Goodbye EGM
By Shoe and Crispin
A quick time-out from the Ex-EGM Awards Ceremonies — a crapload of our buddies and former co-workers just got laid off this week because UGO took over the 1UP Network, and it didn’t seem right to be celebrating 2008 when 2009’s busy smacking our jaws with a lead pipe. We’ll finish up those awards in a bit….
Crispin and I are both extremely sorry to see these fine people lose their jobs, but we’re not terribly worried. We know they’re talented people with great resumes from working there, so they should be back working 80-hour work weeks for some other website or magazine soon enough. We just hope this economy cooperates with that theory.
Another unfortunate casualty is EGM itself. Its 20-year run came to an abrupt end with a blurry Wolverine cover (January 2009 issue) because UGO didn’t want it and Ziff couldn’t afford to keep printing it. EGM is just dead, dead, dead…gone forever…a legendary magazine that had its place in gaming history but is to be no more.
I know the guys are super bummed that the real last issue (Feb. 2009…originally planned with Street Fighter IV on the cover — a fitting end and tribute to the kabillions of SF covers in EGM’s past) won’t get to sit up on newsstands next to the latest Cat Fancy or OK or whatever the hell is still surviving in this tough magazine market. I heard a lot of great articles — including a kick-ass 20-year retrospective feature — was supposed to go into that month. The goods should show up online, though, so stay tuned to 1UP.com for that. But I don’t know if that will make the editors and writers any less mad at their former bosses who apparently knew that issue was never going to be printed, led the team to believe otherwise, and never told them until it was too late…making them work a hellish, frantic deadline for nothing.
EGM’s last issue, which will never see print. Read more about EGM’s final days on Milky’s blog. Also, 1UP just put up the original cover story, so now you can read it for free, you cheapskates.
It just stinks we can’t have the officially last EGM to hold, read, and keep. Another Ziff Davis mag whose life got cut short without even a chance for a goodbye issue (see Computer Gaming World…screw calling it “Games for Windows Magazine”…it’ll always be CGW to me).
A lot of people out there are lashing out at UGO and its parent company Hearst for the layoffs and for EGM’s closing, but trust me…you’re barking at the wrong suits. I don’t need to say much more, because Jeff Green (former Editor-in-Chief of CGW) says it all on his must-read blog (MTV Multiplayer also sheds some light on this). In addition to everything Jeff said, do know that Ziff Davis Media was burdened with this unbelievable debt that made it near impossible for it to achieve its goals with the 1UP Network. Kill IGN or GameSpot with 1UP’s traffic? Kill Game Informer/PC Gamer with EGM/CGW’s circulations? Not with every penny you’re making going back toward massive interest payments. It was like trying to scoop out all the water in the ocean with a PlayStation 3. Why did so many people leave there over the last two years? A lot of us knew this was coming.
Anyways, like Jeff said ever so bluntly like he does so well, the 1UP Network won’t be the same without some of the talent that has left and without EGM by its side (not to mention the long-gone CGW!). That doesn’t mean they won’t do well in the future under new management, though. They still have a kick-ass team (Jeremy Parish might be able to take on GameSpot all by himself), so we’ll stay tuned…although the word is several people that are still on board may not be for a lot longer, being extremely upset with current conditions and all… (hey old buddies, just count to 10…or maybe 1,000…and don’t forget what the economy looks like out there).
Enough moping. Crispin and I decided the best way to celebrate EGM’s memory is to complain about everything (done) and have some silly awards to give us an excuse to get all nostalgic (see below). Let’s have at it!
FAVORITE COVER
Shoe: BattleStation! (EGM #213, March 2007). The art team came up with a brilliant concept, making fun of PS3’s “white room” campaign with a tomato smeared on the console to show how it’s disappointing gamers. Too bad that issue tanked at newsstands.
Runner up: Kingdom Hearts II (EGM #201, March 2006) with the four different covers, each with a different theme. I also loved both Final Fantasy covers that Yoshitaka Amano did exclusively for us, which couldn’t have been done without EGM’s James Mielke (EGM #146, September 2001 and #172, November 2003).
Go to Magweasel for a list (with images) of almost every EGM cover ever made up until recent years.
