Player One Podcast

On July 26, 2009, Andy Baran, former EGM/EGM2/Expert Gamer editor passed away from pancreatic cancer. He was 35 years old. This episode of the podcast is filled with stories about working with and knowing Andy from CJ, Phil and Greg, as well as voicemails from other past colleagues. Thanks again to all who helped contribute to this episode: Terry Minnich, Ken Williams, Dan Hsu, Kraig Kujawa, Dan Leahy, Mark Hain, Jennifer Whitesides Gavigan, Crispin Boyer, Chris Baker, David Siller, Jeanne Kim Trais, James Mielke, Joe Funk, Mike Vallas and Tracy Baran.

Running time: 1:44:35

Andy Baran’s 1UP blog
Bitmob: RIP EGM’s Andy Baran
VGEvo: R.I.P. Andy Baran of EGM
The Early Days of EGM Part 1
The Early Days of EGM Part 2
Kotaku: EGM Writer Passes Away
Bitmob: In Memory of Andy Baran
“Double Dragon” by The Minibosses

Direct download: 08_03_09-Episode145.mp3

Chris Johnston Electronic Gaming Monthly, Episodes andy baran, EGM, episode, podcast

[Note: This is a continuation of the story that starts in this post. You may want to read that before going on.]

I don’t know if you’ve ever had to go into your boss and say, “hi, I’m overworked, can I get a little help here?” but when you’re 17 years old and the guy at the top is a lot older than you and already doesn’t like you, it can be a harrowing experience. I’d already been on Ed’s shit list. In one issue of EGM2 I’d used black and white photos of a little Sega PDA/toy device because it was the only assets of it available at the time. I’d written the article, dropped in the pictures and everything was cool–the issue was signed off and went to the printers. But when it came back, I got yelled at for using black-and-white anything in the magazine–even though he (Ed) had supposedly signed-off on those very same pages just a week or two earlier. Surely this was something he saw and could’ve brought up then? Getting yelled at by Ed was the worst part of the EGM job. He had this way of making you feel like you’d committed an unbelievable atrocity for which there was no forgiveness. Something inhuman, immoral, and that your own mother would disown you for. Ask anyone who’s worked for him and you’ll hear similar tales.

But I thought that this meeting would go differently. It had to. After all, Ed had a son/stepson in high school himself and would surely understand. And when you think about it, I was getting paid hourly at that point and didn’t have Sendai’s health insurance benefits or anything, so–what was the harm? Less hours means they wouldn’t have to pay me as much. It’s win-win…right? So I went in, asked if I could have a moment of his time, and began talking. I explained that I was 17, and that since I was going to school full-time, maybe I could cut down on some of the amount of work I’d been assigned (3 sections, 2 magazines, plus special features, deadlines every 2 weeks). By that time I had also been recruited to help Todd Mowatt with a lot of his work as well, so I felt I had a justifiable reason to beg for leniency. If I could offload one section or not need to be Mowatt’s monkeyboy then everything would be fine. Just a little mercy. Please?

Read more…

Chris Johnston Electronic Gaming Monthly EGM, Electronic Gaming Monthly

[Note: This too is a repost of an entry I did for my personal blog some years ago. One of the things I enjoyed working on the most during the time I was at EGM was the April Fools jokes. I grew up reading EGM and fondly remember things like the Simon Belmont in TMNT2: The Arcade Game for NES or Sheng Long in Street Fighter II. I'm happy to say that I was behind such memorable April Foolin's as the warehouse of Sega Neptunes, Sonic & Tails in Super Smash Bros. Melee and the Dead or Alive Beach Volleyball nude trick. But anyway, this blog entry is not about those -- it's about the one April Fool's joke that wasn't. Enjoy.]

Originally posted June 28, 2004 — I must confess that I don’t know all the details of the story I’m about to tell you about here. I wasn’t working at EGM at the time this happened. But I did catch wind of the aftermath. So I’ll tell you what I know here, and if someone else knows the rest, they can e-mail me and I’ll gladly add it (anonymously, if they’d like). Anyway, on with it:

If you’ve read EGM for any length of time you know that every April issue brings with it an April Fool’s joke. That’s just how it is. EGM…April issue…there’s a joke. But not in April 1994.

And I can almost understand it. When you’re working on a magazine, after a while the deadlines kind of mush together. Sometimes you’re usually not even cognizant of what month it is (what, it’s December already?). You’re especially not thinking of something as small and insignificant as April Fool’s Day. I mean, it’s not even a postal holiday. And in 1994 when the staff was working on the April issue, everyone forgot what month it was and that there was supposed to be a joke in there. Even the editor in chief, Ed Semrad — the guy who had been there for years and you would think would remember ‘cuz it’s tradition — forgot.

