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Columns > Retro > #2: Electronic Games Magazine
"I suppose there are points in a parents life when they realize the diminishing returns of trying to mold their children into their own image I think, for my mom, this might been one of those moments. "  Most Friday nights in the very early 80's, my twin brother and I would accompany my mom on the weekly shopping trip to Lucky's supermarket. Even though this event had an air of the ordinary, we were always excited because it would be the first chance of the weekend to blow the weekly $3 allowance that was burning holes in our Velcro" ripper wallets. The usual haul of contraband that would help get us through the weekend of broadcast TV and lamenting about the seeming impossibility of getting an Atari 2600 video game system for Christmas included: Mad Magazine, $.07 cent Shasta Cola, Marathon bars, dominoes, plastic army men, various Hostess snack cakes and Topps Star Wars trading cards. On one particular Friday night in November of 1981, after we had helped our mom select stuff like individually wrapped Kraft Cheese balls, Peanut Butter Captain Crunch, and Fresca, my brother and I snuck to the magazine rack to try the MAD fold-in and see if the current issue was worth buying. I'm pretty sure though, on that particular night, we never found out. Before our eyes could reach the cover of MAD, we both fixated on the following:  I quickly grabbed the magazine started paging through it. "Electronic Games", just the name held so much promise. "Games". There is nary a better word in the English language (when you are 11 anyway). "Electronic": it seemed so space-aged, so advanced. Sure, we had a few games that were "electronic". Mattel Electronics handheld Football , and Basketball, plus a baseball board-game we had received for our 10th birthday. Other than those things, and a few rudimentary "pinball" games we had made out of spare rubber-bands and diodes from the garage, our actual ownership of "electronics" had been quite minimal, which made the title all-the-more alluring. My brother pushed over my shoulder so he could look as well. I turned past the first page ads and table of contents, and fixed my eyes on these words in the editorial: Did you know that you're a member of the world's fastest-growing hobby group? It's true. Although the first Pong machine made its debut only a decade ago, today more than five million Americans regularly play electronic games. The introduction of space-age electronic amusements amounts to nothing less than an entertainment revolution. I had no idea. I'd never really felt "part" of anything before. Well, OK, soccer and baseball teams maybe, but they were short-lived: as soon as the season was over, so was the camaraderie. This seemed completely different. A "member" of a "revolution"? I had never thought it was possible. The arrival of "Electronic Games" signaled the beginning of something significant, and we could feel it just by seeing in on the magazine rack. Electronic Games Magazines truly was revolutionary. It was the first of its kind: a monthly publication dedicated to video games and the video game phenomena. The Magazine started as a series of "Arcade Alley" columns in Video Magazine in the 1980 written by Bill Kunkel and Arnie Katz and championed by Bruce Apar, their editor. Katz and Kunkel had been friends since the early 70's, turning their passion for pro wrestling into a radio show, and one of the first Pro Wrestling magazines. When that failed to catch on, they wanted to try to make a living at something fun. The seed of that idea blossomed into "Arcade Alley", the success of which proved to Reese Publications (the publisher of Video) that a video game magazine might have a chance for success. Kunkel and Katz pitched the idea, and before the end of 1981, they had their first issue published. By 1982, Electronic Games became THE authority on video games, and along with it, writers Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel, and Katz's girlfriend Joyce Worley, became household names to video game fans everywhere. The basic design of Electronic Games (editorial, news, letters, previews, reviews, strategy) was copied by every major video game publication that followed, and the structure can still be seen today in most video game and computer game magazines. The names Katz, Kunkel and Worley would be branded into our heads in the coming years, but at this historic moment, in the magazine section, next to the party favors and across from the vegetable sprayer, all I cared about was the fact that I seemed to be holding the future in my very hands. I kept turning pages, thirsting for more and more. I knew that at any given moment, my mom could call us to leave the store, and we'd have to leave the magazine behind. There was no way such a practical woman, who had often eaten ketchup and salt soup as a little girl in great depression, would let us waste most of our allowance on a magazine about video games, just the thought of asking her seemed silly. However, when she finally called us to the check-out line, we arrived with "Electronic Games" in-hand. Any thoughts of sneaking it through unseen were lost when she deftly asked me to show her what was clenched in the hand hidden behind my back. Her initial reaction to the magazine was mild horror, mixed with disgust. (the same reaction I had received