The Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall interview

I originally interviewed Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall via email back in 2021. If you’re reading this I’m going to assume you already know that he was the editor of CVG magazine at the start of the 90s, launched Mean Machines, did a bunch of other important stuff in the gaming industry, and eventually re-emerged as the Editor-at-Large for US Gamer.

Anyway, the original interview was used for my CVG retrospective, which is slightly unhinged and rambles on about the KLF, liminal spaces, and a brief moment in the early 90s when anything seemed possible. You can read it here. And you definitely should.

But if you’d rather skip all that and just hear what Jaz has to say about CVG, grey imports, Japan, and whether Mean Yob would get ‘cancelled’ in today’s media environment then start with the interview below.*

Was the inclusion of the Mean Machines section in C&VG a tough sell to management, or was it pretty clear consoles were the future?

“I wasn't at CVG when Mean Machines was first introduced into the magazine. That was Tony Takoushi's idea, but from what I understand, management was very keen to have a regular column that covered the hottest new consoles and games from America and Japan. CVG was always seen as the cutting-edge gaming magazine that featured the latest and greatest games and hardware, so this column was seen as a good way to deliver that information to the magazine's readership.”

C&VG was covering a really diverse selection of consoles and computers around this time, everything from the humble C64 to IBM compatibles and the PC Engine. But how did you balance that shift between the old and new, and the need to cover old 8bit titles alongside the latest Japanese imports?

“CVG has always been about featuring the best gaming experiences regardless of platform, so we included everything in the magazine that we felt would make the readers excited. That meant covering the hottest games on the most popular domestic home micros that most of CVG's readers owned, as well as finding the latest import games that the readership could aspire to owning. 

“It wasn't too difficult balancing the two - we had the Mean Machines column that originally featured import games and then just became the dedicated console section of the magazine, and domestic 8- and 16-bit games were covered in the regular review section. If there were too many games to review that month, we just cut the games that we felt were not of a high quality, which often meant CVG was packed with really great games.”

Looking through old issues of C&VG from that era, the thing that strikes me is the excitement around all the Japanese imports; whether it’s anime, consoles, arcades, etc. Do you think the magazine helped connect kids to a broader world beyond their own suburbs via that reporting and coverage. Basically, it set a generation of kids down a rabbit hole that expanded their view of the world?

“I think we definitely helped readers discover a gaming world beyond Britain and Europe. We opened the readers' eyes to Japanese gaming, which was where most of the cutting-edge software was being produced during that era. The most exciting consoles were Japanese, and they featured all sorts of amazing games, arcade conversions, and original properties that we were very enthusiastic about. I do think our early console coverage hype helped pave the way for the import scene to grow, and later when consoles were officially released they continued to grow in popularity because they represented the most exciting part of the gaming market.

“Much of the reason for this is because Japanese game development was generally more sophisticated than European game production. Japanese developers often had large teams of people that included individuals dedicated to specific development tasks. That enabled many Japanese publishers to produce deeper, more thoroughly designed, far more rigorously tested, and better-looking games than many of the comparative, more home-brewed European titles of the era. Gamers quickly recognized this quality, and Japanese games development became regarded as the best in the world.

“During this era, we also began to see the emergence of Japanese anime and manga, which was very positively covered in gaming periodicals such as Computer and Video Games and Mean Machines magazines. This further helped advance interest in Japanese culture and pique Western gamers' interest in that part of the world.”

Can you think of examples where political or cultural events made their way into the magazine, either overtly or more discreetly, e.g., the Gulf War, or the end of the Soviet Union? Did this impact the way you covered a game like Desert Strike?

“Yes and no. While we did sometimes make political comments in our editorial, they were usually more for comedic value. Ultimately, I realized early on as a journalist that most readers didn't want to see political comments in a gaming magazine. They viewed their hobby as an escape from the real world, and bringing politics into a gaming magazine always resulted in very negative feedback. Jokes and amusing references were fine, but any serious views were often met with letters of complaint from readers who had the opposite political view to the one that was being aired in the magazine. So as a rule, as editor, I always removed overly political comments and ensured that our coverage was generally neutral.” 

And finally, what about Mean Yob or the reader insult corner. Obviously, it was a bit of fun, but do you think the attitude, jokes and insults say more about the time than you may have realised when you wrote them. 

“Oh yes indeed. Stuff like Mean Machines' ‘Insult Corner’ would absolutely not work today. People are far more sensitive these days, and I imagine the sort of rhetoric we got away with back then would be very poorly received today. In the 80s and 90s, people were far more tolerant to that sort of humor and understood that while it may have sometimes been a bit cruel, it was not spiteful and was ultimately being made in jest, even though some poor individual was the butt of those jokes.

“I think if anyone tried that sort of thing today, there'd be endless social media backlash about it. Humor has become somewhat of a minefield these days. It feels that no matter what you say nowadays, someone either won't understand the joke or will find some kind of offense in it. It's extremely tiresome, but it's an upshot of the rise of social media and everyone feeling that they have a right to weigh in with their opinion, no matter what.”

Read all that? Good. Now you’re ready for the associated article about the history of CVG, the KLF, liminal spaces and yada, yada.

*Technically, this is compromised of two separate email exchanges / interviews.