READ 'em and WEEP" Vidiot's Guide to Videomagazines

READ 'em and WEEP" Vidiot's Guide to Videomagazines

FEATURES

M.T. BOXX

Get ready for a laff riot! We’d like to share with you what are surely among the most foolhardy paragraphs ever written in the commission of a lead for this mag:

A few days ago, I was playing channel roulette on my TV between videogames and stumble-flicked upon a CBS News graphic which read simply, WOMEN—NO IMPROVEMENT.

Tell me about it, I thought at first, then realized it was only unemployment stats they were talking about,..

Now, I know we brought up the subject of zap-futility in our last issue. But really, the desperation factor must be kept in mind at oil times when dealing wilh vidgame mags.

Unlike music, film, art and dental taxidermy publications, where you can make up absolutely anything you want and get patted on the checkbook for it, videogames are hunks of self-contained facts. Everybody that plugs in a cartridge gets the exact same story displayed in front of their nose. No stylistic preferences, thematic poop, acting, chops—you name it—enter the picture because the picture is the p/cfurel

Although vidgames are about as open to interpretation as Mile High Stadium, vidgame magazines are another subject entirely. Some have good writing, some have good graphics, some hove good manners ana some ore good in bed. But there are vital differences, and guess who's gonna point 'em out?

OK, so maybe it's vaguely possible VIDIOT might not be the most objective source on this subject. To slightly paraphrase George Burns, we're only God when we get paid. However yooooou can believe ussss when we say all the other vidmags are lotally useless, communist-inspired and should be tom up, shredded and burned to ashes right now/ Ha-ha, a little competitive humor there, guys!

So feast your incisors on this consumer guide, porkchops. We'll cover all the important facets: features, reviews, art, columns, readership, hanging-in-effigy percentage, canaryto-paper ratio and treadmill test results. Wnat more could you ask for?

Accuracy? Integrity?

ELECTRONIC GAMES

(Monthly/$2.95/l 44 p./Editorial percentage 62%)

Departments/Columns: National Vanity Board, National Arcade Scoreboard, Reader's Favorite Games (scores/charts); Switch On (editorial); Hotline (general video news); Readers Replay (letters); Programmable Parade (software reviews); Art Of War (war games); Computer Gaming (computer software); Test Lab (hardware); Insert Coin Here (coin-op reviews); 0&A [reader questions); Pinball Palace pinball reviews); Stand Alone Scene (stand alone/hand held reviews);

Strategy Session (game strategy); Inside Gaming (personalities); Coin-Op Classroom (coin-op strategy). Note; many of these appear on a revolving basis.

EG is the biggie, the Smurf that must die! Their amazing circulation figures are...well, not fair! What'd'ya mean, sour grapes? We're just plain jealous!

That is, jealous of their revenues, not the content. Let's just admit, upfront, that EG is really a pretty decent product. There's a lot of useful info (though you must dig for it) and some of their writers are even awake!

This is a good time to bring up the "thickness' issue. It's said that Joe Maa Buyer often decides what to buy on the basis of quantity and not necessarily quality. EG is a strong number two among vidgame mags when it comes to page count. What must be considered is, exactly how much do you really get on all those pages?

Ads, for one thing. Over one third of the mag is advertising. No complaint here, it's not nearly as ridiculous as the "general" vid books, but it's worth noting.

Art is another big page filler. And we do mean filler, because most of their illustrations look like they're done by the same folks who provide graphics for Sunday School Weekly. Honest—you half expect the face of Jesus to appear in the sky and holler, "Nothing gets out everything!"

The art that accompanies their regular "Players Guides" to various games genres (space, football, romance with lawn furniture) is often laughable. First, they kill a full page with a splash illo, then overpower the text with huge drawings of marginal quality. All they need now is to simulcast in Kool-Aid.

Plenty of reviews here, can't nail 'em with that one. EG has several review sections; home games, pinball, coin-op, and the ever-popular Stand Alone Scene, where a representative reader is summarily picked-out and forced to stand alone in front of everyone!

No quibble (that's right, quibble) on the actual write-ups. Maybe a little too easy to the manufacturers, but hey— gotta sell dem ads, mama! Mainly, what we'd like to ask is howcum you waste so much space with crummy origina! art? What, no reply? Must be guilty!

