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• Why Were Game Magazines So Cruel to Earthbound?

  Earthbound Central has been collecting old magazine reviews for Earthbound, circa Summer 1995. Thus far, the stable includes Gamepro, Game Players, EGM, and most recently, Video Games & Computer Entertainment. I recently blamed Gamepro for destroying any interest my fifteen-year-old self had in Earthbound, as I well should: their review was wretched. But having looked back at Earthbound Central's library of horror, I've come to realise that Gamepro is not exclusively to blame for turning me off to Ness' adventure. American reviewers despised this poor game. EGM's John Gurka reserved a coveted place beside the Throne of God for mentioning that the storyline rivals that of Final Fantasy VI, but even he can't resist sniffing at the “Nintendo-era graphics.” Every other review sneers at the very same, berating Earthbound's lovingly put-together world as “childish,” “cutesy,” and “McDonald's Playland meets Bobby's World.” (So, which ultimately endeared itself to the world? Earthbound or Bobby's World?) Earthbound is looked upon as one of gaming history's least appreciated games. The farts-n-pizza ad campaign didn't help, but the reviewers of olde probably didn't have them in mind when they snapped off the game and started banging on the keyboard. Why did Earthbound get shafted in the first place? Read More... Posted Apr 03 2009, 11:20 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: snes, earthbound, retro, gamepro, nadia oxford, egm, reviews, jrpgs

• Behold The Half-Assed Review That Steered Me Away From Earthbound

  Gather around, ladies and gentlemen. It's time to share my secret shame. Come for the story, stay for the punch, the pie, and a chance to wallow in the lingering stink of failure. When I was young enough to believe in honesty, I relied on game magazine reviews to tell me whether or not a game was worth a purchase. I've already gone over how many Great Canadian Funbux typically went into the purchase of one cartridge game, so you can probably forgive me for doing my research. Unfortunately, I kind of put myself at a disadvantage by taking to heart the opinions of only one magazine: Gamepro. To be fair, I have to admit that I wasn't steered wrong too often. If not for the rave review I read in the November 1994 issue of the magazine, I would have bypassed the majesty of Final Fantasy VI. But it was my faith in Gamepro that made me turn up my nose at Earthbound until just last year. While bypassing Earthbound because of a magazine review was a big mistake on my part, it wasn't like I'd boiled a puppy or cast an unforgivable curse on a baby. Earthbound's genius was snubbed by a lot of SNES owners; that's why the fandom has since been driven half-mad with regret. No, my problem is that Earthbound Central has scanned and archived the review that kept me away from Itoi's masterpiece...and I can't believe that I was swayed by such an impotent clump of...assumptions. Read More... Posted Mar 09 2009, 11:31 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: review, snes, rpg, earthbound, retro, super nintendo, 16-bit, writing, gamepro, nadia oxford, games journalism

• The One That Got Away: Arc the Lad

  Romanticizing the pre-internet age of games criticism is common amongst those of us born before 1990. With the presses stopped on Electronic Gaming Monthly, the last survivors of gaming print’s heyday are Gamepro and Nintendo Power. Those magazines still cater to the adolescent audience they always have, but they’ve lost all of their old schlocky appeal. It’s a good thing. Gaming print isn’t dead, and games criticism is slowly but surely emerging from its fandom-based larval form. Yeah the internet’s glutted with drivel, but there’s a lot of substantive, well-written study of the medium happening. *cough* One thing certainly hasn’t changed. Gamefan may be long dead at this point, but Dave Halverson is still publishing monthly volumes of unabashed fandom in Play. Play, like Gamefan and Gamer’s Republic before it, isn’t really criticism. The magazine doesn’t engage in heady intellectualism like Edge, but it also doesn’t fall into Consumer Reports-style, reviews-and-previews tradition of Gamepro. Halverson’s publications are professionally made ‘zines, literal love letters to the industry they cover. The furor surrounding Halverson’s praise for Golden Axe: Beast Rider a few months back was surprising. The man isn’t a critic. He’s a lover. He publishes The Girls of Gaming, for crying out loud. Despite his flighty editorial mandate, Halverson’s pubs have had a surprisingly lasting impact on North American gaming culture. Today, Treasure is an iconic development studio beloved the world over. Gunstar Heroes wasn’t responsible for that notoriety. It was Gamefan’s constant lionization of the company that birthed the cult of Treasure. Gamefan was, for me, a message in a bottle. Every single month, I would open an issue and be overwhelmed by bizarre foreign games I would never have a chance to play. And at the back of every issue waited the most cryptic and vexing passages of all: the advertisements for Halverson’s import games shop Game Cave. The ads were four-pages long and littered with miniscule pictures of games accompanied by nothing more than a title. That was where I saw this. Read More... Posted Feb 26 2009, 08:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, victor ireland, working designs, sony, playstation 2, play, gamecube, Playstation, nintendo power, golden axe, xbox, gamepro, vagrant story, arc the lad, golden axe beast rider, gamefan, arc the lad collection, maximo, gamer’s republic, tactics ogre

• Starcraft in College

  I first heard about UC Berkeley's Starcraft 101 course over a month ago, and I passed on reporting it here because I was convinced it was a hoax. Well, now we have video that proves otherwise. Read More... Posted Feb 06 2009, 04:00 PM by Cole Stryker with | with no comments Filed under: cole stryker, starcraft, gamepro, education, berkeley

• Horrors that Time Forgot: GamePro TV

  On last week’s episode of GFW Radio, co-host Shawn Elliot spent a few minutes riffing on some old episodes of GamePro TV he’d just seen on YouTube. When I was a kid, this was a show I watched on purpose--and taped for later, obsessive re-viewings. Granted, it didn’t take me long to become spiteful and jaded, but in 1991, people on TV talking about video games was a big goddamned deal. For the love of all that’s holy, I even watched both versions of Video Power. Looking back, GamePro TV wasn’t nearly as terrible as it could have been. Everything on the show looks like it was hit with a hose that sprayed both splatter paint and denim, but this was simply a fact of life for those of us living through the rough transition from the 80s to the 90s. And we certainly didn’t let the guitar riffs that accompanied all of our actions get us down. Life was all about hanging with your friends who were an odd mix of Wayne, Garth, and Cody from Step By Step, and kickin’ back with some Battletoads (crystal meth had not been not invented yet). Read More... Posted Aug 21 2008, 10:00 AM by Bob Mackey with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: gamepro, bob mackey, television

• Gamepro Feature Mourns The Loss Of Mammaries

  "Top __________ Whatevers" lists are the lifeblood of games journalism, so Gamepro's decision to squeeze out a roster of the Eight Worst Game Character Remakes is not surprising. Some of the entries are pretty expected, too. Maskless Scorpion from Mortal Kombat 3 is a no-brainer, and I'm sure a few psychologists would have a field day analysing Bomberman's re-design for Bomberman: Act Zero. I'm not as impressed with some of the other selections. In fact, their write-up for Tomb Raider's Lara Croft gave me a big frowny face. I'm afraid I'm going to have to be one of "those" women for a second. From the feature: "To prove that Tomb Raider's iconic female archaeologist is more than just a top heavy Englishwoman in hiking boots, the series' developers forced their lovely protagonist to undergo a drastic surgical procedure. In Tomb Raider Legend, Lara emerged equipped with what could be compared to tangerines in place of what was once more akin to honeydews. But the game was good, and that's all that matters... right?" Read More... Posted Jul 23 2008, 04:28 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 5 comment(s) Filed under: tomb raider, gamepro, breasts, female gamers, lara croft, sexism