Crispin: Sonic Adventure (EGM #112, November 1998). The art team knew what they were doing when they integrated a keep-on-truckin’ hedgehog with a minty Dreamcast swirl (which incorporates the cover lines for a super-clean look). The combo is so vibrant that doctors prescribe a welder’s helmet and lead apron for safe viewing.
Lots of other EGM covers qualify as art (the final, unpublished Ryu vs. Ken image and the Amano Final Fantasy covers leap to mind), but I’d frame this slice of Silver Age Sonic’s life in a heartbeat.
LEAST FAVORITE COVER
Shoe: I can’t pick any of the covers from the early ’90s because they’re of the “so bad they’re good” variety, so I’ll go with EGM #194, August 2005. Let’s just say no giant hammer of inspiration hit us that month.
Crispin: Oh, so many easy pickin’s among the Fabio and Bruce Willis guest appearances, anatomy-defying commissioned illustrations (I’m pretty sure Ryu has a compound fracture on that Street Fighter III cover), and high-concept high jinks. But I’m going with this totally forgettable, unsellable cover for Unreal Tournament (EGM #137, December 2000). Why? Because it’s a fucking concrete wall. Thrill at the exposed rebar! Marvel at the giant Unreal logo! Wonder at the surely spectacular laser battle that you can’t see…because it’s behind a friggin’ concrete wall! Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one? Oh, right, it was my idea. Brainstorming a cover image for a game with no recognizable characters ain’t easy.
FAVORITE COVER STORY
Shoe: Guitar Hero II (EGM #208, October 2006). Oh man oh man, go read that story if you can (I don’t believe it’s on 1UP, but someone correct me if I’m wrong). It’s like a written version of VH1’s “Behind the Music.” Also, The Future of Videogames (EGM #215, May 2007) was an incredible collection of great articles about such a wide variety of topics…it’s one of the best EGMs ever.
Crispin: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (EGM #114, December 1998). It wasn’t the most hard-hitting or insightful EGM cover story every (but then it’s never easy to get too deep with a game from press-shy Nintendo), but our 30-page tabloid style “Hyrule Tattler” cover story sure was fun to work on. A massive staff effort — complete with a diary of our first day in the game and a hilarious column by John Davison as Hyrulian fashionista Bruce Suchard — this story sticks out as an example of EGM at its most inventive and irreverent.
LEAST FAVORITE COVER STORY
Shoe: BattleStation! Man that was pure hell trimming down SCEA’s Jack Tretton’s interview down from over 20,000 words to about 7,000. I didn’t want to cut anything, but yet I had to. It took forever. Runner up: Hudson Hawk (June 1991). Hudson Hawk…really?
Crispin: MechWarrior II (EGM #90, January 1997). “All 12 Mech Specs Revealed!” crows the cover blurb. And we deliver! Inside: two pages of weapon loadouts and heat-sink limits for every battlebot in this PS1 adaptation of the PC game. Again, this travesty is a sweet child of mine, the best I could come up with under a 12-hour deadline after spending the previous two weeks slaving away on a special Shadows of the Empire strategy guide. Hint: Shoot the dianoga trash gobbler in the left tentacle!
EX-EGMer YOU’D LIKE TO TOUCH BASE WITH AGAIN
Shoe: I know who Crispin’s going to pick (I would pick him, too, but I’ll just tag along with Crispin’s imaginary meet over coffee), so I’ll go with these other dudes: the old crew of Scott Paris, Paul Ojeda, and Roach. These guys took me in and showed me how they partied in Lombard, Illinois. I miss those guys.
Crispin: I KIT with most of my old work BFFs via social-network stalking, but I’d sure like to find out what happened to my Semradical first boss, the apparently living-off-the-grid Ed “hi guy!” Semrad.
Ed scolding Shawn Smith and Crispin. It wasn’t really like this back in the day…much.
EGM’s HIGH POINT
Shoe: All those exclusives! Street Fighter 3 and 4, Halo 2 and 3, Soul Calibur 2, SOCOM 2, Xbox reveal, Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow,
Zelda: Twilight Princess, Silent Hill: Homecoming, Ratchet and Clank Future…I think I gave a little Macaulay Culkin “yes!” fist-pump each time I landed a big one.
