( Since we are relaunching the site, we are periodically identifying stories we published during our “dark periond” from 2012 through 2016. This was re-posted from October 11, 2014)

February 12th, 1985. That’s the day Nintendo won everything.

It was the day the 2nd to last issue of Electronic Games magazine was published in the USA.  Electronic Games had been, since 1981, the defacto standard for video game news and information for the Golden Age of video games.    The creators of Electronic Games Magazine, Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel, and Joyce Worley pioneered video game journalism.  In the pages of their magazine, the  rise and fall of the first great video game age was chronicled and recorded.

However, by the end of 1984, a huge shift was occurring in the gaming world.   Video game companies were going of of business at an astonishing rate, and the zeitgeist at the time held that consumers   were all moving to low-cost computers like the Commdore 64 and Atari 800XL.   Because of this, the publisher of Electronic Games Magazine decided that the  services of Katz, Kunkel and Worley were no longer needed.   Even though the team were a trusted group of journalists who had built hard-won credibility with the gaming public, they were shown the door.  Their expertise in video games was no longer necessary.

The last few issues of Electronic games published in 1985 (February, March and April) were used to burn-off a backlog of stories written by the original creators, while prepping the magazine to shift full-time to computers with new publication named “Computer Entertainment.”   Even though magazine started as a dedicated publication for video games, the March 1985 issue had very little coverage  of gaming consoles.   Besides a handful of “clearing the plate” style  reviews for inconsequential end of life video games like Congo Bongo (Colecovision), Beamrider (5200), and Frogger II: Threedeep (2600),   there was only a single news item about video games named “Nintendo’s Final Solution.”

Besides having an amazingly insensitive and, as history would show, totally ironic title, the story was about the imminent release of the Nintendo “AVS” (Advanced Video Entertainment System..an early name for the NES).  The new editors of Electronic Games felt that this might be a “miscalculation” because the “video game market in America has virtually disappeared.”    Obviously, using all available information, this is the only story they could have written about the “AVS”.   They had recently fired the only people involved with the magazine that knew anything about video games.    Would Katz, Kunkel and Worley have treated the story in a different way?  The trio always heralded the arrival of new console with a sense of awe and wonder that matched their gaming enthusiast readership.   Would they have dug into the story, found out about the Famicom in Japan and followed-up the story with an interview and in-depth report about the console?    We may never know, but we also know they were never given a chance.

Personally, I don’t recall reading this news item about Nintendo.   I had my subscription to Electronic Games at the time, and I was still reading every issue, but maybe not as thoroughly as I had in the past.  I too was seduced by the power home computers, and I believed they were the key to my future.  Even though I had grown up with arcade and console video games,   by 1985, I spent nearly all my time playing games and writing programs in BASIC on my Atari 800.     I probably skipped the news section of Electronic Games that issue to jump directly the Bill Kunkel’s in-depth report on computer software piracy (the last in-depth story of his every published in Electronic Games) or the Strategy Session coverage of computer action RPG Gateway To Apshai.

There was one more issue of “Electronic Games,” published in March of 1985 (the April issue), but it was effectively the first issue of “Computer Entertainment”.    The last vestiges of the original Electronic Games had been wiped away. The focus of the magazine at that historic moment was the home computer revolution.    Any story about console video games was just an unfortunate distraction to their goal of re-launching a magazine for a new era.

And that was that.  That little story about Nintendo became the last of 1000’s of stories Electronic Games Magazine published about video games. It just so happened to also be a report about the video game system that would one day take over the world.  The release of “AVS” , arguably the most important event in the history of video games,  was brushed-off as inconsequential also-ran, not even worth investigating further.  The pioneering voices of the video game revolution had been silenced.  It would be many years before another mainstream publication dedicated to video games would arrive on the news stands in the USA     In the absence of an independent magazine dedicated to video games, in-depth and investigative journalism was replaced by magazines published directly by console manufacturers.  All the information was controlled.   The enthusiasts had no voice.  The  war was over before it even started.

-Steve Fulton