Wednesday 12 December 2007

Overload? No thanks mate…


One of the original titles for the magazine before we settled on Maximum. We were extremely lucky to be told beforehand that Overload was the title of a certain… you know, men-who-like-men top shelf rag. Must have been one of the few that Richard did not subscribe too but there you go! Boom. Da Daa! I glanced through a few issues I kept hold of and began to ponder the the reasons for its demise.
1 First off, too many fighting games. What were we thinking? I should have been punched hard in the face for throwing endless beat 'em ups and Neo Geo nonsense across every issue. Sure, it had its place but we went overboard even by Maximum standards. VF, Tekken, Soul Edge, Darkstalkers, KoF, more Tekken, X-Men plus a little more Tekken to wash it all down.
2 Too much import and arcade coverage. Nowadays I just laugh for a LONG TIME when I see the pages we wasted on King's Field. PC Games should also have been canned. Hardly any of our audience even owned a PC back then let alone care for the games on them.
3 Thirty pages with a purple background? Should have stuck with the Overload title methinks…
Zeppelin should have sucked godammit!
But they didn't which makes not being there so much more painful. Then we had to endure smug pensioners leaving the O2 arena gushing praise whilst keeping the false teeth in. Damn their eyes! World Tour now Page!

4 comments:

Damien McFerran said...

It's funny, some of the things you mention - import coverage, loads of fighters, etc - are the things that made me love the magazine so much!

Gary Harrod said...

Yes but we are in the minority and therefore the magazine became Mimumum rather than the Maximum that Emap had hoped for…

Richard said...

Some good points there but I think it was the Saturn and arcade covers that doomed us. Gaming was suddenly becoming cool, but we did nothing (Resident Evil aside) to tap into the PlayStation generation.

Damien McFerran said...

Screw the Playstation generation! :P