Steve Merrett. The Mean Machines Sega interview
Steve Merrett has written and edited some of my favourite gaming magazines growing-up, including CU Amiga, MegaTech, and Mean Machines. But it’s his time as editor of Mean Machines Sega in the mid 90s I’m really interested in.
The interview below traces the magazine’s history from inception in 1992 to closure in 1997. In the process it tells the parallel history of Sega in the 90s.
You can read the full article here.
Q1. Let’s start at the start. Can you tell us a bit about your history with video game magazines and how you came to be editor of Mean Machines Sega. I know you were previously at Nintendo Magazine System (NMS) and prior to that had bounded around various EMAP titles.
“I started my career at a small Chichester-based publisher called Gollner Publishing. I was initially on tips for an Atari title called ST Action,, but worked my way into reviews as I was a huge arcade and home format fan. Gollner was truly small-scale, but with talented and enthusiastic people, and we then launched Amiga Action which I was made Editor. I say Editor, but I had no experience of running a magazine and all the financial and planning stuff that came with it. I was only 19 and just wanted to play and write about games, but the magazine did Ok. Or so we thought. Then we were all pulled into a room, told the company had been sold to Europress and that we had to move from leafy Chichester to outside Macclesfield in the north. I went for six months, hated it and the way Europress worked, and got fired!”
“I'd previously been courted by CU Amiga to join them, so I rang Steve James who put me on the team as Contributing Editor, and then moved up to Dep Ed position. I soon had my head turned by the consoles in the games room though (Zool just does not hold a candle to the likes of Mario World or Sonic, despite what Amiga defenders will say...), so when a role came up for the as-yet-unannounced Nintendo mag, I went for it and was Deputy Editor alongside Jim Douglas. Jim, however, left to start GamesMaster magazine at Future Publishing, after just one issue - so myself and Andy McVittie (the Production Editor) effectively ran it until they bought Tim Boone in six months later. I was then offered the Editorship of Megatech which I did for six months, then they sold it to Maverick to make into a skimpy poster mag, and was moved to the newly-vacant Mean Machines Sega Editor position. After that came a promotion to Managing Editor where I oversaw Mean Machines Sega, Mean Machines PlayStation and also PlayStation Plus.”
Q2. Can you paint us a picture of the EMAP offices at the time. So circa 1994. Did the various magazines all have their own bit of office terf, or was it more of a free-for-all with overflowing ashtrays and everyone from the various magazines piled on top of each other?
“We were all based in Priory Court in Farringdon, London. The building was a shambles, but each of the five floors would play host to one or two mags. When I joined, The One and PC Review were on the ground floor, Advertising were on the First, CU Amiga and Ace were on the second, Marketing and Megatech on the Third, and Mean Machines and Nintendo up on the fourth.”
“The fourth floor was the place to be, though. We had the likes of Jaz Rignall, Gary Harrord, Rich Leadbetter, Lucy Hickman, Radion Automatic, Andy McVittie, Gus Swann and the fantastic Paul Davies all cramped into a tiny area of desks, with a narrow gaming room to one side where various broken TVs and and consoles in varying states of repair lined one wall and a massive Street Fighter 2 arcade machine dominated the other. It was a fantastic time. Every one of the team was brilliant and contributed to the enthusiasm and love that shone through in both mags. There was no fighting between formats as staff were shared across both titles, so everyone got to see what everyone was playing and try every themselves.”
“But, yes, it was filthy. The whole building was a mess. But EMAP was made by the people there. Which the hierarchy never understood.”
Q3. What did the Mean Machines name mean to you when you joined Mean Machines Sega? Can you quantify the x factor that made it special (and so fondly remembered to this day). And expanding on that, what makes a gaming magazine stand out from its peers?
“Mean Machines to me was integrity. It was there to be your knowing mate who knew the Sega market inside out and wanted to share that with you. It was honest, utterly trustworthy, and loved games. All games. To me, a good games mag makes you think you made the right decision in the hardware you own. When there were great games, we would show them off with six page reviews that went into huge detail with in-depth info of all the stuff a reader wanted to know. These games were £50 back then which was a staggering amount of cash, so we wanted to make sure nobody wasted their money. Which allowed us to also weigh in hard when stuff was crap.”
“Our news pages were brilliant, too. Tiny scraps of screens taken from Japanese magazines of titles we perhaps would never see in the UK, but which showed how much was on the horizon. And when we got access to something new on, say, a Street Fighter title we would go to town as, like us, we knew the Sega audience wanted to know everything available.”
