May 13, 2025 • 23 mins
Mollie Patterson's Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/mollipen.bsky.social
Mollie Patterson's homepage: https://mollielpatterson.com/
The EGM Compendium Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/egmbook/egmcompendium
FunFactor ULTRA subscribers are getting our full 91-minute interview with the great Mollie L. Patterson of EGM and GameFan fame, talking about her (very) early years as a 'zine writer, joining the rough-and-tumble world of GameFan, and graduating to layouts and editing at EGM--not to mention the state of games media, the EGM Compendium project, and how some of the retro stuff we loved has stayed relevant today.
But we wanted to make sure all our listeners got a nice, meaty taste of the full-course meal, as well. To hear the rest, just go to https://www.funfactorpod.com and join the Review Crew! You'll also get exclusive input on what we cover in Season Two of the main show.
-----
Sources include the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections.
The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!
Mollie Patterson's homepage: https://mollielpatterson.com/
The EGM Compendium Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/egmbook/egmcompendium
FunFactor ULTRA subscribers are getting our full 91-minute interview with the great Mollie L. Patterson of EGM and GameFan fame, talking about her (very) early years as a 'zine writer, joining the rough-and-tumble world of GameFan, and graduating to layouts and editing at EGM--not to mention the state of games media, the EGM Compendium project, and how some of the retro stuff we loved has stayed relevant today.
But we wanted to make sure all our listeners got a nice, meaty taste of the full-course meal, as well. To hear the rest, just go to https://www.funfactorpod.com and join the Review Crew! You'll also get exclusive input on what we cover in Season Two of the main show.
-----
Sources include the Internet Archive, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections.
The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Fun Factor listeners, just wanted to give you all
a little taste of what Fun Factor Ultra Review Crew
subscribers are listening to today with our exclusive premium interview
with Molly Patterson of Game Fan and EGM Fame. Molly
has been in this industry a long long time, done
a lot of foundational work, work we have already looked
(00:20):
at in future episodes of this show. Absolutely encourage you
check the whole thing out by becoming a member. Just
go to fun Factor pod dot com, hit the big
subscribe which it hit the Fun Factor Ultra Review Crew
quarterly or annually. Just get on this train. Because this
interview with Molly has so much I can barely clip
(00:40):
out highlights. It's all one big giant highlight. Thank you
all so much for listening to Fun Factor.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Please enjoy. I really like your point about criticism looking.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
At some what it wants to be or what it's
trying to be, rather than just comparing it against you know,
like high bar standards, you know, in that genre or whatever.
That's something Tie and I've talked a lot about, I
think over the course of these early episodes of our show.
But I want to go back to Game Fan, because
I think it's really interesting how you're describing, you know,
criticisms against you know, like a bunch of writers who
(01:20):
didn't go to school or whatever for writing or criticism
or journalism. But I've seen you describe your early days
at Game Fan as being surprised by the quote unquote
garage nature of the operation. There wasn't a lot of
like standard equipment or workflow, but there's obviously something special happening.
The magazine was very important to so many people. It
reached you know, reached me in Canada, and I read
(01:42):
it regularly as a Canadian. You're that crew, you know,
for all the garage nature or whatever their background was,
was making something that a lot of readers adored. What
was it like working there in the mid nineties after
you kind of got your start.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Yeah, for anybody who doesn't know, like President heard me before,
you know, like like I was saying, like back then,
like if you weren't doing fanzines, you were doing pro magazines.
And the ability to do pro magazines today is literally
one person at home could sit here, make everything and
you know, write it up and then do it all
and end design, export it to a PDF, tended to
(02:20):
a print company and they're printing it right, and that
that's it. But like back then, you couldn't do that,
and making a magazine was such an industry. If there
were so many pieces, so many cogs, there are so
many things you had to do. And so I went
to Game Fan thinking, Okay, this is going to be
a professional company. There's going to be offices, and there's
going to be like people like and then all this
(02:42):
equipment stuff, because that's what you had to have back then.
And I get to Game Fan and and it was
literally like a college dorm with a bunch of just
pieced together hardware that sometimes barely ran, you know, and
it was shocking to me that a group like that
could produced the magazine. But I think what it was,
(03:03):
you know, in one of the places where this most
resonated with me was so we we had these RGB
capture cards, which most people didn't have. And so when
you go back and look their Game Fan, if you're like,
why were there screen shots just so much better than
everyone else, is that we had these cards that had
(03:24):
from my from my memory of the story is they
were they were being discontinued, and so game Fan tried
to buy as many of the cards as they could get.
We would get all of our consoles modits they could
hook it up into into the capture cards. And when
you were sitting there capturing both, you couldn't you couldn't
see Like nowadays, if you're capturing something from a when
(03:45):
you're playing a game, you just have a record video
on the entire time and then take shots from that,
or you can instantly do screen shots or whatever. But
back then, like the person grabbing the screen shots could
not see on their screen what they would get when
they grab the shot. So you had what were called grabbers.