Crispin: The era of the “Too many games!”/Xbox vs. GameCube/moving from Chicago to San Francisco. Long before the specter of Ziff bankruptcy loomed, these ad- and content-rich issues marked my salad days at EGM.
EGM’s LOW POINT
Shoe: The Fighting Force/Gex 3D/Apocalypse triple cover (EGM #96, July 1997). This three-way split cover run was nothing more than a sorry attempt to kiss up to the publishers for all three games. Hey, why do one favor for one company when you can do three one-third favors for three different companies? It was one of the few, rare times I was embarrassed to be associated with the mag.
Also once, I worked 21 days straight in a row, 12-16 hours each day, with the occasional overnight stays at the office during that span. I was a smelly, stagnant blob of a vegetable of a man. I can’t believe I wrote anything coherent during that time. Also also: See the start of this post.
Crispin: When Ed Semrad asked me to write a positive preview of the putrid Contra: Legacy of War after Shoe accurately quoted the game’s producer in an earlier preview saying the game “needed some work.” Ed feared Shoe’s preview had damaged our relationship with Contra publisher Konami, and he wanted me to write a more upbeat preview to fix that relationship. If anyone bought the game because of my preview, I’ll surrender myself to your Legacy of War warcrimes tribunal.
FAVORITE ANECDOTE
Shoe: At one E3, Shane Bettenhausen, Bryan Intihar, and Mark MacDonald played a cruel trick on me. They told me they just saw this awesome game called Winx Club, and that I should go after a cover story exclusive on it asap. “Don’t worry about its title…it’s great, trust us.” So I run into Marc Franklin, Konami’s PR guy at the time, at a party and brought it up as something we might want a scoop on. He was a little surprised that I was interested (Winx Club Google) and proceeded to tell me about how they figured there’s a wide-open market out there with older brothers handing their PS2s down to their younger sisters…then it hit me. This is a little girls’ game. I confirmed this with Marc and realized that I’ve been had, bad.
Marc helped me get them back, though. He wrote this angry email for me about how EGM backed out of this Winx Club cover and that Konami was very upset about this, and I forwarded it on to the three jackasses…telling them how they’re in big trouble for getting me into this mess. Shane and Mark didn’t really fall for my counter-prank, but poor little Bryan did. That was good enough for me.
Crispin: Oh man, too many to count. Guess I’ll go with the first time I had unfettered access to the EGM game closet. Way back in the Chicago days, if you wanted to get a game from the library, you had to wait until the managing editor fell asleep at his desk, then slip the closet key from around his neck. I am only just barely exaggerating.
One weekend, I somehow wound up with that key. I spent the next 48 hours gorging on games — everything I ever wanted to play for every system I never had, from the 3DO to the Sega CD, plus all the classic SNES stuff and even ROMs for games that never came out. It was a childhood dream come true: a magic room full of every game ever made for every system up to the recently launched PS1.
RANDOM THING WE’LL MISS THE MOST
Shoe: Those 16-hour work days, with the occasional overnight stay at the office. Yeah, they stunk and I hated them, but there’s something that miss about those youthful and careless days. We’re already a bunch of goofy guys…add in slap-happy sleep deprivation and things get seriously wacky! I’m talking about office-chair races, all furniture/desk items/wall decorations turned upside down when that cubicle’s inhabitant was away (I caught Crispin red-handed and red-faced admiring his 180 treatent of my desk), and Decapitato…the throwing of the ringed blade down dark hallways at each other whenever the power went out in our old Lombard, Illinois offices.
Crispin:
The peeps.
PARTING WORDS
Shoe: I said it all above, but more than missing the magazine, I’ll miss being with some of my bestest friends in the world. I hope in their new adventures and careers, they don’t move more than five miles away from me. Keep it in the area code!
Crispin: EGM was 12 years of my life; compacting my feelings into a pithy missive is a suicide mission. So I’ll just share the very first lesson I learned at EGM’s Lombard, IL, offices: Street Fighter’s Ryu is pronounced “ree-you.” Who knew? And my last lesson as I left EGM’s San Francisco, CA, offices: Fortune favors the bold. With that in mind, I have no doubt that every EGM alum will continue to do great things.
