A lot of really cool stuff on this page, if you haven't checked it out yet. I added a bunch of stuff to it yesterday.
http://www.digitpress.com/archives/zmeston/
UPDATED Zach Meston Secret Documents Vault
A lot of really cool stuff on this page, if you haven't checked it out yet. I added a bunch of stuff to it yesterday.
http://www.digitpress.com/archives/zmeston/
Damn, zmeston, you've got some cool stuff.
Nintendo's ultra-sensitive policies regarding Shadowrun had me cracking up throughout the entire article ("please remove 'Babe' or other stereotypical derogatory names"). It's hilarious to think that this comapny's console is now home to numerous violent FPS games, Eternal Darkness, and four resident evil titles.
"Please change 'Carve him up for spare parts in the morning.' to something less graphic."Because a zombie eating your FACE isn't graphic at all.
Makes me wonder if they censored anything out of their final fantasy games...
Also, Zach, just wanted to let you know...
you now know ONE person who remembers game buyer.
Unfortunately, the imagine prez. is WAY off base on why THAT magazine failed. First there was Game Players, and then that became ULTRA Game Players (for god knows what reason), and they took away the one thing that made Gameplayers interesting; the humorous reviews and rants, mixed with the serious critical looks at games. It had made for an entertaining read, and was why I subscribed to Gameplayers in the first place.
After enormous reader uproar, the humor was returned, and ULTRA Game Players became a good magazine again. Throughout all of this, I maintained my subscription. Then, UGP got cancelled, and became Game Buyer.
I received a free subscription to this, to cover the rest of my UGP term. I read two issues, found that the writing was substandard, the humor was gone, and the reviewers were extremely ignorant and uninformed, called Imagine, and made them change my subscription to NextGen instead.
In my opinion, the constant CHANGE is what put that mag to death. Sure, Gameplayers occasionally rubbed people the wrong way, but instead of being cowed by that, imagine media's corporate bigwigs should have looked at the POSITIVE flow of reader mail, all concentrated on the entertainment factor. They were too worried about the minority complaints, and not focused enough on what the majority of consumers wanted. That's why they failed.
It is hilarious, isn't it? All it took was one best-selling Genesis game for Nintendo to abandon a decade-long policy of "family-friendly" self-censorship and wallow in the blood and gore along with the rest of the industry.Originally Posted by WiseSalesman
I don't know that Game Buyer was so much the victim of constant change as Imagine's incredible mismanagement during that period of time. I mean, this was a company that bungled NextGen, once the most exciting and respected magazine in the U.S. market.
My favorite document is the one that off-handedly mentions the never-seen sequel to General Chaos, one of my fave-rave Genesis titles. Now that's a proto I would kill to see.
-- Z.
Haven't read that one yet, but I loved General Chaos (in two player anyway...I thought the single player mode was lacking), so I'll have to check it out.
If a prototype of Shadowrun ever pops up on ebay or something I am so going to own it, just on the off chance that it might have some of that stuff in it. I don't care if I have to sell my first born to The Scissorman.
Didn't you get yelled at by some Hudson rep later on for not giving Super Bomberman 2 a high enough score to satisfy them?
Yep, I sure did. In retrospect, my score was probably low -- I'm forever second-guessing my reviews, especially the ones I wrote as a young punk -- but still. Heck, I didn't even complain that my grand prize for winning the SB2 contest was a refurbished Sony Color Watchman, not a new one. Heh.
-- Z.
Just looked at the bomberman tourney files, and recognized Jeff "Lucky" Lundrigan of Gameplayers. That guy was smug as all hell, I'm glad you kicked his ass.
Heh! Victor Ireland referred to him as "Louie," for his passing resemblance to Danny DeVito in appearance and height. I haven't seen his byline in a while, so I'm not sure if he's still in the biz or not, although I suspect he is; game journos generally don't leave the industry unless they're exiled from it, a la Semrad. It's like the geek Mafia.
I admit to never having a genuine conversation with Louie/Lucky; all my encounters were brief handshakes or head-nods. (Keep in mind I wasn't exactly ingratiating myself with Imagine or its employees during much of Lucky's run, of course; my nasty, stupid website triggered more than one threat of legal action and ass-whooping from Imagine higher-ups.)
-- Z.
I last saw Jeff Lundrigan's name on a gamers.com article a few months ago. I remember him from Game Players, and he was indeed one smug bastard.Heh! Victor Ireland referred to him as "Louie," for his passing resemblance to Danny DeVito in appearance and height. I haven't seen his byline in a while, so I'm not sure if he's still in the biz or not, although I suspect he is; game journos generally don't leave the industry unless they're exiled from it, a la Semrad. It's like the geek Mafia.
-- Z.
Speaking of bastards, I think I have that GameFan with the "little jap bastards" piece in it. I also have the issue after that, in which Dave Halverson apologized for the article (even going so far as to print a statement in Japanese) and then proceeded to vaguely blame the incident on some saboteur doubtlessly in the pay of EGM or GamePro.
If I remember correctly, zmeston, your own site later reported that the Gamefan article was just a gag inserted by some pothead layout artist, who was never fired, but instead moved up into the corporate section of the mag. You never did tell us his name, however.
I too remember Game Buyer. For the few issues that it lasted, it was rather bland and suffered from the same problem that Play has now: almost every game scored a three out of five or higher.
Hey, I wonder if Sushi X is in that picture of Steve Harris and the EGM staff . . .
There ya go. "Every time I try to get out, they pull me back IN!" Seriously, though, it's a great gig, and no wonder me and Lucky and Andy Eddy and a few dozen other old-timers refuse to make way for fresh meat.
To tell the truth, I don't remember the guy's name, although I'm sure it would come back to me if I glanced at an old GameFan masthead.
I'll never quite understand why Halverson didn't just admit to the blunder, and fire or reprimand the guy, instead of coming up with the ludicrous "sabotage" story. But from what I've been told, Halverson isn't an easily understood individual.
I remember my first E3 as a Working Designs employee, during which Victor dragged Halverson over to me and introduced us (we'd never before met in person). I spent about ten seconds waiting for him to punch me in the face. If he'd made even the slightest jerking motion, I would've leapt backwards about a mile. To his credit, he shook my hand instead of choking me to death.
As it was told to me, Sushi-X was Harris in the magazine's early days, then became an all-purpose pseudonym that all of the magazine's writers used at one point or another. Or maybe that was Quartermann. Ah, screw it. I'm just glad to see OPM's "Clish McLaver" keeping the pseudonym tradition alive.
-- Z.
Ok I gotta ask. Why was Ed Semrad 'exiled' from the vg journalism industry?
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Just wanted to say thanks to zmeston for releasing those docs, I'd been gagging to read them, especially the Shadowrun stuff, great stuff. Cheers.
(and thanks DP for hosting/posting them up)
This is really fascinating stuff...thanks much to dp and zmeston for bringing all this to light. The Shadowrun and Gamefan pieces are classics, of course, and I found the Bubsy 3D bug report to be particularly interesting, for whatever reason. I was kinda hoping to see something like "major bug: game is completely terrible in every way; please revise" on the list, but I guess they didn't catch that one.
Almost forgot!
This was updated over the weekend as well. Zach sent along a pretty cool Tomb Raider "proposal" document from 1996. Give it a look.
http://www.digitpress.com/archives/zmeston
404 not found
I concur....404 not found.
Darn, the link doesn't work. Get it back up so I can look at it!
In the meantime, I'll go back to wondering why there are two Zach Mestons posting these days.
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