People who had done that over and over and over again.
(04:07):
They got the timing down because it took about one
or two seconds between when you press it and what
you would actually get. You'd had to kind of like
predict the screenshot you were going to get, and then
once you got it, you had to actually deinterlace the
screenshot in order to see it. You couldn't in real
time check. But so we would sit there and we
would play fighting games for like two three four hours
(04:32):
just to capture the screenshots. And that was all we
were doing, and we were like, okay, in every screenshot
we're going to have both fighters doing an interesting move
against one another, so that you had a screenshot that
was genuinely exciting and showed off the game. And what's
(04:52):
funny about that is throughout my life now, I constantly
will get screens from pr at companies when ever, and
I'll just be disappointed at how often those screenshots are
just so terrible because whoever took the shot just didn't care, right,
And so that's what I think made game fan what
it was is you had people who just cared so
(05:15):
much about well, okay, maybe not about grammar and English language,
but cared about presenting those games and showing them off.
And so every screenshot we took, every single one of them,
was thought out and we picked and like, Okay, we're
going to use this screenshot not because that's what we have,
(05:38):
but we're going to put in there because that's the
one we want to show. We thought about the artwork,
We thought about, you know, as much as now they
look terrible to me, is screenshots and game van how
all these borders around them and the layout people would
take elements from the games, crop them out and create
this these intricate borders, you know, around it would make
(06:00):
these crazy layouts and we would go deep into like
checking out import games and stuff like that. So I
think that's what really made game found what it was
and why it was popular was because it was on
one side that fan level of if you read and
I was almost going to say his name, I'm not
going to say his name, but if you read a
(06:20):
certain person or if you read other people in the magazine,
you you knew those people played those games and loved
those games and knew what they were talking about. You know,
if you read a fighting game from certain from certain reviewers,
you knew they knew what they were talking about. If
you if you read an RPG review or a critter
(06:42):
platformer or whatever it was, you know, you knew those
people lived and breathed and died those games. And so
that was part of it. And then on the visual side,
we put just so much effort into it. So I
think it was always clear that that it was a
genuine effort and not to throw anybody under the bus,
(07:02):
but I think as time goes on, there are certain
outlets and certain people where you see the kind of
things they say or do, or the reviews their previous
whatever it is where sometimes you can be like, Okay,
is this person legitimately you know, loving games? This person
theygitim'tly know this stuff? Do they do?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
They do?
Speaker 4 (07:22):
They? Did? They really play to the end of that
game and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
But I think there was.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Thever that kind of question a game van is that
whatever whatever we were doing, you knew that we were
die hard fans of that thing.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And that came through in our episode that we just did.
The feature review that we reviewed was a review of
Lufia two, and the layout work that you talked about
came through. We're look at these beautiful there's a border
on every screenshot and it looks like the border of
a later generation RPG, right, even in the screenshots the
Lufia two's textboxes were just blue with white borders Final
(07:59):
Fantasy stuf. But your screenshots actually had more artistic care
taken to them than the textbox of the actual game did.
But you know, it's a big, beautiful two page layout
with a bunch of screenshots at different sizes and angles,
and you know, and all you know, a lot of text,
a lot of words lavished on this game, and there
was no score. There were three capsule reviews earlier of
(08:21):
the same game in the main review section.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
But this review was.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Just a whole editorial review with no score at the
end umpteen years before that became in vogue, you know,
just kind of treat it as an art object and
not as a consumer product, which, as you pointed out already,
was the criticism that people would levy at game fans, going, hey, well,
you've got a game story. You're trying to sell these games.
But I thought that was really cool that all this
time later, we're looking at this and that intent and
(08:48):
craft and care still stands.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Out and every game on that right, That was the
point too, is it like, and I'm guilt to this too,
Like there would be things when we were jurking, like
Walmart game set or whatever. You know, there would be
some games it's like, Okay, this isn't as important of
a game, so maybe we won't put as much work
into it or as much time, or we won't care
as much about screenshots, you know. But with game fan
(09:10):
there there were no throwaway pages. And even if it
was a game that we weren't wasn't like a Final
Fantasy seven, you know, it wasn't a King of Fighters
ninety eight or something like that. We still put that
same amount of effort into showing off every game, so
there were no no of those like throwaway coverage stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That comes through.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Like in the issue we were just looking at there's
I can't remember the name of it, but it's like
a kind of alone in the Dark style puzzle adventure
game for PlayStation, and like I've never heard of it.
It doesn't have a Wikipedia page, but it got like
a full page spread with like great screenshots. Turns out
it was developed by gust who of course has gone
on to make a million popular games since. And it
(09:55):
was interesting because I think that, like you know, game
Fan giving space to a game that like you never
would have seen that in game pro or game players
to that extent. And looking back, game Fan always made
me feel like I was learning about new games, not
just learning more about the games I already was excited about.
