Videogame Fanzines. A history. Part 1.

Fanzine: a magazine, usually produced by amateurs, for fans of a particular performer, group, or form of entertainment.

I had my name featured in Australia’s Hyper magazine all the way back in 1993. Issue #2, to be specific.

I had just started high school, owned a Sega Mega Drive and was publishing a little videogame fanzine called Neotech. When I saw a new Australian games magazine on newsstands I decided to write in and demand some coverage of my publishing ventures. Whoever was editor back in those days was nice enough to include an image, a short blurb and describe me as a sociopath.

Thing is, if you were into videogames and writing back in those days then a zine made sense. There was no Internet as we know it, no proper email, certainly no Tumblrs, blogs, Facebook or Twitter. Videogame magazines came out once a month and were the bible as far as videogame news and information was concerned. If you had a different opinion, or had something to say about Street Fighter 2, or your local arcade, or whatever, you pretty much had to type it up, photocopy it and distribute it yourself. Also, dinosaurs roamed the earth.

Almost 30 years later I’m an old man. More importantly, social media has given everyone a voice, setting up a blog takes all of two-minutes, sharing information is as easy as clicking a button and the Internet has replaced print as the primary sources of video game news and reviews. The photocopied video game fanzine is a relic in this day and age — an archaic nod to the last century. It’s also strangely resilient.

Here’s one I wrote earlier

Mathew Kumar has written for publications like Edge, Gamasutra and Eurogamer, he’s also the writer and publisher behind Exp, a zine that showcases “experiential articles” about videogames. Released in small quantities on an ad-hoc basis, the magazine offers “a different and defiantly print-orientated style of video game writing.”

Wes Ehrlichman founded The Gamer’s Quarter in 2005 to “find a new, more personal voice to videogames journalism, [one that] let the players tell stories of what games meant to them.” The magazine (which ran from 2005 to 2007) was intended to “give coverage to less mainstream games, and generally just talk about games in ways that might provide a unique insight.”

On a more local tangent, Super Potato was founded in Melbourne back in 2009 and featured contributions from various Hyper writers. The magazine was spearheaded by THQ’s former Promo Manager, Drew Taylor. As he recalls, “By being an old-school zine, Super Potato could break rules. Nobody was paying the ad bills, so we could write whatever we wanted, do whatever we wanted! It gave all of us a chance to try something different. Each person submitted three pages, laid out in whatever style they wanted, with whatever content they wanted. It was gaming editorial anarchy!”

Aside from photocopied pages, the one thing all three publications share is a desire to write about videogames from a more personal perspective. While mainstream magazines (and websites) focus on a news, previews and reviews format, the indies are free to write about whatever takes their fancy. As videogames have become more complex, lifelike and morally ambiguous over the years, that’s given writers plenty of material to work with.

Beyond the valley of the Frag Dolls

Ironically, these small publications with their niche content can sometimes reach an audience that more traditional newsstands publications can’t. Raina Lee started her zine, 1-Up, because she felt that, “Games writing lacked seriousness, depth, and critical thinking, and especially a feminist or female perspective.” Her zine attracted an audience that didn’t know or care about Gears of War or Halo or more traditional videogames.

As she explained, “Non-gamers are not interested in reading traditional games journalism because it’s not about a relatable experience — it’s aimed at the hardcore game fan, full of specs, reviews, and references to other games. It’s a very insular kind of writing … I am really flattered when non-gaming people, especially girls, pick up 1-Up, because I realize that there is a way to write to non-gamers, a way to relate games to the world outside.”

Drew has his own take. “It might sound crazy now, but just six years ago the idea that videogames could be written about from an artistic and interpretive viewpoint was simply unheard of … Super Potato was spawned out of a conversation about being dissatisfied with 90% of the gaming media out there … Very little of it feels personal, or collectible.”

Print me, hold me, love me

While the evolving nature of videogames, the internet and narcissism has given people plenty of scope to write Sonic the Hedgehog fan fiction and Lara Croft literary essays, it doesn’t explain the continued existence of zines. After all, it’s much easier and more effective to start a blog or Tumblr than to faff about with glues and photocopies. But as anyone old enough to remember the ‘Golden Age’ of videogame magazines will tell you — reading something online just isn’t the same.

As Wes from Gamer’s Quarters recalls, “When I was a kid I liked getting a new magazine as much as I liked getting a new game. I would read my new issues of GameFan and EGM cover to cover and then turn the magazine over and start reading again. I have a basement full of these magazines that really meant something to me.”

Or to put it another way, most people today could store the sum total of all their music, videogames, books and movies on single laptop. And while that might be space efficient, it doesn’t make for a very warm apartment. It’s much the same with zines. While they could be presented as PDFs or online blogs (and most do offer some online presence), having an actual tangible product in your hands is a different experience.

As Drew laments, “People still have books and printed material from a hundred, two hundred years ago. Physical objects remain. They have a level of immutability. The internet, on the other hand, really suffers from being unstable. The digital medium is fluid; what you see today may not be there two years from now, or even tomorrow. Video formats change, images get moved on servers, page links get broken.”

Living… in a material world

While small print videogame zines aren’t in any danger of toppling the established hierarchy, they’re surprisingly resilient. They’re also mutating and changing, buddying up with the online world. Many zines now offer some sort of PDF preview you can browse before handing over your cash and buying a physical copy. Certain zines are also giving away PDF prints that users can download, print off, fold and staple into little booklets.

Having said that, there’s nothing quite like an individually numbered, limited edition magazine to call your own. In a world where information and media is increasingly disposable, there’s something about the tactile, personal nature of zines that encourages their survival, irrespective of much faster / more convenient the internet may be.

As Arnie Katz, the Godfather of videogame fandom once said, “Fandom is a parade. You can watch as it passes, turn aside and do something else, or join. And when you join it, you’re part of a long, connected line of fans that stretches as far as the eye can see, both ahead and behind.” As long as offices have (after hours) photocopy machines and people have opinions, that legacy will continue.

An (additional) brief history of zines

Videogame zines were at their peak in the early 90s and that has a lot to do with a guy called Arnie Katz and a long defunct publication called Video Games & Computer Entertainment. An industry veteran, Arnie introduced a monthly column showcasing zines from around the world. This all coincided with a huge drop in computer prices, the rise of simple desktop publishing programs and a generation of videogame fans hitting high school and wanting to write about their experiences.

One of the magazines that arose from this scene is Digital Press. Founded by Joe Santulli, Digital Press would not only go on to become a retail store and publish a number of books, they helped kick of the retro revival. Long before anyone else thought to cover classic games, they were writing about Atari 2600 games and long forgotten developers.

Interestingly, the fanzine scene turned rotten pretty quickly. What began as a fun hobby started turning serious when game companies began sending promos to certain magazines. Jealously and accusations of ‘bought’ review scores saw all kinds of skirmishes break out, often carried over into the editorial of the actual magazines.

A new generation of fanzines emerged around the time of the Playstation and Saturn launch in the mid-90s, but as the Internet became ‘a thing’ these were abandoned in favour of monstrosities like Geocities.

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