Saturday, May 29, 2010

Korean Week: Old (and new) Korean gaming mags part 4

I mentioned I would post it today, but here is the final part of my look back on old magazines. After the first steps where made, mags started to mushroom all over the place, with many of them being very shortlived. I only really have experience with three of them, but here's a quick look at all the other mags I know about.

This might be the least exciting and least surprising post so far for this week, so I have in store a little something for tomorrow, too :)


GamTong, another very old one I missed, first published in 1992, first (and maybe only) biweekly mag in Korea


Je-3 Sedae Game (Third Generation Game), first published 11/1993. The cover shows a drawing of Kim Kaphwan. Yes, the real Kim Kaphwan.


Super Game, actually GamTong under a new name in 1994, disappeared soon after


Game Magazine, first published 1994, I think this was one of the most successful mags after Game World

PC Game Magazine, I think it started in 1995


PC Game, first published 5/1995


PC Champ, first published 8/1995, basically the PC only brother of Game Champ, but both mags were continued even after the other one turned mostly into a PC mag itself. Contained some translated articles from PC Gamer.


Game Pia, first published 11/1995, in 1998, they started using models in cosplay for the cover instead of game artwork (I think that practice only lasted a year or so, though)


Computer Game, first published 1996


Game Times, first published 1/1996, I think this only lasted two issues


Game Line, first published 10/1996, was very popular


A translation of Computer Gaming World was also available for a while


Game Leader, first published 11/1997, very shortlived


PC Player. Of all the 90's mags, this one survived the longest. The last issue came out in 2006


Game Life, first published 10/1998, lasted only two months


Game Mania, first published 12/1998


PC Power Zine, PC Champ was renamed to this with issue no. 1/1999


V Champ, don't know exactly when this was first published, but it gotta be 1998-ish


Game i, first published 1/2000


PC G@m, first published 2/2000


Playstation, first published in 2000 as the first single format mag, for a console that still wasn't officially released in Korea no less. This was soon merged into Gamerz, but was revived in 2002 as the official magazine. I think the last issue came out around 2007 or so...


Gamerz first published in 2000, this is basically the only print mag that can be bought in stores today. The only other active mag I know is Game Journal, and that's just a thin business publication for arcade owners. Gamerz however is a sheer monstrosity of about 600 pages per month.


Game Chosun, published 2001-2002, there's a games Webzine by the same name that still exists today, but I don't know if it' related.


GOLA (Gaming Online Asia), first published 2/2003

That's it. There are some more recent mags I'm missing, (I remember one OnPlayer I've seen an early 2009 issue of), but I'm not going to search for any more...

2 comments:

  1. I love games magazines! They often provide an indicator of the state of the games market in a country at a particular time.

    How many pages do these mags possess on average? The UK seems to be the only market that has monthly magazines that have more than 100 pages nowadays.

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  2. From the ones I know well (Gamepia, PC Champ, PC Power Zine) the range was between 300 and 500 pages. It wasn't unusual to have more than a hundred pages of advertisement, though (for some reason the ads were and are always compressed at the beginning part).

    As I wrote, Gamerz nowadays has much more. The one issue I have at home has the editorial part starting at page 50 (but that number's a mere placeholder, there are far less pages of ads before that) and ends with 672, which makes 622 pages of pure content. At the same time it has astonishingly few ads (less than 20). I guess you can only make a mag like that if you got the monopoly.

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