And I think that enthusiast idea that like the fanzine
enthusiasm comes through so much in the way that at
(10:18):
least I interfaced and you know, engaged with game Fan,
and it was the one that helped me understand that
there were so many games in Japan that I wasn't
getting to play, and that kind of always put a
fire under my ass to try to learn more about
what these you know, Japanese games that I couldn't get
my hands on were about, which is of course gone
on to shape a lot of what I've done as
(10:38):
an adult as well.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, it's funny because like my reading of game Fan
and not at the beginning beginning, but like, well, I
don't know, I'm trying to think because like I feel
like my getting into game Fan and then working at
game Fan also came with the generation that was PlayStation
in Saturn, and not necessarily that you previous generations you
(11:03):
couldn't import games, but I feel like because of games
coming on on discs now and then being a little
bit cheaper to import and they're being more options, Like
I feel like that was really the generation where imports
became more of a thing. And then now you can
just get a mod switch in your console whenever, And
so it was interesting that game Fan was one of
the was one of So you know, it's funny because
(11:25):
going back to EGM at this point, you know, I've
I've seen that there was more coverage of import games
than I remembered there being, but it was still oftentimes
we don't know what this game is, we don't really know,
you know, who's behind it, but we saw it somewhere,
we took some shots, we've got some information, so here
it is, and kind of presenting it that way. Whereas
(11:47):
on the game fan side, it was it was people
who legitimately were like playing imports just constantly. And because
game Fan, I mean gamers Club was getting imports in constantly,
we did have a direct source for buying those games,
so there was more love for kind of showing off
all those imports that you might not see otherwise back
(12:08):
in a generation when imports were getting easier to play,
but also those games were still not always expected to
get Western releases.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
One of the things that blew my mind yesterday as
we were looking a game fan is at the back
for the Diehard store, you would sell imports, but there
was a little note saying that the Japanese games would
come with a translation. Right, do you know, like what
was the story behind that?
Speaker 4 (12:39):
I don't know because I didn't really touch much of
the because the time I got there, the magazine and
store were pretty separate. But for anybody who doesn't know. Basically,
Game Fan Magazine came out of Diehard Gamers Club's catalog,
which ran for Ifewitch issues, which Dave actually first contacted
(13:04):
EGM founder Steve Harris, asking Steve if he could help
Dave make the catalog and then asked him for tips
on making a magazine, and then there was a big
falling out between the two sides. Oh wow, so which
which is funny, but yeah, so, I mean it based
I think part of it just was is like, okay,
we want to sell these imports to Westerners. But this
(13:27):
was back before the anime boom, back before you know,
every every kid was trying to learn Japanese. You know,
most people didn't speak it, and there was no internet
really and there was you couldn't just go on game
facts or you couldn't watch walk throughs on YouTube. So
you really needed some way to help people justify buying
imports or helping to them, you know, to think could
(13:47):
be okay to buy imports. So that's why they were
doing these these translated kind of guides back then, giving
them with the games.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I mean, I want to do a whole episode on
this because this is like, this was in nineteen ninety six.
This is before like the final Fantasy Vive fan translation
from Kohler and a few of his compatriots, which I've
always sort of looked at as the first like breakthrough
fan translation. But there was obviously more of this happening
behind the scenes, and I'd love to kind of track
down one of those translations that Diehard was providing with
(14:15):
these imports.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
But I digress.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I want to get back to, you know, just working
at game Fan, And one of the reasons we reached
out for this interview.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Is that a piece you wrote for.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Game Fan went viral on Blue Sky a few weeks ago.
It was anime coverage, but the page is just like
wall to wall text and it was pretty funny. People
thought it was was quite amusing, and then you stepped
forward and claimed responsibility for it and said, hey, like, listen,
I was a writer who also did layout. I was learning,
you know, we're figuring things out as we go. But
(14:49):
you also pointed out that being a writer who was
also working on a layout was unique at that time.
It was something that wasn't you know, most writers were
writing then you had layout people, and that didn't necessarily
cross streams. I'm curious about how the sausage is made.
We want to learn and know more about magazines, Like
can you walk me through the process in those days
(15:09):
for writing and laying out an article for Game Fan?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
What was the editorial process? Like what sort of tools
did you use? How did you you know? How did
that come together that you were laying out your own articles?
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah, so, I mean it's it's funny because you know,
later days on EGM and then so later days EAGM.
I think it was like we had like five writers
and then one main designer doing the magazine, you know,
and then Walmart Game Fan. It was a smaller staff,
it said, like I was saying earlier, it's like there's
so many things you can do now, get so much
(15:41):
easier to do all this stuff that you can do
it a smaller crew. But when I when I was
in Game Fan in ninety six, that's when I started.
I mean there was a team of writers and a
team of designers, you know, and those were kind of
two different groups. And the writers would come in, they
would play the games, they would work with the grabbers
(16:02):
to grab the screenshots, and they would give it all
to the designers. And the designers would put it all together.
