Game Players Magazine

Game Players was a video game magazine that had its best years in the mid-1990s. Starting out as a seemingly-regular game mag (that was actually the very first one not devoted to only one system and produced in-house by a video game company). There was very little to separate it from what came later as far as video game magazines went, but in the mid-90s, it shifted into a more comedic, irreverent style with Chris Slate taking over as it's Editor. Under Slate, the entire magazine started getting more deliberately whacky, with the game reviewers gaining personality (and faux-personality, with Bill Donohue as an evil dungeon-master and Mike Salmon as a sarcastic ladies-man).

The letters page started with several running gags, with Donohue and the fans building upon each others' jokes, creating new fictional characters and personas, speaking of a "Cleansing" (and later, "The Rinsing"), and promises of world-takeover and violent reprisals. It was just that kind of a mag—Mostly nonsensical, and all it good fun (and vulgar taste). While Game Pro Magazine was far bigger, and EGM and Diehard Game Fan got all the "legit" industry cred, Game Players was a wild and whacky book with running gags, a letters page that was 80% joke-topics (leaving the rest for actual video games), and stands out even today.

It was not to last. 1996 saw the magazine turning into Ultra Game Players, at which point they tried to drop all the humour and changed a great deal of the staff. Their review system, originally based off of Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, Innovation & Replay Value, now exploded into a huge eighteen category scoring system. This did not go over well, and by 1998, it had changed into another format as Game Buyer, but four issues later, the entire thing fell and the magazine was shut down.

It's editors and writers would move on elsewhere—Chris Slate now edits Nintendo Power, Bill Donohue still writes Jaded Gamer columns (they debuted in the Ultra era), and many other contributors still deal in the video game industry.


 * Estrogen Brigade Bait: Reviewer Mike Salmon, especially with his 90s-style long hair and facial hair.
 * Fan Service: Played straight in many ads inside their magazines (an ad for Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer in one issue was almost beyond belief in this regard), but they weren't above parodying the hell out of it in one article where, in response to a complaint about this trope they took a picture of a woman in a skimpy outfit holding a BFG and did a faux-serious run down of how practical the outfit really was (with tongue firmly in cheek).
 * Fanservice Cover: The final issue of Ultra Game Players (June 1998) featured a swimsuit-clad woman on the cover, as one of the features inside was a long-requested article about the hottest video game babes. Other fanservice-y covers include any cover with Lara Croft, and the May 1998 cover, which featured Turok and a bikini babe hanging off him whose face was modeled after Pamela Anderson.
 * Killer App: Frequent hype was common, despite a relatively-impartial viewpoint. They all but blew their wad with Battle Arena Toshinden, calling it literally the "Best Brawler EVER!" on their cover after playing during some Entertainment Expo. Though they were spot-on sometimes (Tomb Raider, Mario64), things like that just look more hilarious in retrospect.
 * I Was Young and Needed the Money: Their response to a female fan's complaint about Chun-Li's Shower Scene in Street Fighter II the Animated Movie.
 * The Nineties: Their decade of operation. They're also a major signpost of that era, going crazy over the most bloody and violent games, getting into the start-up of the Anime movement, and using that decade's lack of censorship to make tons of dick and fart jokes.
 * Rule of Funny: Ruled on their letters page, which eventually focused more on joke-y letters about "Moogoo the Mangler" and "The Cleansing" of the impure and weak, than it did towards actual video game coverage.
 * Eventually, though, they did notice this was getting out of hand and politely informed fans that yes, most of that crap was funny, but they really needed to cover games sooner or later. Soon after, most of the more absurd writing atrophied away.
 * Series Hiatus: The main Game Players title went on one from October 1991 to June 1993.
 * Take That: They were not above knocking crappy systems, and all but called-out various pieces of garbage for their lameness. Rise of the Robots was a big victim, as was the Virtual Boy console and the 32X add-on to the Sega Genesis. Nintendo got called out a great deal for their Vaporware that they were known for in the 1990s.
 * Their lowest possible rating (below even "Shoot Me") was named after a game called Cosmic Race. They had good reason.
 * Gamer-X was also a thinly-veiled parody of Electronic Gaming Monthly's Sushi-X.