Dear Readers,
Once again, it is that time of the year. School’s back in session, it’s getting colder outside (or at least I assume as much; the only times I go outside are when I need to collect sunlight in Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hands), and, apparently, football season is underway. Who knew? But none of that is what I’m here to discuss with you today. If you’ve been following GameCola since at least this past winter, you know we like to start off the year with something special, something we creatively refer to as “The January Issue”, or the “Jan Ish”, for short. In past year’s we’ve enjoyed much success in being able to bulk up the special issues with oodles of special material, with our staff members bumping up their word count, submitting brand new feature columns, and working with me to put together the “GameCola Interactive Video Entertainment Awards”. That’s not all we do, though — we also rely on you fans to send us letters, photographs, artwork, poetry, and especially guest reviews and top ten lists.
Currently, GameCola has nine members on its staff. Of those nine, three were given spots after submitting guest reviews to GC, while the others got on by means I’d rather not discuss here. If you’ve ever wanted to be a part of the GameCola staff, now’s the time to do it. If you send me a guest review for the Jan Ish, and it doesn’t make me wear out my keyboard while fixing typos and grammar atrocities, chances are you’ll be able to join the staff if you want. Or if you don’t wanna join up with us and write a review every month, you can just write one for this specific issue, just to help us out because you love us. Or, hey, I’m not picky — if you feel like writing about your top ten favorite games (or least favorite, don’t forget you have that option available to you, too), we’d be more than happy to publish that. Especially now, when we need them not only for the Jan Ish, but for the issues before it as well. And we definitely wouldn’t mind if you’d send us any of the typical submissions — letters, photographs, artwork, poetry — or even any of the less typical, such as animations, video files, short reviews, snippets from AIM conversations, or anything else (really, anything else AT ALL) that you can come up with.
Look, guys. Last January we were able to feature ten reviews, and while that record still stands as the “Largest Number of Reviews Ever in One Single Solitary Issue of GameCola”, I’d like to better that this year. We have tons more people reading now than we did way back then, and I’m sure there’s got to be a few of you out there who have had thoughts of reviewing video games in the past. This is your chance. Don’t be afraid to just try it out — if you end up hating it, ah well, at least now you know not to try it again. But who knows? Maybe you’ll end up loving it. Maybe you’ll end up trying to make it as a video game journalist. Or maybe you’ll at least enjoy it enough to join up with us for a bit. It’s like my Uncle Steve always says — you never know unless you try.
Paul Franzen
Editor-in-Chief
e-mail: pfranzen@gamecola.net