And so there was this expectation, expectation of like, if
you're a writer, you wrote, If you were a designer,
you designed.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
But there were a.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Couple specific people who who did both, you know, because
they they wanted to do both. And the fun of
doing both was that if you were doing your own layouts,
then you know, we would we would talk to designers.
We would sit in their office and be like, hey,
you know, this is what I'm thinking. These are kind
of like the theme I want to go for, this
(16:36):
is what I want to show off. You would do that.
But if you were the one doing the layout, then
then you got control of everything and from start to
finish you could know what you wanted to do in
your page or your spread or or whatever it was.
So I came in as a writer. I well, I
came in hoping to be a writer, and then I
was quickly put on the website, and so I was
(16:56):
doing the website and then writing for the magazine both
and I can't remember well, I think one of my
earliest though, so my my very first layout was Sam
Roisted on four for Neo Geo, and I don't remember
what it was, But like I was always into the
design side, especially because I had come from the fanzine
(17:16):
world and the fanzine world to do everything yourself, you know,
and so I loved the writing, but I did also
love the design, and so I was like, hey, can
I just try making layouts? And they're like, yeah, sure,
because the designers weren't going to say no to you
doing their job on some level because they were going
to get paid anyway, so you know, they didn't care
if you want to do it a way out or two.
(17:37):
And so back then we used cork Express was the
one we used. That was the big industry one because
back then Adobe really wasn't do well. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I think they had page Maker back then, but PageMaker
definitely was not as as high end as Quirk Express was.
And then later on Adobe releases in design and that
kind of takes over. But yeah, no, I mean, it was,
(18:00):
it was. It said. It was interesting because now I
don't think about the back then, like just the computers
we had were so terrible and so slow for a
lot of stuff unless you were designers. So it did
take a while and getting you know, these days, if
I want to do a layout for something, I'll reach
out to PR and be like, hey, can you give
(18:21):
me access to your asset sites. I can grab screenshots,
I can grab that they have high resolution layered artwork
and stuff like that. That kind of stuff didn't exist there.
There were almost never asset libraries. You could never say
we didn't get screenshots from companies. You know, we might
(18:41):
get art, we might just have to find the art somewhere.
We have to scan the art from somewhere, you know,
and we do all these kind of cropouts of from
screenshots and whatever. So it was kind of just hacking
together whatever you had to work with. But yeah, it
was it was It was fun. Like I said, I
loved doing that, but I was definitely still learning and
(19:04):
what I one of the things I kind of said
in talking about that anime Fan layout was that you
didn't always have people saying like, hey, this layout is
completely unreadable. You should not be doing this. And especially
if you go back looking through game Fan now, there's
so many things where I'm like, why would you use
that font color on that background? Why would you have
(19:28):
a box behind the text but the text is like
right against the edge of the box. And there's like
no padding and no room to breathe at all. Why
would you do this? Why would you have for that
anime page is like why is it one full with
column of just eight thousand words effects with nothing bringing
(19:50):
it up? But it it that does kind of go
back to the fan side of it. Was that is
in my mind, it probably was not oh, I need
to make sure this is readable. It was I've got
all this information that I want to give to people.
And that was one of the funny responses to me,
(20:10):
was on one hand, I was seeing people saying like, yes,
this is unreadable, you know, But on the other some
we're like, it's unreadable, but it's packed with so much
information that I'd appreciate that. And that's kind of the
thing is is that you look at at you know
a lot of the layouts we were creating a game
fan and all those screenshots and all the images and
(20:33):
all the text just being crammed in wherever it could be.
You know, it did make it harder to read. But
the thought was we want to give you as much
as we can about this this stuff, you know, and
and and so yeah, so like there was there was
no like when I started making layouts. I had like
maybe like an hour crash course with somebody showing me
(20:53):
how to actually use work Express. But there was no Okay,
these are these are the good rules for.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Design, you know.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
There was nothing like that. So it was just I'm
going to try it, and then when I've made a layout,
if there's anything I don't like about it, next time,
I'm going to try to do something else. And one
of the other problems is that these days it's much
easier to know what the end result is going to
look like, but back then, knowing how something would look
(21:25):
on a page was a lot harder, and it's even
hard today sometimes because inevitably, one of the big problems
is that things will print darker than you think they're
going to print because on a screen it's it's a
it's a lit screen. You're seeing all those colors like
fresh and bright and a lot of contrasts and stuff.
Then we go to print, inevitably things that end up darker,
(21:47):
so you can you can screw that up pretty easily,
and there's other things, and so back at game Fan,
what we would do was, you know, you weren't sending
digital files over, so we had these big machines in
the basement that you could. We had one that was
a printer, and so we would actually print out our versions.