I’d like to imagine the staff was completely oblivious to it until they opened snail mail letters with people guessing what the April Fool’s joke was. “You almost had me there — those Babalities in Mortal Kombat II have got to be fake,” “Handheld Genesis? What kind of an idiot do you take me for!” or even “I believe that ad in your magazine is a joke. No company would ever call their game ‘Plok.’”

But what I do know is that upon the discovery of this royal f-up, Ed called everyone into a big meeting where he proceeded to yell at the staff for a long time. Tears were shed (by him, if I remember the story correctly), people were blamed, fingers…pointed. Evil eyes…given. It was a bad scene. But what’s done was done.

Now…the best joke would’ve been to admit that there wasn’t one; that readers had spent time looking for a joke that wasn’t there. Now that would’ve been funny. Instead, it was damage control time. A decoy was acquired — a typo on the April cover. While EGM of that vintage was often a hotbed of typos and grammatical errors on the inside, this time one had broken free and somehow worked its way onto the magazine’s front. Thank god for that li’l cock-up, eh? Thus, “STREEETS OF RAGE 3″ (with an extra “E,” ‘case you missed it) became the “joke.” In the next issue they passed it off as such, proudly pointing out the typo as if it was deliberate. A brilliant gag, huh?

If you have the May 2004 issue of EGM handy (#178, MGS3 cover), flip to page 57 and you’ll see the first public acknowledgment that this “joke” was actually just a mistake and a close-up picture of the typo. But that piece doesn’t go into too much detail. It’s such a funny story that it was one I’d tell any new staff member come April Foolin’ time.

TO BE CONTINUED….

—–

There’s more talk of EGM April Fools jokes at this Wikipedia page (btw anyone remember what the 1996 joke was? Did they forget that year too? It’s not listed here).

And when I was a guest on EGM Live (the 3/26/07 episode) we talked about April Fools jokes a bit.

Chris Johnston Electronic Gaming Monthly april fools, EGM, Electronic Gaming Monthly

[NOTE: This is a repost of a blog entry from my old personal blog.]

Originally posted June 26, 2004 — Now’s a good time to take a moment and talk about one of EGM’s mainstay characters — Sushi-X. While other people can probably tell this story better than I can from the beginning, I’ll take a stab at explaining some of what I know about this mysteriously pseudonymed character.

The way I figure it (and I’m guessing here, since he appeared in EGM before my time), the Sushi-X persona was inspired by Famitsu’s Taco-X, a reviewer often dressed as a ninja. Since EGM’s Review Crew style is a direct rip-off from Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu’s review style, this hypothesis of mine probably isn’t too far from the truth. The Sushi-X that most EGM fans know and love was the one that was a master of fighting games, hated Game Boy titles just because he could, and was often the “swing reviewer” who would pan something the other guys liked. The guy who played Sushi-X for the longest amount of time was Ken Williams. (Ken now helps run video game site vgevo.com with Trickman Terry.) Ken had been Sushi-X for a good long time before I started in 1994. And his personality was exactly that of the Sushi-X in the magazine — he loved fighting games and had a passionate disdain for anything Game Boy or that involved turn-based role-playing. When a new fighting game would come into the office he’d spend hours on it — whether it was an upright machine or something that could be plugged into the office’s Super Gun. While I was working there, Super Street Fighter II Turbo arrived and the guy went nuts on it, practicing combos, refining his technique — it was insane to watch. I never considered myself very good at fighting games, but I did get schooled by Ken a couple times. And I mean…rocked. Some of his techniques and skills would show up in the magazine as strategy guides or in special fighting game guides that EGM would publish from time to time. EGM did print a picture of Ken at one time semi-hinting that he was Sushi-X. At one of the early ’90s Consumer Electronics Shows, the Sendai booth had a Street Fighter machine set up where people could challenge a staff member. I forget which issue it was, but there is a picture of that scene in the magazine. Of course, no one figured that the white guy with the EGM jacket playing against them was Sushi. Most thought Sushi was a Japanese guy, which had never been the case.

Read more…

Chris Johnston Electronic Gaming Monthly EGM, Electronic Gaming Monthly, Sushi-x

As a reader, I’m a James Mielke fan. When the guy is covering a game or a developer that he’s interested in, he generally does a fantastic job at it. He’s truly passionate about certain games, and it comes through wonderfully in his writing. I’ll even admit that he’s far better at covering the games he likes than I probably ever was, or ever will be. I also thought that the final issues of EGM – the ones under his direction – were fabulous. He managed to inject that kind of passion and enthusiasm throughout the entire magazine, even though he liked to pat himself on the back a bit too much in his editorials.

Even on a personal level, I like the guy. Whenever I would take trips out to our San Francisco office he was always friendly and helpful, fun to be around, and just an all-around good guy.