Q4. On that note, was there a lot of rivalry between the various magazines within the EMAP staple? What about other publishers like Future or Paragon?
“Not really. I had worked on three mags by the time I landed on Mean Machines, so knew and had worked with most people. We also used to give each other freelance work to supplement our crap wages, so infighting would bite the hand that literally fed you! As for other publishers, we didn't really see them. We used to think Dave Perry at Paragon was a bit of a tit with all his self-promotion, but we were hardly alone in that and as older, wiser people I've spoken to him since and we laugh about it all. Thirty years will do that! Ditto, I didn't realise how much I had upset Paul at Digitiser until I sent him a note on Twitter praising one of his videos, but hopefully time has healed that one too.”
Q5. You became editor in 1994 just as the 32 bit generation was about to launch and the 16bit consoles were winding down. How did you rate Sega’s chances at the time given they were juggling several platforms, and both the Mega CD and 32X had under performed in the market?
“I didn't. I knew the Saturn was going to struggle. The reason the Megadrive flew was because Sega US had a lot more control, which lead to loads of third-party games and a reason for people to buy it. With the 32x it was barely an upgrade and expensive for what it was, and then Japan took control of Saturn and it launched with a disappointing selection of titles as they wanted to control releases much more closely. We'd got wind of Sony's plans for PlayStation and their charm offensive with publishers and knew of at least three times as many games on the way, so it was obvious that the writing was on the wall for Sega.”
Q6. The internet didn’t really exist at this point. Was there any attempt within EMAP to try and experiment with online content as the 90s progressed, or was that still a pipe dream during your tenure at the magazine?
“Gus Swan would oversee this after I moved on, but we'd barely got email by the time I was on PlayStation Plus, so this was still a few years away.”
Q7. Where did you see Mean Machines Sega positioned amongst all the other Sega Magazines at the time? What did you see as the main demographic?
“We felt we were pitched at 12-17 year-olds, with a few younger ones also buying it to be like their older peers. In terms of position, we were always the authority voice. I loved Sega Power and MEGA, but while their writing was fantastic, I often felt the design was a little formulaic. We always tried to be true to the original colourful design of the early Mean Machines issues, even when we went over to desktop publishing.”
Q8. The Sega Saturn didn’t do very well in the west, at what point did you know the system was in trouble, and how did this impact the magazine?
“I spoke to publishers on a daily basis and it was clear their focus was PlayStation as Sega was being so hard to work with. I'd already been asked to work on an internal pitch for an EMAP PlayStation magazine so was split across two mags, with Mean Machines Sega taking up most of my week, and then myself and Oz Browne stuck in a tiny room to devise what would eventually become PlayStation Plus. It was only because Mean Machines still had Megadrive, Mega-CD, 32x and a few Saturn games to include that it maintained its decent issue sizes, but Saturn games were becoming an afterthought for most publishers. There was an early level of parity where Gremlin put their stuff on both, but Sony were actively courting more and more people, and Sega started to fall behind quite quickly as Psygnosis went exclusive and others followed.”
“We had Mean Machines and the Official Sega mag at this point which cannibalised each other's sales a bit, so I handed Mean Machines to Gus but kept an overseeing role, but it was clearly on the slide.”
Q9. At some point in your tenure I’m assuming you could see the writing on the wall for Sega, what was the mood like at Mean Machines Sega as it came to the end of its run?
“They were all talented guys and would find work, but it isn't great to work on a title with no games. I remember the last days of Sinclair User which was basically old budget reissues being reviewed, and it is soul destroying. Mean Machines was the same. The calbre of games on the cover went down, as did the page count. It then only becomes a matter of time until it folds.”
Q10. You still work in the industry, albeit on the PR side these days. What do you miss about the industry back in the 90s vs today? And what don’t you miss?
“The industry can all be a little po-faced these days. The love of games does not always shine through, and writers get some rotten flak from social media for expressing their opinions which we never had to put up with. But there does seem to be less joy these days. Games are in rude health with the new Zelda and Mario titles showing Nintendo at the top of their game, and games such as GTA, EA FC, Starfield and CoD showing significant presence. Instead, we get a lot of navel-gazing articles where people choose abstract topics to discuss, and it makes me wonder who they are writing for sometimes. Knowing your audience is everything, but I guess these days of less games and more demand for constant content makes life so much harder. I think I was in editorial when it was a better - certainly happier - time, but there are some amazing games writers out there. You just need to dig through so much to find them.”
