Video Game Journalism - History of Print-based Video Game Journalism

History of Print-based Video Game Journalism

The first magazine to cover the arcade game industry which is still in continuous publication is the subscription only, trade periodical Play Meter magazine, which began publication in 1974 and covered the entire coin-operated entertainment industry, including the video game sector. Consumer-oriented video game journalism began during the golden age of arcade video games, soon after the success of 1978 hit Space Invaders, leading to hundreds of favourable articles and stories about the emerging video game medium being aired on television and printed in newspapers and magazines. In North America, the first regular consumer-oriented column about video games, “Arcade Alley” in Video magazine, began in 1978 and was penned by the late Bill Kunkel along with Arnie Katz and Joyce Worley. Meanwhile in Japan, video games began receiving coverage in personal computer and manga magazines from the late 1970s. Video game designer Yuji Horii was a writer for one such video games column in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine during the early 1980s.

The first consumer-oriented print magazine dedicated solely to video gaming was Computer and Video Games, which premiered in the U.K. in November 1981. This was two weeks ahead of the U.S. launch of the next oldest video gaming publication, Electronic Games magazine, founded by “Arcade Alley” writers Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz. The oldest video game publication still in continuous circulation (as of 2012) is Electronic Gaming Monthly, which was founded in 1989. The first newspaper column dedicated solely to video games was The Vid Kid by Rawson Stovall and syndicated nationally by Universal Press Syndicate. The weekly column ran from 1982 to 1992.

Meanwhile in Japan, the first magazines entirely dedicated to video games began appearing from 1982, beginning with ASCII's LOGiN, followed by several SoftBank publications and Kadokawa Shoten's Comptiq. The first magazine dedicated to console games, or a specific video game console, was Tokuma Shoten's Family Computer Magazine, which began in 1985 and was focused on Nintendo's Family Computer (also known as Famicom or Nintendo Entertainment System). This magazine later spawned famous imitators such as Famitsu in 1986 and Nintendo Power in 1988.