The GameFan history thread

[EvilMog]

I havent been to the old GF Tavern in AGES! Everytime I went there nobody was ever speaking. So I gave up on it. Shit, I remember going to GF chat the 1st few days it went live. I believe it was during an E3. I miss the old GF crew. I used to chat on that thing all the time. I remember picking on ECM alot. I think I was even a moderator at one point. Hmmm I havent thought about most of those guys in a while. So sad. I remember talking to Dangohead a lot. I remember getting kicked for stupid shit like calling shidoshi "shit"doshi. Anyone here around the tavern from the beginning?

[mollipen]

I remember getting kicked for stupid shit like calling shidoshi "shit"doshi.

God, I remember that. *heh*

I never go to the chatroom, because I hear everybody there hates me.

[Klonoa]

Chief Hambleton, Reubus, Knightmare were all regulars at the Tavern. First time for me was right before FF7 came out.

[mollipen]

Is there any website where you can read old GameFan mags (in text form or scans of the pages). How about just the reviews/viewpoints ?

If I had two copies of everything, I'd tear apart one set and scan in every issue. It'd be nice to have a digital archive.

[EvilMog]

God, I remember that. *heh*

I never go to the chatroom, because I hear everybody there hates me.

Nobody hates you. Well, not that I would know since I dont got there anymore.

How long ago was that shit anyways? 8yrs?

[AstroBlue]

That's a great website shidoshi, I'm always impressed with what you can do with web publishing. Was it hard to setup MediaWiki? I've had an idea for ages that would use it, but have always been scared about the setup.

[Klonoa]

I wonder if you Taverners remember the tetrinet battles.

Those were pretty fun.

[mollipen]

That's a great website shidoshi, I'm always impressed with what you can do with web publishing. Was it hard to setup MediaWiki? I've had an idea for ages that would use it, but have always been scared about the setup.

Not that hard, actually. For me, the hardest part was getting used to how it works, and understanding how to do things. The documentation I found was, to me, that kind where it seemed to be written by somebody who already expects you to know how to use the software.

Once you get the hang of it, though, it's pretty easy.

[Dolemite]

I talked to Knightmare a few times when he was working at Lobotomy. Cool guy.

[djpubba]

The "writers" would all stand around us at the computer and dictate their reviews as we typed them directly into the layout.

What?

There's gotta be a story behind this...

Hmmm, story... well nobody there could type worth a darn and for a while the only computers to type on were mine and George's (I had a Mac IIx, my own computer which I brought in from home, and they bought George a Mac IIci). So most articles would be hand written and handed to us. The Viewpoint section was consistently dictated right into the layout for many issues. Everyone would gather around me or George and just brain dump. Several of the aliases were all Halverson -- Skid, Mr. Goo, E. Storm, sometimes Sgt. Gamer -- probably one or two more I'm forgetting... more than a few times the different Viewpoints on the same game would all be written by him.

I guess another interesting story would be about how the GameClub GameFan catalogs got done. This was before I was in the same physical location as everyone else (pre-magazine). Halverson would write out the copy in pencil on pieces of paper. He'd cut screen shots out of Japanese magazines and paper clip them to 3 x 5 cards with the names of the games written on them. When it was all ready, I'd meet with him to get the pile, which I took home to turn into a catalog. That's how all the DieHard GameClub ads in EGM got done, too. I'd do 'em up then return with printouts for approval.

Speaking of screen shots... we started off with some really horrible composite video capture hardware. The quality of shots in issue 1 was piss-poor, but I knew from my experience hacking the Genesis and Neo Geo into arcade cabinets with RGB monitors that if I could find a screen capture card with RGB input we'd be able to grab near pixel-perfect shots and trounce EGM and the other mag's shot quality. So I dug through the ads in the back of a bunch of Mac magazines and found what I was looking for -- the Computer Friends Colorsnap 32+, which advertised RGB inputs. So I told Dave that it'd be so worthwhile to plunk down the extra dough to buy this card. He was skeptical but agreed with some reservation. When the card arrived, it came with a cable that just had BNC connectors, so I cannibalized the cable I had made for the arcade monitor, mated the two, grabbed some shots and showed him the difference. He was upset that I hadn't showed this to him sooner.

After I left GameFan and started Dimension Publishing with Talko and Brody, Halverson sued Dimension when we came out with a competing publication (PS-X, later PSExtreme) and part of the suit was that we had stolen RGB screen capture technology owned by GameFan -- not any of their hardware -- no, we stole the very concept of grabbing screen shots in RGB.