(22:08):
It wouldn't look exactly like the actual magazine would do,
but we would print out spread after spread after spread
after spread, and then check through them. But then when
we were done, we would print out the four color
separations on these kind of I think they were clear sheets,
and then we put those into a Manila envelope for
each in every spread, and then send all that stuff
(22:30):
by mail to the printer and they would use those
to print them. So yeah, so it was it was
a combination of of like having computers that made it
hard to really get into like complicated layout stuff, not
having any of those assets easy accessible all the time,
and then not having an easier way to see what
(22:53):
the end result would be in the end. And yeah,
you know that that. I I feel terrible about some
of those anime Fan layouts going back to them now,
But at the same time I got the chance to
This came after the big split where half the kind
of crew went off to make Gamers Republic, and that
gave me the opportunity to actually run anime Fan for myself.
(23:16):
I was getting to write everything. I was picking what
I was going in there, I was doing the layouts,
and so I love that chance, and so it's hard
to go back to a little bit to look at,
but it was also a huge opportunity for me.
Hey, Fun Factor listeners, just wanted to give you all
a little taste of what Fun Factor Ultra Review Crew
subscribers are listening to today with our exclusive premium interview
with Molly Patterson of Game Fan and EGM Fame. Molly
has been in this industry a long long time, done
a lot of foundational work, work we have already looked
(00:20):
at in future episodes of this show. Absolutely encourage you
check the whole thing out by becoming a member. Just
go to fun Factor pod dot com, hit the big
subscribe which it hit the Fun Factor Ultra Review Crew
quarterly or annually. Just get on this train. Because this
interview with Molly has so much I can barely clip
(00:40):
out highlights. It's all one big giant highlight. Thank you
all so much for listening to Fun Factor.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Please enjoy. I really like your point about criticism looking.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
At some what it wants to be or what it's
trying to be, rather than just comparing it against you know,
like high bar standards, you know, in that genre or whatever.
That's something Tie and I've talked a lot about, I
think over the course of these early episodes of our show.
But I want to go back to Game Fan, because
I think it's really interesting how you're describing, you know,
criticisms against you know, like a bunch of writers who
(01:20):
didn't go to school or whatever for writing or criticism
or journalism. But I've seen you describe your early days
at Game Fan as being surprised by the quote unquote
garage nature of the operation. There wasn't a lot of
like standard equipment or workflow, but there's obviously something special happening.
The magazine was very important to so many people. It
reached you know, reached me in Canada, and I read
(01:42):
it regularly as a Canadian. You're that crew, you know,
for all the garage nature or whatever their background was,
was making something that a lot of readers adored. What
was it like working there in the mid nineties after
you kind of got your start.
Speaker 4 (01:58):
Yeah, for anybody who doesn't know, like President heard me before,
you know, like like I was saying, like back then,
like if you weren't doing fanzines, you were doing pro magazines.
And the ability to do pro magazines today is literally
one person at home could sit here, make everything and
you know, write it up and then do it all
and end design, export it to a PDF, tended to
(02:20):
a print company and they're printing it right, and that
that's it. But like back then, you couldn't do that,
and making a magazine was such an industry. If there
were so many pieces, so many cogs, there are so
many things you had to do. And so I went
to Game Fan thinking, Okay, this is going to be
a professional company. There's going to be offices, and there's
going to be like people like and then all this
(02:42):
equipment stuff, because that's what you had to have back then.
And I get to Game Fan and and it was
literally like a college dorm with a bunch of just
pieced together hardware that sometimes barely ran, you know, and
it was shocking to me that a group like that
could produced the magazine. But I think what it was,
(03:03):
you know, in one of the places where this most
resonated with me was so we we had these RGB
capture cards, which most people didn't have. And so when
you go back and look their Game Fan, if you're like,
why were there screen shots just so much better than
everyone else, is that we had these cards that had
(03:24):
from my from my memory of the story is they
were they were being discontinued, and so game Fan tried
to buy as many of the cards as they could get.
We would get all of our consoles modits they could
hook it up into into the capture cards. And when
you were sitting there capturing both, you couldn't you couldn't
see Like nowadays, if you're capturing something from a when
(03:45):
you're playing a game, you just have a record video
on the entire time and then take shots from that,
or you can instantly do screen shots or whatever. But
back then, like the person grabbing the screen shots could
not see on their screen what they would get when
they grab the shot. So you had what were called grabbers.
People who had done that over and over and over again.
(04:07):
They got the timing down because it took about one
or two seconds between when you press it and what
you would actually get. You'd had to kind of like
predict the screenshot you were going to get, and then
once you got it, you had to actually deinterlace the
screenshot in order to see it. You couldn't in real
time check. But so we would sit there and we
would play fighting games for like two three four hours
(04:32):
just to capture the screenshots. And that was all we
were doing, and we were like, okay, in every screenshot
we're going to have both fighters doing an interesting move
against one another, so that you had a screenshot that
was genuinely exciting and showed off the game. And what's
(04:52):
funny about that is throughout my life now, I constantly
will get screens from pr at companies when ever, and
I'll just be disappointed at how often those screenshots are
just so terrible because whoever took the shot just didn't care, right,
And so that's what I think made game fan what
it was is you had people who just cared so
(05:15):
much about well, okay, maybe not about grammar and English language,
but cared about presenting those games and showing them off.