That’s probably why, when he chose to fellate himself for about 11,000 words on his weblog, it didn’t really bother me for the most part. I rolled my eyes at a lot of it, because despite some real accomplishments during his career, it’s hard not to see the whole thing as one massive ego stroke where his apparent greatness is more than a little exaggerated.

And that leads me to my third relationship with James Mielke – as a co-worker. As a co-worker, I had a real problem with the Milkman. And normally, I’d keep that kind of feeling to myself. But two paragraphs in his recent blog post misrepresented the then-crew of EGM so badly – a group of people I love and respect – that I feel like I need to defend them (and myself) publicly.

Read more…

Greg Sewart Electronic Gaming Monthly EGM, Electronic Gaming Monthly, james mielke

[NOTE: This is a repost of an entry I originally wrote for my personal blog, which is horribly outdated and is not even worth going to anymore (oh god, the layout...it's like I was blogging in 1998 and using Lynx to browse the Internets). I'm going to move those entries over here piece-by-piece and at some point close down the other site. I'll probably post an entry from there every day or two. And this is the first of those! Enjoy!]

This is the first issue of EGM that I worked on (uncredited).

Originally posted June 24, 2004 — It was ten years ago this month that I was first hired at Sendai Publishing Group to work on Electronic Gaming Monthly.

When I was originally hired at Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) I had just turned 17, and it was the summer of 1994, between my junior and senior years of high school. I’d been doing a fanzine called Paradox for about three-four years before that and had sent copies of it to EGM in the hopes that one day, they’d give me a job. During the ‘zine days, I’d talked on and off with Sendai’s then-grand pooba Steve Harris about the magazine and the game industry — though really, I was a wide-eyed kid with a passion for games and mediocre writing ability that wanted a job. So when he offered me one, I was ecstatic. All that blood, sweat, and tears doing a ‘zine with some friends at my own expense had finally paid off. My starting “Associate Editor” salary was $16,000/year — not bad for a high-schooler still living with his parents.

I remember my first day, and my first assignment, vividly. At the time, EGM2 had just started up and both magazines had a single staff. Because it was the last day of a deadline, I was told that my first duty would be to help out with the Quartermann column for the premiere issue of EGM2. I thought, “great. I get to pow-wow with Q-Mann, talk rumors; this will be great.” But as a longtime EGM fan I was ill-prepared for what I found out a few seconds later: THERE WAS NO QUARTERMANN (dun dun dunnnnn!) There was in the beginning; one person wrote Q-Mann (and apparently got an awful lot of his information from the staff of a certain west coast game store that would later start its own magazine) every month for a couple years and that was that. But the “old” Q-Mann didn’t have time to do it anymore, so it was up to various members of the staff to pick up the reigns. And because I was the newbie, it was my turn to do it. I was given a sheet of paper with some minor (read: crap) rumors on it and was told to write Gaming Gossip as my first assignment. To me this whole thing came as a shocking revelation. Here it was, my first day working at the North Pole and I find out that there is no Santa Claus–or rather, that I am Santa Claus. Read more…

Chris Johnston Electronic Gaming Monthly EGM

No game talk this week. Instead, we dedicate the whole episode to talking about EGM’s closure and the 1UP layoffs in the wake of Hearst/UGO’s purchase of 1UP.com. In addition to regular hosts Chris “CJ” Johnston (ex-EGM News Editor) and Phil Theobald (ex-EGM editor and former GameNow Reviews Editor), we welcome a couple more ex-Ziff guests to the program: Kevin Gifford (ex-1UP editor and gaming magazine expert/Magweasel), Greg Sewart (ex-EGM Previews and Reviews Editor), Greg Ford (EGM Managing Editor), and Andrew “Skip” Pfister (ex-EGMer, GMRer and 1UP.com Reviews Editor/Podcast Producer).

Thanks for listening! You can leave us a voicemail comment by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don’t forget to join our forums if you haven’t already!

Running time: 1:54:27

This week’s links:
Andrew “Skip” Pfister on Twitter
Andrew “Skip” Pfister’s page on 1UP.com
Greg Ford’s page on 1UP.com
RebelFM
Eat-Sleep-Game.com (RebelFM folks)
Talking Orange (ex-1UP Show folks)
Magweasel
GSW: Opinion: Print Game Media – [Still] Not Dead, [Maybe] Getting Better
GSW: Game Mag Weaseling
Greg Sewart’s Wordpress blog
Chris “CJ” Johnston’s Twitter
Phil Theobald’s page on 1UP.com
Joystiq: Future Publishing experiences increase in gaming mag sales
PaidContent.org – Ziff Davis Gets Out Of The Game
NeoGAF: Listing of 1UP/EGM folks’ blogs and Twitters

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Chris Johnston Episodes 1UP, 1UP.com, EGM, Electronic Gaming Monthly, ford, Gifford, Pfister, sewart, Skip, UGO, ZD, Ziff-Davis