August 19th 1993 saw the launch of Edge Magazine. An adult look at the future of games and I loved it from day one. 23 years later and they’ve just launched the 300th edition…and I still have all of them. I almost ditched the collection when I moved house over 10 years ago but I’m glad I held on to them. I scanned the covers a few years ago and every year update it with the latest covers. All 300 Edge Magazine covers can be found in this Flickr album.
Issue 300’s cover pays homage to issue 1 but is fairly dull compared to some of their better covers. Edge over the years focussed on design and substance unlike so many of their competitors. Arrogant, controversial but always pretty bang on from my perspective.
What’s caused most debate is the game reviews. Edge score out of 10 and over the years there have been precious few 10’s awarded.
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Edge have also awarded some retrospective 10’s over the years as well.
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One of the repeated debates has been on publishing a score. How many people don’t buy a game because it got a 7 but it was still a great game? I’ll hold my hand up and say a 6 or 7 has put me off a game or three despite reading the review and thinking thats sounds great. I’ve also played and really enjoyed lots of games that got a 6 or 7 proving the text is more important than the score. Despite Edge talking about removing the scores they still publish them while other gaming sites now no longer put a score on a game and the reviews are better for it.
Despite online being the place to get up to date info and paper magazines always being behind, Edge interviews, features and their unique perspective on the industry still make for a must read. Hopefully they can maintain an audience going forward and they are around for a few more years…I need my monthly Edge fix.
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