You want more wackiness? Well, how about the big editorial in the March Switch-On, billed as o "Pledge To The Readers:" l]"No firearms or alcohol ads!"; 2}No reviews of "offensive" games (bu//—they covered Froggerl); 3) No "sexually explicit" ads (ditto above).

There's much more, but why bother—we already feel as wellprotected as having overheard our doctor tell the nurse to increase the dosage.

A humble thanks, EG, for protecting us from ourselves! Or worse, our imaginations!

BLIP (Monthly/$l .00/32 p./Ed. percentage 81 %)Departments/Columns: News Bfips (general news); Blip Tips I and II (strategy); Ha!! Of Fame (readers scores); B/ip Confidential (playing hints),Clubhouse (vidgame clubs info); Video Jokes (not funny); Comics.

Maybe it's not "fair" to review a magazine so early in its prathood [two issues as we ao to press) but sorry, cruel world of publishing and oil tnat stuff.

If you were to take one look at Marvel Comics’ new baby, BLIP, and say, "C'mon—what d'ya expect from a comic book?," you'a be right. This is the only horse that's not in the Bpocket format (i.e., "regular" size, like VIDIOT and the rest) and is often found in the comics rack.

This is the part where we're supposed to write, "but it's more than a comic book!" Yeah, it is, but so's a shipment of mildewed sorghum or a replacement thumbsucker doll head. It's obviously aimed at the comic book crowd and it certainly reaches its limited goals. Easy to read, no big words or overly imaginative layout to confuse the toddlers.

The actual comic strips account for six of their 32 pages. Quality is A-OK, with Marvel's regular writers and artists contributing. Marvel comic characters also appear throughout the rest of the issue.

Their features are very, uh,,.BL/P-ltke. "Spider-Man Ploys Spider-Man" featured a character in a web-nose suit playing the Parker Bros. Spider-Man cart and slugging another guy dressed up like the Green Goblin. As they say in the comics, wow.

Or how about "Videogames Of The Stars," featuring none other than Matthew Laborteaux of Little House! Who is this guy? The inventor of the Worms Eat My Garbage T-shirt? The pundit (yes, pundit) who coined the anthropological term suck face?

BLIP doesn't really "review" videogames, instead concentrating on playing hints and very low-cal strategy. Both issues so for featured Blip Tips I and Blip Tips II, each a simple, straightforward two page look ot a particular game or genre. B/ip Confidential consists of short notes on several games.

If you're "old enough" to understand this article, you're too old to read BLIP. VIDEOGAMING ILLUSTRATED

(Bi-monthly/$2.75/66 p./Ed. percentage 83%) Departments/Columns: The Keyboards (editorial); Eye On (news shorts); CJose-Up (hardware); Focus On (strategy); V.J.P. (interview); Supergaming [technical poop); Cinema

(films); Conquering (strategy); Preview new games); Computer Eyes software); Input (letters); Print Out book reviews); Championship Videogaming (reader tips); Star Words (celebrity quotes); Meet The Original (game chronicles).

VI Is another case where we've "unfortunately" seen only a couple of issues. Let's see, we used the cruel world of publishing song and dance on the last review. This one'll hove to be the ol' brutal readies of "lead time" number. Anybody buying this line? Yeah? Now you wanna buy a luau pit in Greenland?

Graphically, VI has a ways to go. Layout is about as creative as a selfinflicted gunshot wound. Original art could be best described as leading the witness. The best of the color art turns out to be reprinted from elsewhere.

But hey—don't let a few rotten boards spoil a good porch! Despite the fact tha1 Jeff Rovin "Kind"—infamous for his intensely bad television books— is the editor and founder, VI still has a few good points. Portions we found particularly interesting were Cinema (good idea, especially with the explosion of pre-sold titles) and Meet The Original, which gives some historical poop on game origins like, say, "Gorillas Vs. Women" for Donkey Kong.

This doesn't really have much in the way of features. They prefer to cover almost everything under their column heads. For example, Conquering appears in five different places in the mag, each one a two-to-flve page diagnosis on an individual game (Conquering; Worm War 92, etc.).

