It had to happen sooner or later, but the news of EGM‘s demise was still pretty crushing, to be honest. I’ve been reading that magazine since Sonic the Hedgehog was a fresh face on the cover; not quite the beginning, but close enough. Even when it went through a stint of having alternating Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat covers exclusively, it was still the best thing on the rack. It certainly served to show me, for the first time perhaps, that a game magazine could be more interesting than the (admittedly awesome at the time) console-exclusive gee-whizzery of Nintendo Power or the braindead zombie cartoon ramblings of Gamepro.
You can download a PDF of issue #1 here
There have been better magazines over the years—I was big on Gamefan‘s enthusiasm, for instance—but I don’t think any gaming publication has enjoyed the consistency of EGM. I was always fond of their personalities and individual but cohesive styles of writing, and thought the majority of their major features were pretty impressive undertakings. On the videogame side of things, EGM probably had a bigger hand in getting me interested in writing for a publication than anything else. While some of the competition was perfectly happy to remain in permanent stasis, EGM grew up with its readership and the words reflected that, even if I didn’t agree with them all the time.
On the Internet side of things, I tended to consider 1up a pretty reliable source when it came to opinions on new games. But most of all, their podcasts got me interested in creating something similar with my friends, which has been a lot of fun. But beyond all of that, I think the saddest thing is that EGM isn’t going to get to leave the industry with a final hurrah. Rather, they’re forced to let out one last bubbling fart with a cover story sporting a hideous closeup image from the latest licensed Wolverine game. You can practically hear the party poppers exploding from here, can’t you?
Jeff Green’s blog post on the 1up firings sums it up kind of depressingly and certainly doesn’t make me want to visit UGO’s version of whatever the site will become. Instead, I’ll just pour some booze out for another great mag gone to the graveyard.
subhumanzoids 
I’ll almost definitely continue to read it, but I’ll also have more interest in what the fired folks do.
I’m sure I’ll check on the site and how it develops, but yeah, I’ll definitely be watching the ex-1upers more.
Honestly, given Ziff’s chronic financial problems and the way the economy’s been lately, I’m surprised they lasted this long.I think once I got past the Gamepro/Nintendo Power stage, I was always more of a Game Informer fan than EGM. I did spend a lot of time in the 1up blogging community once upon a time, but my enthusiasm for mainstream games wained to the point where I couldn’t really relate to all my friends there who were going gaga over Halo 3, COD4, Mario Galaxy, etc. Also, me and Jeremy Perish don’t really get along, lol.All my old 1up friends are looking at this as a trajedy but by now with the industry being what it is I’m not too sad.
I’ll take pretty much anything over Game Informer, honestly. Its only real success is that it’s basically free and sits on top of everyone’s toilet.
Haha, to be honest I haven’t read Game Informer regularly since middle school myself, but since the advent of internet I rarely read any game magazine these days.Lately, I have found the UK mag Edge to be fairly interesting. The writing quality is generally better the average internet stuff, and they are pretty critical – often giving 7’s and 8’s to the big blockbusters everyone else is giving 9’s and 10’s for fear of getting blacklisted by the game companies and alienating rabid fanboys. They can sometimes ere the side on merely being pompous, sometimes they seem to give some games low scores simply for the sake of it, while still giving high scores to some of the same overrated blockbusters everyone else does. Still, I’d say Edge at least offers a unique voice in a homogonous sea of gaming magazines and offers something that you can’t quite get on Gamespot/IGN/1up/Metacritic.
I’ve flipped through Edge a few times, and I liked what I saw. I don’t know why I never picked it up, maybe it has one of those high Euro price tags on it.