didn't come as a surprise to me because not only does ziff-davis suck but they've also been giving away free subscriptions like mad probably so no one would complain when they did sell it.  Only magazine I cried over was Dragon and Dungeon because that shit was meticulously researched.  I remember one Dragon had an article on how to run a campaign during the Crusades with a dark fantasy touch and they mapped out Jerusalem and made stats for religious organizations the players could join OH MAN IT WAS INCREDIBLE.

Still, this laid off a ridiculously talented crew and they're relocating twice that number.  Fuck that shit.  The company was doing fine but thanks to this "recession" all the big wigs are fucking panicking, selling all of their assets, and firing dozens of hardworking middle-income people so they can keep their 50 million a year fucking paychecks.  GOD HELP ME IF I ONLY MAKE 45 MILLION A YEAR I WILL MAKE SURE 20 GUYS BENEATH ME ARE FIRED AND STARVING IN THE STREETS!

And UGO is terrible.  At least they're keeping Filefront or else I'd be pissed.

James Mielke who I always thought was a doofus who liked Digimon videogames.

b-b-but i'm a doofus who likes the digimon videogames

Haha yes I think I have that one too. It was like HOLY SHIT, REAL TIME EVENTS IN A GAME???? and I remember being pretty excited about the prospect of it coming to North America.

Man EGM also had some pretty elaborate April Fools jokes too. There was one years ago about a system called the Phantom which would allow you to buy and download games to the console via the internet. This was like 9 or 10 years ago, and it's kind of neat because you can actually do that now, and in fact it's a massive and growing market (XBOX Live Arcade, Steam, etc). They had a massive "press release" about it I think, and even photoshopped pictures of the Phantom booth at some electronics expo.

Thanks for letting me know that my friends and I were dumbasses who thought this was real.. and years later pondered what ever happened to the phantom

this didn't come as a surprise to me because not only does ziff-davis suck but they've also been giving away free subscriptions like mad probably so no one would complain when they did sell it. 

That's how I got mine.

I guess this means no more free issues...

b-b-but i'm a doofus who likes the digimon videogames

Haha I am refering to when those DIGIMON WORLD videogames were coming out and EGM was reviewing them and everyone on the staff gave them like 2 and he was giving them 8s and shit. Basically I've always found Mielke was incapable of giving truly poor reviews, like his scores were always substantially higher than the others tasked with a certain game. It's another reason I was sort of surprised and annoyed to find EGM was only giving one reviewer on quite a few games now when I bought an issue recently. Sure, they used three on BIG TICKET titles but the smaller ones only had one person working on them.

I really liked the first Digimon World but it was broken and difficult as hell so I guess objectively it was REALLY BAD I just still liked it (best curling ever).  No one should rate that an 8 though!

Apparently 1UP Yours is alive but no Shane... so the show wont be nearly as entertaining.

Also, the guys from 1UP FM have a new podcast called Rebel FM the first one was yesterday and I liked it.

I love Shane. I even joined the facebook fan club of his. He MADE 1Up Yours.
I find it funny how the official topic is people just ranting about how shit Shane was and purely because he was a Sony fanboy... he made it so funny, but it looks like the Microsoft fanboys couldn't take it!

And I gotta check out RebelFM, sounds alright.

Why couldn't someone shitty like Gamepro go down...

I got what I think is the last print issue (the one with Wolverine on the cover?) and good lord...it was a disappointment!  It had to be at least a fourth the size of what I remember EGM being and the content was just...not enough.  I should never have bought it, my memories of EGM could have been what they used to instead...

to be fair, a lot of those old EGM's would've been the size of the current issues if they had eliminated the 30-40 pages of previews which were often just TWO SCREENSHOTS + SMALL PARAGRAPH OF TEXT that they did for EVERY SINGLE THING EVER, including japanese games that would never get released in the US and random terrible licensed titles (disney horse adventures is coming to the gameboy colour in march??? sweet thanks EGM). I guess they did away with those whenever they took on the new magazine format.

That and I think there are just LESS GAMES these days, probably because the cost of development is so much more. I mean, there used to be like TWO NEW MOTOCROSS games a month for the PS1, and now you just have EA Sports releasing yearly updates for every single sport imaginable.

to be fair, a lot of those old EGM's would've been the size of the current issues if they had eliminated the 30-40 pages of previews which were often just TWO SCREENSHOTS + SMALL PARAGRAPH OF TEXT that they did for EVERY SINGLE THING EVER, including japanese games that would never get released in the US and random terrible licensed titles (disney horse adventures is coming to the gameboy colour in march??? sweet thanks EGM). I guess they did away with those whenever they took on the new magazine format.

That and I think there are just LESS GAMES these days, probably because the cost of development is so much more. I mean, there used to be like TWO NEW MOTOCROSS games a month for the PS1, and now you just have EA Sports releasing yearly updates for every single sport imaginable.

I see what you mean about less games, I've kind of noticed that there just aren't the same numbers as there used to be!  But I liked the tiny previews, because I could always look into the games in more detail if they looked interesting.  Sure they had previews for shit licensed titles but they would also have more interesting things in there.  Even if they never came out in the US I still liked reading about cool sounding games.