These articles are mainly strategyoriented. Brief reviews are handled in the Preview section, where a halfdozen or so newish carts are...you know.. .previewed!

Whot's the matter, guys—cat got your brain?

JOYSTIK (Bi-monthly/$2.95/74 p./Ed. percentage 100%) Departmenls/Columns: Message

(editorial); Letters (urn...); Future Waves news),Jnnerview (interview); Neo coin-op strategy); Winning Edge ditto); Home Video (hardware); Computer '83 (software); Sword of Ram (comics); Technocracy (technical poop); j JoyS/ik Chart (reader scores); plus fiction!

JOYST/K is extremely buttery on the eyes. Frankly, we love the color, although sometimes we're not sure whether to look at it, eat it or wear it on our eyes. But that's another consumer guide (or special issue if EG does it).

Unlike the competition, JS boldly allows its art people to go wild, even off the deep end if so inclined. The results are well justified, even though each page tries to pack in everything but Lt. Trask's identifying mark. Quick kids—set the controls for the heart of the paint!

Another plus—no advertising! No one I've talked to can explain how these guys can afford their snatty graphics without ads. Undoubtedly a crime syndicate cash laundering scheme! Little more competetive humor there, folks!

When you get down to actual editorial content, JS is interested chiefly in detailed strategic examination of arcade games. They generally succeed, but honest, only hardcore coin-op kings need apply. If you're not totally intrigued with Tron, for example, you probably won't want to read an eight page breakdown of minute details and directions.

Some of the departments (Neo, Winning Edge) are also devoted to this line of inquiry. Most of the others are the standard stuff ail these mags have—letters, editorials, interviews, recipes, soap opera updates, etc. A couple of innovative moves are fiction and a Heavy Metal-ish comic strip. Bod fiction. Stupid comic strip.

Outside of the half dozen or so major game features, there's no review section proper. No need for one. The whole damn rag is a review section starring five or six games.

Arcade fanatics take note—"normal" humans, roll over and play dead! ELECTRONIC FUN WITH COMPUTERS AND GAMES (Monthly/$2.95/l02 p./Ed. percentage 77%) Departments/Columns: Edifoncf (zzz); New Products (hardware); Glitches (news); Output/Input (reader questions); EFG Times (news); Gamemokers (interview); Show Of Hancf He/d (hand held reviews); Screen f Plays (strategy); Readers' Tips (c'mon, I guess!); Reviews (uh, letters?); Infer/ace1 off [panel discussion); Reader Program Of The Month (zzzzzz); The E.A.T Report (gimme a break!); Game Of The Month (centerfold); Cartoons.

EFCG got off to a slow start, but now they're conning on fast as black market slither has ever since lizard sales were banned in Detroit.

Their premiere issue is a premiere issue fave of mine. First, on editorial entitled, "A New Videogame Magazine? Wf\y?" Good question— too bad they didn't ask us!

An even more daring feature of the debut number was no fab/e of contents! Awright! Grove/ for the contents, swine!

OK, time to be "fair" now. One thing EECG's got going for it is lots of color, presented in o layout that displays mucho variety. Mucho mucho,

So much, in fact, some ungrateful critics might be tempted to say it's sloppy, even slapdasn. Retina-jarring shifts from boring black-and-white to vivid color blobs that look like a meatgrinder full of butterflies keep you awake if slightly cross-eyed.

Feature content has drastically improved since the beginning. What started as buzz-bombs like their three page interview with Marty "I have □ public destiny!" Ingels or "Dear Mama And Data...Letters Home From Computer Comp" have since developed into fairly interesting stories on holography and modems. Not to mention their immortal Special Frog Supplement.

The departments range from the monumentally boring EFCG Times and E.A.T. Report (Exquisite Ant Torment? Evaporate All Tutus?) to a pretty strong eight-page review section. They cover a bunch of games with color screens, special "boxed" playing tips and a moronic rating system based on tiny black joysticks instead of the usual stars, asterisks or little boys wearing dunce caps.

The overall shotgun graphic attack suffers further in the departments, which all have huge stylized logos that look like the worst moments of the 1972 Topps baseball card set. CUBS, it should say.

Then there's the dreaded EFCG Times (Entirely Fictitious Critic Guy?), a news section on pages coated with some awful combination of flesh, lime and gray.

