Weekly Famitsu. One magazine to rule them all.

The first time I saw a physical copy of Weekly Famitsu magazine I was massively underwhelmed… 

Which is not how you’re supposed to start an article about one of the most influential video game magazines to ever exist, but here we are.

I found the magazine in a small Japanese bookshop hidden away in a Melbourne alley. This would have been around 2011 or so. The shop is long gone. But the memory remains.

By this point the magazine had taken on mythical proportions in my mind. I had been aware of it ever since the 16bit era when UK and US magazines would steal images and provide poorly translated news snippets from import copies. But I had never actually encountered a copy in the wild. 

So, why the disappointment? I’ll get to that in a moment. First, a quick recap.

Weekly Famitsu history

When Weekly Famitsu launched in 1986 the world was a lot smaller. I mean that metaphorically, obviously. But the point stands.

Information was harder to come by. The world was compartmentalised. And, if we’re talking video games, Japan was the epicenter and Famitsu was the oracle. The source of truth. 

Not that we ever saw physical copes in the west. The magazine was occasionally referenced in western gaming media when announcing upcoming releases or gaming industry news, but it was an abstraction. If anyone had asked us to describe the magazine’s layout, contents, staff or other details we’d have been unable to respond.  

For kids growing up in the boondocks, Famitsu was a concept more than it was a physical magazine. It symbolised Japan and the sudden rush of technology that was barreling down the pipeline as the new millennium approached. 

Curiously, the western media didn’t seem much interested in any of this. When EGM magazine visited the office in 1990 and wrote about it in a subsequent issue they only allocated one page and three short paragraphs to the magazine. 

And so we allowed our minds to drift. And Famitsu became whatever we wanted it to be. It was an avatar on which we could project whatever version of Japan and its video game industry that we wanted.

Follow the yellow brick road

There’s a famous scene in 1939’s Wizard of Oz film where the characters draw back a *literal* curtain to reveal the ‘Great Wizard of Oz’ as just an old guy with an elaborate speaker set-up.

Picking up that random copy of Famitsu felt similar. If far less dramatic. Turns out it's just a magazine with a lot of text, a lot of very small images, and a lot of information to process - all of it Japanese. Whatever I had built it up to be in my mind. This wasn’t it. This was just a Japanese video game magazine.

And sure, maybe November 2011 wasn’t a particularly vintage issue, and we already had the internet at this point, so the impact of Japanese news sources was somewhat dulled, but you get the general idea.

Controversy. Weekly Famitsu in the media

Several years later I’m yet to see another copy of Famitsu in the wild. And there’s still precious little information about it in western media. 

Even now, Famitsu is something that’s either overlooked, misunderstood, or fetishized in western gaming media. One of the few articles with any firsthand access is a 2015 report from Polygon written by Matt Leone.

He explains that the magazine’s relationship with the broader video game industry is one of co-dependence, rather than critical appraisal. As the article states:  

“Japanese game media, not only Famitsu but the others as well, really work closely with publishers and developers," says Weekly Famitsu magazine Editor-in-Chief Katsuhiko Hayashi. "We team up with them and decide when to put out stories and things like that. So it's kind of like a partnership — we have the same destiny as the game publishers, and we work as a team to make the game industry better. That's how we view ourselves." 

It’s a theme that was previously explored in a 2009 issue of Wired magazine. The short version is that American game reviewers base their scores on how “they themselves felt about the game.” Whereas Japanese magazines and reviewers, “were more open-minded and considered what other players would think.” This approach helps to smooth out the bumps when it comes to Japanese games coverage.

According to the Wired piece by Chris Kohler, there’s a term for this collaborative approach, chōchin kiji; a "lantern article" that sheds (positive) light on a favoured subject.

Booking a ticket to Narita 

Maybe it’s just me, but that all feels like the tip of the iceberg. Famitsu has been published for almost 40 years and has covered the rise of video games from a uniquely Japanese perspective through feast and famine.

But as far as online content and genuine insights, there’s really not much out there. Sure, we know about the 4-person review score panel (stolen by EGM), the magazine mascot (Necky), and the covers that alternate between Necky and a random model.

Based on a handful of online articles we know that Famitsu’s editorial policy is one of collaborative work with gaming companies. Something that appears to have become more pronounced as the print media has struggled to remain relevant in a digital world.

But that still feels like surface level insights. And I can’t see it changing anytime soon.

I’m half tempted to book myself a flight to Narita and try to speak with the people involved. But I’m not sure how one would even go about organising that. So if anyone has any tips or connections feel free to drop me a line…