And so every screenshot we took, every single one of them,
was thought out and we picked and like, Okay, we're
going to use this screenshot not because that's what we have,
(05:38):
but we're going to put in there because that's the
one we want to show. We thought about the artwork,
We thought about, you know, as much as now they
look terrible to me, is screenshots and game van how
all these borders around them and the layout people would
take elements from the games, crop them out and create
this these intricate borders, you know, around it would make
(06:00):
these crazy layouts and we would go deep into like
checking out import games and stuff like that. So I
think that's what really made game found what it was
and why it was popular was because it was on
one side that fan level of if you read and
I was almost going to say his name, I'm not
going to say his name, but if you read a
(06:20):
certain person or if you read other people in the magazine,
you you knew those people played those games and loved
those games and knew what they were talking about. You know,
if you read a fighting game from certain from certain reviewers,
you knew they knew what they were talking about. If
you if you read an RPG review or a critter
(06:42):
platformer or whatever it was, you know, you knew those
people lived and breathed and died those games. And so
that was part of it. And then on the visual side,
we put just so much effort into it. So I
think it was always clear that that it was a
genuine effort and not to throw anybody under the bus,
(07:02):
but I think as time goes on, there are certain
outlets and certain people where you see the kind of
things they say or do, or the reviews their previous
whatever it is where sometimes you can be like, Okay,
is this person legitimately you know, loving games? This person
theygitim'tly know this stuff? Do they do?
Speaker 3 (07:21):
They do?
Speaker 4 (07:22):
They? Did? They really play to the end of that
game and stuff like that.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
But I think there was.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Thever that kind of question a game van is that
whatever whatever we were doing, you knew that we were
die hard fans of that thing.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
And that came through in our episode that we just did.
The feature review that we reviewed was a review of
Lufia two, and the layout work that you talked about
came through. We're look at these beautiful there's a border
on every screenshot and it looks like the border of
a later generation RPG, right, even in the screenshots the
Lufia two's textboxes were just blue with white borders Final
(07:59):
Fantasy stuf. But your screenshots actually had more artistic care
taken to them than the textbox of the actual game did.
But you know, it's a big, beautiful two page layout
with a bunch of screenshots at different sizes and angles,
and you know, and all you know, a lot of text,
a lot of words lavished on this game, and there
was no score. There were three capsule reviews earlier of
(08:21):
the same game in the main review section.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
But this review was.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
Just a whole editorial review with no score at the
end umpteen years before that became in vogue, you know,
just kind of treat it as an art object and
not as a consumer product, which, as you pointed out already,
was the criticism that people would levy at game fans, going, hey, well,
you've got a game story. You're trying to sell these games.
But I thought that was really cool that all this
time later, we're looking at this and that intent and
(08:48):
craft and care still stands.
Speaker 4 (08:49):
Out and every game on that right, That was the
point too, is it like, and I'm guilt to this too,
Like there would be things when we were jurking, like
Walmart game set or whatever. You know, there would be
some games it's like, Okay, this isn't as important of
a game, so maybe we won't put as much work
into it or as much time, or we won't care
as much about screenshots, you know. But with game fan
(09:10):
there there were no throwaway pages. And even if it
was a game that we weren't wasn't like a Final
Fantasy seven, you know, it wasn't a King of Fighters
ninety eight or something like that. We still put that
same amount of effort into showing off every game, so
there were no no of those like throwaway coverage stuff.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
That comes through.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
Like in the issue we were just looking at there's
I can't remember the name of it, but it's like
a kind of alone in the Dark style puzzle adventure
game for PlayStation, and like I've never heard of it.
It doesn't have a Wikipedia page, but it got like
a full page spread with like great screenshots. Turns out
it was developed by gust who of course has gone
on to make a million popular games since. And it
(09:55):
was interesting because I think that, like you know, game
Fan giving space to a game that like you never
would have seen that in game pro or game players
to that extent. And looking back, game Fan always made
me feel like I was learning about new games, not
just learning more about the games I already was excited about.
And I think that enthusiast idea that like the fanzine
enthusiasm comes through so much in the way that at
(10:18):
least I interfaced and you know, engaged with game Fan,
and it was the one that helped me understand that
there were so many games in Japan that I wasn't
getting to play, and that kind of always put a
fire under my ass to try to learn more about
what these you know, Japanese games that I couldn't get
my hands on were about, which is of course gone
on to shape a lot of what I've done as
(10:38):
an adult as well.
