(Editor’s note: This article was originally published in the July 2007 issue of GameCola, back when GameCola was published in a monthly online magazine format.)
GameCola Headquarters
Tabernacle, NJ 08088
July 1, 2007
Dear Readers,
Welcome, my little Fanzens, to the one-and-only videogame Web site, EVER, in the history of the Internet. I’m coming to YOU, live, from the post-apocademic, “real” world, which has surprisingly few Scantron examinations and surprisingly plenty of in-house massage therapists. I’m done college and have an actual job now, and life, as I know it, has changed forever.
But, that’s neither here nor there. What’s at least here, but possibly not there, is videogames! Ah, videogames. As it turns out, here in the “real” world, nobody plays videogames. Nobody—and these are people close to my own age—I talk to at work plays videogames these days. A few people remember playing Tetris in college, and some have vague recollections of Bubble Bobble. Nobody plays them now, though. They don’t own PlayStations or Xboxes. They’ve never touched a DS. They don’t even know what a Wii is.
But that, as noted, is here, but not, precisely, there. What is, in all honestly, there, though whether or not it’s here is still a bit shaky, are the following facts I’ve recently learned:
- The new (est, at least) Ataris CD is an abomination.
- Being paid to edit is awesome.
- Apple cider doughnuts from South Jersey farm markets are the best possible food.
- Being beaten by snotting, preening middle schoolers at Magic: the Gathering tournaments is irritating.
As you can tell, however, we are now missing the essential ingredient of “here.” Ideally, we’d be able to have both “here,” and “there,” and, in fact, I think I’ve found just the thing that is both here and there, and that’s this: the new issue of GameCola!
This month, we’ve got “Captain Eric” trying on a new thumb—a Psychic Thumb. For this issue, and possibly for this issue only, Eric’s gonna be previewing recently announced games, rather than reviewing ones that have already come out, and saying whether they’re worth your time or not, despite that neither he nor anybody else has actually played them yet.
In addition, we’ve got our very first photo-narrative videogame review: Now with fewer words about the actual game than ever! Also, in testgame.exe: Making the Adventure, you, the Reader, no longer have to keep starting Elizabeth’s work of art from the beginning—she’s now including a save file in the download that let’s you start where the new content starts.
And, of course, we have all your favorites: Digital Championship Wrestling, which features a grudge match that pits the heroes of Gauntlet against one another; Top of the Heap, which takes a look at “Sports Games in Which You Kill People”; Inside the Guide, which gets its Carmen Sandiego on; and …of the Month, which asks the burning question of who the greatest …of the Month guest host of all time is. All this and more, with “more” being “everything else that’s listed in the Table of Contents.”
That’s all I’ve got. Enjoy GameCola!
Love,
Paul Franzen
editor in chief
e-mail: pfranzen@gamecola.net
