EGM

I'm sure everyone's heard by now, but Electronic Gaming Monthly, heretofore the last best multi-platform gaming magazine, is no more. I wish I could say that the news was shocking, but really, it's not. It is, however, very sad.

EGM was the first multiplatform gaming magazine I was aware of, as a young man. I read it on and off for the entire time it was published, though I only subscribed to it for the last three or so years. It was always a treat to read, though, in both the Sendai and Ziff-Davis eras, with a cavalcade of insightful features and insider news, rivaled only by Next Generation, which I also subscribed to in its waining days.

As much as I loved many magazines of days gone by (I loved Game Players/Ultra Game Players, as well as the aforementioned Next Gen, and I even read the occasional issue of Diehard Gamefan), there was always something... different about EGM. I think it might've been the fact that, during the Sendai era, the churned out massive tomes on a monthly basis, which could take an entire month to absorb (the largest issue came in somewhere around 400 pages). Whatever it was, there was always something different about EGM that no other mag before or since (and considering the state of print media, will likely ever) captured for me.

In the summer of 2007, I had a chance to see "Trickman" Terry and the most tenured Sushi-X, Ken Williams, talk about their time at EGM. It was amazing for me to actually meet THE Sushi-X. Yeah, he was a kind of chubby white dude, but even after all those years, even at 24, meeting Sushi-X was a big deal to me, not to mention the Trickman, who, unbeknownst to him, helped me and frustrated me to no end (all James Bonds, indeed, Trickman). I mean... they were celebrities to me, even though they just wrote for a magazine.

Now I interact with some (now former) EGM staffers online, and while they don't have the same aura as Sushi-X and Trickman Terry, they're guys who wrote for EGM, the world's foremost multiplatform gaming magazine! I mean, how cool is that?

Ok, this is rambling a bit, basically what I'm saying is that EGM, and print magazines in general, are generational touchstones in a way that, no matter how good they are, 1Up, GameLife and Giant Bomb will never be, and it's sad to see it go. I already miss looking forward to the next big feature, or cover story, or whatever it may be. I can't really think of a good way to end this, so I'm just going to say that I went to my parents' house and dug my old EGMs out of the attic, and I encourage everyone else who has any to do the same. There's a lot of fun to be had looking back through the legacy of the last best gaming magazine.