GameFan Volume 7 Issue 05 (May 1999)

By this point, Dave Halverson had left to start Gamers' Republic. Metropolis Media owned the GameFan magazine and through its mismanagement, several employees would follow Dave to the next magazine. We now have Eric Mylonas as the editorial director, but he doesn't leave a good impression when (in his Editorial) he refers to all these people that write in to the mag, calling themselves hard-core gamers, but he considers them "hard-core-lite" ONLY because they don't buy imports. Sorry, but I can play games for countless hours, spend all my extra money on games when I can, wait outside an arcade for 40 mins for it to open, but I'm not considered "hardcore" until I pay $75 for a Japanese version of a game that I can't understand the language and won't work naturally on my console anyway. Sorry, but I think this idea is ridiculous because the man that created this magazine also created an import videogame store first, and was reported to be overly positive about most games because they needed to move inventory at the store. I dont believe a gamer can be called hardcore by the amount of money he spends. It should be based on the amount of time you spend playing games, or researching and watching other games or the gaming industry as a whole. Moving on.

Highlights from this issue: (Volume 7 Issue 05) We have a special, Games That Get No Respect, a 2-page look at several editors' choices. If you are limited to the mags only available on Retromags, then you will see a big jump in the layout designs. A lot of the "boxy" or "cubed" designs from before have changed. You dont really have screenshots coving the borders of the page like before -- it much more modern, but you often have a single image or artwork for a game in the background. Like for Croc 2 or G-Police. We have reviews on Gex 3, the Next Tetris, Shadow Madness, and the Dungeons & Dragons Collection (sat) that eventually made its way to the PS3 and X360. we got reviews for Dreamcast as well, House of the Dead 2, Power Stone, and Psychic Force 2012. They cover Outcast on PC, plus reviews for Roller Coster Tycoon and Aliens vs Predator. The anime section has 6 pages, which makes sense, since it was becoming bigger as the 2000s approached. And there's 4 pages of arcade machines. A decent size issue considering Christmas is far away, and E3 isn't here yet.