I found the following review in a box of old magazines at Sandmeyer's Bookstore, on Printer's Row, Chicago. It was the annual Printer's Row Street Sale, which draws the last vestiges of Midwestern publishing together for a summer hurrah. Conveniently, it’s right next to a Bar Louie, which makes for an outstanding day of drinking outside.

I was digging through a box of old science fiction novels, the kind about Venusian princesses kidnapped by black hole monsters--written from a perspective clearly and only the author’s--when I spotted the box of magazines stashed away in the back. They seemed to be the usual fare: Time, Newsweek, vintage Playboys, that sort of thing. But some blocky, neon letters caught my eye; it was an old issue of EGM.

Electronic Gaming Monthly was, and is again, a gaming news magazine. I became familiar with it through its spinoff publication EGM2, later Expert Gamer, which was more focused on strategies and codes. I would pour over both these magazines, absorbing video game culture by reading the rantings of a bunch of people who loved video games and had somehow figured out how to get paid to geek out about them. The earnest, slapdash feeling of the mag was typical of 90s magazine culture. Or the 90s in general.

I preferred EGM2. I only got a couple of games a year, or rented them, so it made more sense to wring all I could out of them. EGM was designed to get me excited for games I might never play. Even so, EGM pointed me to Metal Gear Solid, which, as it did for many people, made me realize what a reflexive, story-heavy game could be.

Finding this magazine made me nostalgic for the pre-internet days, when being a fan of something meant really working for your information: I would scour the backs of the magazine, where they would have price listings for forthcoming games advertised with unfinished box art. Some of those games never materialized, but it gave me hope for Robotech 64, listed for $55 next to imported Sailor Moon toys. When I read a letter to the editor, sometimes it was as close as I could get to having a friend as passionate as me about whatever thrilled me at that moment. That was fine: it was close enough.

I dug the magazine out of the pile, surprised to find it stored in an oversized Mylar bag, like my dad’s old issues of Fangoria. I felt the weight of it. Information was heavy in the 90s. The July sun beat the South Loop at high noon, and light glared off the cover, especially the gold embossed in Link's Hylian shield. Ocarina of Time was about to come out, heralded with the usual overjoyed headlines of fan publications. I made sure no one was watching me, pulled apart the bag, and opened the magazine, curious to find out what people thought Zelda 64 was going to be.

The article sang the praises of the series, quoted Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto commenting on the joy of exportation, outlined the technical aspects of the game as it ran on the Super Mario 64 engine, and warned of challenging boss battles. It spoke a little about the mythology of the Zelda universe, addressing narrative in games in a sidebar.

I was about to return the magazine to its plastic bag when something in the sidebar caught my eye. It covered the evolution of narrative in games and mentioned that in the back of that issue was an article written by EGM’s resident apocryphal historian Sushi X about a little-known spinoff of the Wolfenstein franchise, an experimental game about stealth, subterfuge, WWI submarine combat, and the modern novel.

I thought about simply tearing out the review and retrospective on Virginia Wolfenstein, but decided I’d feel better about buying the magazine. If nothing else, there was some cool Ocarina of Time art. Plus, if I’m going to reprint an article without permission, the least I could do is buy the original publication.