If that color scheme appeals to you, you'll love First Screening, where a reader sends in the program to his very own made-up game ana it's faithfully reproduced—computer paper and all, Fascinating reading; 920 GO TO 940/ 930 Print #D, "YOU M/SSED"/935 A(JJ)= I. Timeless is the only word.

Hmmm. Looking back, maybe we were a little too nard on EFCG. Shucks.

CREATIVE COMPUTING VIDEO & ARCADE GAMES (Published three times yearly/$2.95/l 30 p./Ed. percentage 85%)

Departments/Columns: Ed/fonai; Mastering (strategy); Arcade Games Section (strategy, reviews); Home Video Games Section (ditto); Home Computer Gomes Section (ditto ditto).

CCV&AG packs a total-fact wallow like no one else. It'd really be great if you could read it without looking at it.

If this was a better-looking package, who knows? We might have run out of snotty things to say about it.

You want reviews? They got reviews. Coin-ops, game systems, computers,

We're

only God when we get paid.

tokens and even batteries get rated in this slow reading but adult-eyes mag.

In fact, it's so scan-heavy, the whole thing is basically organized as three dacfdy-sized review sections with features built in.

Take the Arcade Games Section, for example. First, a whole page for the logo. C'mon, yo wanna waste space, wny not use horrible art or print free ads like some of these rags do?

Anyhoo, the section leods off with a copious inspection of Tron, Kangaroo, Victory and Robotron. Then a section of short looks at other recent coin-ops. Feature time next, with a pair of—oh no!—"think" pieces. Like it's not bad enough just to "think"!

What else we got here that's good? Well, pretty strong cart review pile as well. The black-and-white screens verge on uselessness, but they do cover o lot of territory, including four pages of one-line VCS updates. Fairly doze-oriented reading but mucho fax.

One feature that we particularly like was their thorough, even tedious, examination of joysticks, followed by the aforementioned battery tests. Not only did we almost figure out what o potentionmeter is, but we learned that alkcline and "heavy duty" batteries aren't as great as the manufacturers would have us believe.

Graphics are CCV&AG's greatest downfall. You spot a vaguely interesting-sounding title in the contents, soy "Who Really Invented The Videogame?" You flip to the page and find these massively boring columns flanked by B&W photos straight out of o 1 948 Civics textbook. Voting is your sacred responsibility os an American citizen, you expect the caption to read.

This one's mainly for word fans.

Picture peeps should look elsewhere. VIDEO GAMES (Monthly/52.95/106 p./Ed. percentage 75%) Departments/Columns: Hyperspace (editorial); Double Speak (letters),Blips (news); Soft Sport (cart reviews); CoinOp Shop (arcade reviews); Hard Sell (technical poop); Dr. Video (actual doctor fax); Bull's-Eye (business news); Score! (no such luck); Slots (score/soles charts); Comics Relief.

VIDEO GAMES—where did they ever come up with such an impishly original name? Ho-hum, not a bad rag considering the dullsville monicker.

At least the graphics are starting to come around offer o mediocre beginning. We've been throwing around the scientific term "slapdash" a lot, and it applies here too, we’re afraid. Take the Blips section. You open it up and there sits one very hurriedly scribbled original illo, one real nice screen reproduction and a snoozescenf B&W head shot. You will not encounter any unexpected sensations of cool, like the Trident ad goes.

Virtually all the original art fails on an EG level—Scholastic mag outtakes and speed-of-sound drawing. Another eyesore was the recent "Beating The Coin-Ops" special, 16 newsprint pages slammed into the middle of the mag in glorious ick-and-white.

Got a complaint about the software reviews also. Didn't you just know it? It is a nice, organized looking section with all-color screens that look just fine. The catch is the whole section's written by one writer. He gamely tries to insert quantities of "variety," which some editors might call streaky or just plain inconsistent.

They do have the only vidgame oriented comics that are worth the eyetime, thanks to ace cartoonist John Holmstrom. Love his pictures. Now, if only he could make the words worth boxing at too. To balance out John, they have a sword and sorcery strip of epic crumminess called The Zydroid Legion. It's the kind of garbage other artists use for paper slippers.

Take a nap. The color is better and it's still free!