Speaker 4 (10:40):
Yeah, it's funny because like my reading of game Fan
and not at the beginning beginning, but like, well, I
don't know, I'm trying to think because like I feel
like my getting into game Fan and then working at
game Fan also came with the generation that was PlayStation
in Saturn, and not necessarily that you previous generations you
(11:03):
couldn't import games, but I feel like because of games
coming on on discs now and then being a little
bit cheaper to import and they're being more options, Like
I feel like that was really the generation where imports
became more of a thing. And then now you can
just get a mod switch in your console whenever, And
so it was interesting that game Fan was one of
the was one of So you know, it's funny because
(11:25):
going back to EGM at this point, you know, I've
I've seen that there was more coverage of import games
than I remembered there being, but it was still oftentimes
we don't know what this game is, we don't really know,
you know, who's behind it, but we saw it somewhere,
we took some shots, we've got some information, so here
it is, and kind of presenting it that way. Whereas
(11:47):
on the game fan side, it was it was people
who legitimately were like playing imports just constantly. And because
game Fan, I mean gamers Club was getting imports in constantly,
we did have a direct source for buying those games,
so there was more love for kind of showing off
all those imports that you might not see otherwise back
(12:08):
in a generation when imports were getting easier to play,
but also those games were still not always expected to
get Western releases.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
One of the things that blew my mind yesterday as
we were looking a game fan is at the back
for the Diehard store, you would sell imports, but there
was a little note saying that the Japanese games would
come with a translation. Right, do you know, like what
was the story behind that?
Speaker 4 (12:39):
I don't know because I didn't really touch much of
the because the time I got there, the magazine and
store were pretty separate. But for anybody who doesn't know. Basically,
Game Fan Magazine came out of Diehard Gamers Club's catalog,
which ran for Ifewitch issues, which Dave actually first contacted
(13:04):
EGM founder Steve Harris, asking Steve if he could help
Dave make the catalog and then asked him for tips
on making a magazine, and then there was a big
falling out between the two sides. Oh wow, so which
which is funny, but yeah, so, I mean it based
I think part of it just was is like, okay,
we want to sell these imports to Westerners. But this
(13:27):
was back before the anime boom, back before you know,
every every kid was trying to learn Japanese. You know,
most people didn't speak it, and there was no internet
really and there was you couldn't just go on game
facts or you couldn't watch walk throughs on YouTube. So
you really needed some way to help people justify buying
imports or helping to them, you know, to think could
(13:47):
be okay to buy imports. So that's why they were
doing these these translated kind of guides back then, giving
them with the games.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
I mean, I want to do a whole episode on
this because this is like, this was in nineteen ninety six.
This is before like the final Fantasy Vive fan translation
from Kohler and a few of his compatriots, which I've
always sort of looked at as the first like breakthrough
fan translation. But there was obviously more of this happening
behind the scenes, and I'd love to kind of track
down one of those translations that Diehard was providing with
(14:15):
these imports.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
But I digress.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
I want to get back to, you know, just working
at game Fan, And one of the reasons we reached
out for this interview.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Is that a piece you wrote for.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Game Fan went viral on Blue Sky a few weeks ago.
It was anime coverage, but the page is just like
wall to wall text and it was pretty funny. People
thought it was was quite amusing, and then you stepped
forward and claimed responsibility for it and said, hey, like, listen,
I was a writer who also did layout. I was learning,
you know, we're figuring things out as we go. But
(14:49):
you also pointed out that being a writer who was
also working on a layout was unique at that time.
It was something that wasn't you know, most writers were
writing then you had layout people, and that didn't necessarily
cross streams. I'm curious about how the sausage is made.
We want to learn and know more about magazines, Like
can you walk me through the process in those days
(15:09):
for writing and laying out an article for Game Fan?
Speaker 2 (15:11):
What was the editorial process? Like what sort of tools
did you use? How did you you know? How did
that come together that you were laying out your own articles?
Speaker 4 (15:20):
Yeah, so, I mean it's it's funny because you know,
later days on EGM and then so later days EAGM.
I think it was like we had like five writers
and then one main designer doing the magazine, you know,
and then Walmart Game Fan. It was a smaller staff,
it said, like I was saying earlier, it's like there's
so many things you can do now, get so much
(15:41):
easier to do all this stuff that you can do
it a smaller crew. But when I when I was
in Game Fan in ninety six, that's when I started.
I mean there was a team of writers and a
team of designers, you know, and those were kind of
two different groups. And the writers would come in, they
would play the games, they would work with the grabbers
(16:02):
to grab the screenshots, and they would give it all
to the designers. And the designers would put it all together.
And so there was this expectation, expectation of like, if
you're a writer, you wrote, If you were a designer,
you designed.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
But there were a.
Speaker 4 (16:14):
Couple specific people who who did both, you know, because
they they wanted to do both. And the fun of
doing both was that if you were doing your own layouts,
then you know, we would we would talk to designers.
We would sit in their office and be like, hey,
you know, this is what I'm thinking. These are kind
of like the theme I want to go for, this
(16:36):
is what I want to show off. You would do that.
But if you were the one doing the layout, then
then you got control of everything and from start to
finish you could know what you wanted to do in
your page or your spread or or whatever it was.
