Ty Schalter (VICE, FiveThirtyEight) and Aidan Moher (WIRED, Vulture) review what rocked and what sucked about the classic video game magazines that inspired them to become professional journalists, authors, and critics—and what they can tell us about today's digital media and games.
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Ty Schalter (VICE, FiveThirtyEight) and Aidan Moher (WIRED, Vulture) review what rocked and what sucked about the classic video game magazines that inspired them to become professional journalists, authors, and critics—and what they can tell us about today's digital media and games.
ANDY MCNAMARA ON MY PERFECT CONSOLE: https://shows.acast.com/my-perfect-console/episodes/andy-macnamara-former-editor-in-chief-game-informer
MATT MILLER ANNOUNCING GI'S RETURN: https://gameinformer.com/letter-from-the-editor/2025/03/25/game-informer-is-back
We've been grinding XP and saving up MP for this one: Our first issue of Game Informer-- though in 1997, the mag is years from its dominant Aughties peak, and decades from its shocking 2024 closure and its thrilling 2025 revival.
Ty comes clean about his lack of history with the magazine, Aidan discusses having written for it; they both talk about how the PS1 library was chock full of brilliant, groundbreaking, unconventional, and nevertheless first-party (or AA/AAA-level funded) experiments of the kind that are so hard to get greenlit these days.
And then...Carnage Heart.
It was Ty's bizarre obsession, Aidan had never heard of it, and it was (and is) one of the most unusual, tough-to-talk-about games of all time.
How did the GI staff handle it? Listen to find out! ----- Sources include the Internet Archive, the Video Game History Foundation, Retromags.com, our original research, and our personal magazine collections. The FunFactor theme, and all other original songs, are composed and performed by Millennium Falck. Check out his work at millenniumfalck.com!
FunFactor
Ty Schalter (VICE, FiveThirtyEight) and Aidan Moher (WIRED, Vulture) review what rocked and what sucked about the classic video game magazines that inspired them to become professional journalists, authors, and critics—and what they can tell us about today's digital media and games.
