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GamePro Magazine Timeline: GamePro Turns 20!

• By Kevin Gifford
• May 06, 2009 13:00 PM PST
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Through 20 years and thousands of games, GamePro has always been there for you. Join us on a teary-eyed journey through the history of America's final word on games.

The only constant in this industry is that it's always changing. First the games came on clunky cartridges, then on shiny plastic discs, and now they're streaming through your internet connection. Sony and Microsoft, known mainly for the Walkman and Word in 1989, have both become billion-dollar video game kingpins. It is no longer considered cool to play Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! with a Power Glove. Twenty years after it launched, GamePro is one of the few constants the industry can rely on.

Hardly a moment in gaming, from the rise of Mario and Master Chief to Trip Hawkins trying to convince us that buying a $699 3DO system was a good idea, has gone unreported within its pages. But the magazine itself has also undergone massive changes over its two decades, going from a garage operation run by a game executive and his sister-and-law to one of the most prestigious publications in the entire industry. And as the magazine business finds itself slowly, inexorably dragged online, new evolutions are happening more quickly than ever before. How about we take a moment to reflect on the past 248 issues before plunging forward again?

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1989

Patrick Ferrell, an executive at Nintendo thirdparty publisher Tengen (you know, the one that made NES games with black cartridges), leaves his job to publish the first issue of GamePro out of his garage in Redwood City, CA. His sister-in-law LeeAnne McDermott serves as the first editor-inchief. The premiere issue was mainly distributed through Toys 'R' Us stores; Ferrell sold the mag to IDG Communications a few months later for its big bimonthly newsstand launch. PC World writer Wes Nihei was the first staffer they hired; he wound up sticking around for the next decade and a half. "Looking back, we can be generous and say that first issue was raw," he says. "A slab of maguro tuna before it's sliced into sashimi."

1990

It's a tumultuous time for video games-the 8-bit NES is still king (this was back when gamers cared about things like "bits"), but NEC's TurboGrafx-16 and the white-hot Sega Genesis are threatening to break the market open completely. GamePro, already selling over 100,000 copies a month, responds by ballooning in size, covering everything from the Atari 7800 to the latest in arcade machines, and generally kicking ass.

It's 1990, and in one of those fateful moments that can define a magazine for the rest of its existence, GamePro introduces a happy-face-oriented rating scale for its reviews. In fact, the "smiley scale" remains so iconic that ill-informed forum trolls often think GamePro still uses it. PROTIP: we dropped smiley scores over five years ago!

1991

The SNES finally gets released in America in September, but the hottest Japanese games just aren't getting translated into English fast enough! Responding to reader demand, GamePro launches new mags devoted to 16-bit consoles and the suddenly very crowded handheld market. Console gaming was all about Japan at this point, and the GP of this era are filled with coverage of games months out of U.S. release and ads for 1-900 game-news hotlines and Japanese importers, some of which had their advertising revoked after ripping off readers.

1992

Street Fighter II, Street Fighter II, and more Street Fighter II-that sums up 1992 in GP-land. Capcom's arcade sensation dominates the letters and strategy- guide sections of every issue, with hopeful readers crying for info on the million-selling SNES port and the GamePros responding with codes to unlock boss characters and other extras. That, and Sega's Sonic the Hedgehog, were the two console wunderkinds in what was otherwise a disappointing year, with the Sega CD add-on proving to be a useless space-age gadget (yeah, we gave Sewer Shark a perfect score, we're sorry) and our constant rumormongering over Sony and Nintendo's SNES CD-ROM attachment amounting to jack squat...even though it very nearly happened.

1993

Everyone and their mother is getting into the game industry, from 3DO and SNK to Commodore, whose CD32 console barely hits the marketplace before the company goes bankrupt. GamePro, ballooning to over 250 pages per issue to cover them all, becomes thicker than most rural phone books. SFII strategy guides give way to Mortal Kombat blood codes and endless Nintendo- versus-Sega flame wars in the letters section this year-ahh, a simpler time indeed! The very first edition of LamePro debuts in the April '93 issue, featuring such megahit parodies as Where in Time Is Elvis Presley? and Fungus Mc- Gee's All-Star Bench Football. It got a lot funnier in future installments.

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