in1978 when I suggested I buy 10 packs of $.10 "Star Wars" Blue Series 1 trading cards for my brother for our birthday). Surprisingly though, she gave -in quite easily this time, and I've always wondered why. Maybe she saw and understood how much it meant to us, but I really don't think so. To this day, she still doesn't understand the appeal of video games or computers. I think it was something much more personal. I suppose there are points in a parents life when they realize the diminishing returns of trying to mold their children into their own image I think, for my mom, this might been one of those moments. My brother and I split the cost of the $2.95 magazine and took it home, where we traded turns reading/looking over the other guy's shoulder for most of the weekend. That Friday night, we missed the new episodes of "The Incredible Hulk" and "Dukes Of Hazzard". TV just could not hold a candle to our new discovery. To be honest, TV itself would never quite hold the same fascination again. Well, not static, boring, non-interactive broadcast channels anyway. We drank-in the full-color pages, the reviews, and previews, the articles, and the advertisements. Every page held a treasure-trove of wonder and interest. Did all this stuff really exist? We not were complete virgins when it came to video games, but who knew the information about them could fill an entire magazine? It was a whole world we had been missing, and neither of us wanted to waste another second standing by it's edge: we wanted to jump in feet first and never look back. Before finding "Electronic Games" we were both interested in anything that had to do with video games, however, there just was not that much information to be had. Furthermore, if information was available, it was either negative, misleading, or patently incorrect. We were constantly told by the TV news that video games were "just a fad" and they would soon disappear. The parents in our city, Manhattan Beach, CA had recently risen-up to fight the opening of a themed arcade/restaurant named "Magic Pizza" because of the "bad element" video games were sure to attract. Even our parents, who were otherwise cool in so many ways, had a tough time understanding why we wanted an Atari 2600 and what it meant to us. If we listened to others, video games were flash-in-pan bad habit sure to rot our brains as well as our teeth. In our hearts we knew they were fun and cool, however, we had no solid proof except for our own personal feelings, until now. "Electronic Games" magazine became that proof. Mom had given-in and let us buy it, and our dad started to act genuinely interested in our fascination after seeing it. The magazine was printed vindication for a couple of 11-year-olds whose infatuation started 1977 with "Combat" in the Fed-Mart TV department, and had gradually built every year since. We followed "Electronic Games" for many years, pouring over every issue with seminal sections like "Q&A", "Arcade Alley", "Portable Playtime", "Joystick Jury", and "The Game Doctor" that fueled our love for the medium of video games. We read through in-depth reports on software piracy, The Atari 7800, and the move from home consoles to home computers. We stayed with the magazine up until it's final publication, March 12, 1985. As we moved onto computers ourselves, we were happy to read game reviews and features by the writers and editors of "Electronic Games" in the pages of Atari computer-specific magazines such as Antic and Analog. Still though, they seemed like sailors adrift with no port to call home. When "Electronic Games" finally came back to life in on August 25, 1992 (after Katz, Kunkel and Worley spent a few years working for "Video Games And Computer Entertainment" magazine) it seemed too little too late. The earnest spirit, wide-eyed-awe, and critical eye of the early video game writers didn't mesh with the 16-bit (and soon 32 and 64-bit video game age). It seemed like they were returning to a party they had planned, but were no longer welcome to. The prevailing young readership wanted huge graphics, orgasmic previews, and tons of cheats. The basic structure of magazines still mirrored "Electronic Games" but frustratingly, there seemed to be little room for the kind of in-depth journalism that started it all. Still though, "Electronic Games" left an undeniable mark Copies of the original volumes are some of the most bid-upon items on eBay. Katz Kunkel and Worley regularly attend the CGE classic gaming convention each summer. Bill Kunkel even continues his "Kunkel Report" semi-regularly at on of the best classic gaming sites on the internet, Digital Press. Even though the profile of the magazine would diminish over the years, the importance of "Electronic Games" to us in the winter of 1981 cannot be understated. The irony here, (and of course there must be since we Gen-Xers are supposedly full of it) is that while we had been exposed extensively to video games and electronic entertainment in the past, it took a printed magazine, a technology roughly + millennium old, to make it all seem real. Within days of finding it for the first time, we would be hinting about that an Atari 2600 would be the perfect Christmas gift, and this time, the targeted ears seemed genuinely receptive. The prospects of seeing one under the Christmas tree no longer seemed all that impossible after all.
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