So I came in as a writer. I well, I
came in hoping to be a writer, and then I
was quickly put on the website, and so I was
(16:56):
doing the website and then writing for the magazine both
and I can't remember well, I think one of my
earliest though, so my my very first layout was Sam
Roisted on four for Neo Geo, and I don't remember
what it was, But like I was always into the
design side, especially because I had come from the fanzine
(17:16):
world and the fanzine world to do everything yourself, you know,
and so I loved the writing, but I did also
love the design, and so I was like, hey, can
I just try making layouts? And they're like, yeah, sure,
because the designers weren't going to say no to you
doing their job on some level because they were going
to get paid anyway, so you know, they didn't care
if you want to do it a way out or two.
(17:37):
And so back then we used cork Express was the
one we used. That was the big industry one because
back then Adobe really wasn't do well. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I think they had page Maker back then, but PageMaker
definitely was not as as high end as Quirk Express was.
And then later on Adobe releases in design and that
kind of takes over. But yeah, no, I mean, it was,
(18:00):
it was. It said. It was interesting because now I
don't think about the back then, like just the computers
we had were so terrible and so slow for a
lot of stuff unless you were designers. So it did
take a while and getting you know, these days, if
I want to do a layout for something, I'll reach
out to PR and be like, hey, can you give
(18:21):
me access to your asset sites. I can grab screenshots,
I can grab that they have high resolution layered artwork
and stuff like that. That kind of stuff didn't exist there.
There were almost never asset libraries. You could never say
we didn't get screenshots from companies. You know, we might
(18:41):
get art, we might just have to find the art somewhere.
We have to scan the art from somewhere, you know,
and we do all these kind of cropouts of from
screenshots and whatever. So it was kind of just hacking
together whatever you had to work with. But yeah, it
was it was It was fun. Like I said, I
loved doing that, but I was definitely still learning and
(19:04):
what I one of the things I kind of said
in talking about that anime Fan layout was that you
didn't always have people saying like, hey, this layout is
completely unreadable. You should not be doing this. And especially
if you go back looking through game Fan now, there's
so many things where I'm like, why would you use
that font color on that background? Why would you have
(19:28):
a box behind the text but the text is like
right against the edge of the box. And there's like
no padding and no room to breathe at all. Why
would you do this? Why would you have for that
anime page is like why is it one full with
column of just eight thousand words effects with nothing bringing
(19:50):
it up? But it it that does kind of go
back to the fan side of it. Was that is
in my mind, it probably was not oh, I need
to make sure this is readable. It was I've got
all this information that I want to give to people.
And that was one of the funny responses to me,
(20:10):
was on one hand, I was seeing people saying like, yes,
this is unreadable, you know, But on the other some
we're like, it's unreadable, but it's packed with so much
information that I'd appreciate that. And that's kind of the
thing is is that you look at at you know
a lot of the layouts we were creating a game
fan and all those screenshots and all the images and
(20:33):
all the text just being crammed in wherever it could be.
You know, it did make it harder to read. But
the thought was we want to give you as much
as we can about this this stuff, you know, and
and and so yeah, so like there was there was
no like when I started making layouts. I had like
maybe like an hour crash course with somebody showing me
(20:53):
how to actually use work Express. But there was no Okay,
these are these are the good rules for.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Design, you know.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
There was nothing like that. So it was just I'm
going to try it, and then when I've made a layout,
if there's anything I don't like about it, next time,
I'm going to try to do something else. And one
of the other problems is that these days it's much
easier to know what the end result is going to
look like, but back then, knowing how something would look
(21:25):
on a page was a lot harder, and it's even
hard today sometimes because inevitably, one of the big problems
is that things will print darker than you think they're
going to print because on a screen it's it's a
it's a lit screen. You're seeing all those colors like
fresh and bright and a lot of contrasts and stuff.
Then we go to print, inevitably things that end up darker,
(21:47):
so you can you can screw that up pretty easily,
and there's other things, and so back at game Fan,
what we would do was, you know, you weren't sending
digital files over, so we had these big machines in
the basement that you could. We had one that was
a printer, and so we would actually print out our versions.
(22:08):
It wouldn't look exactly like the actual magazine would do,
but we would print out spread after spread after spread
after spread, and then check through them. But then when
we were done, we would print out the four color
separations on these kind of I think they were clear sheets,
and then we put those into a Manila envelope for
each in every spread, and then send all that stuff
(22:30):
by mail to the printer and they would use those
to print them. So yeah, so it was it was
a combination of of like having computers that made it
hard to really get into like complicated layout stuff, not
having any of those assets easy accessible all the time,
and then not having an easier way to see what
(22:53):
the end result would be in the end. And yeah,
you know that that. I I feel terrible about some
of those anime Fan layouts going back to them now,
But at the same time I got the chance to
This came after the big split where half the kind
of crew went off to make Gamers Republic, and that
gave me the opportunity to actually run anime Fan for myself.
(23:16):
I was getting to write everything. I was picking what
I was going in there, I was doing the layouts,
and so I love that chance, and so it's hard
to go back to a little bit to look at,
but it was also a huge opportunity for me.
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