US · 1989–2009
The flagship US multiplatform gaming magazine of the 1990s, known for its newsstand presence, colour reviews grid, and the famous April Fools hoaxes that fooled an entire generation of players.
Electronic Gaming Monthly launched in 1989 under Sendai Publications founder Steve Harris and quickly became the dominant voice in American games journalism. Its review format — four reviewers scoring each game independently, printed as a grid — became an industry standard and was widely emulated. EGM reached a peak circulation of over 1.5 million copies during the mid-1990s console wars, positioning itself as a broad-tent publication that covered Nintendo, Sega, and later Sony hardware with roughly equal enthusiasm. The magazine is also remembered for engineering some of gaming's most successful pranks: the infamous 1992 April Fools issue that claimed players could unlock Sheng Long in Street Fighter II was believed so widely that Capcom eventually created a similar character (Gouken) as a tribute to the hoax. EGM was acquired by Ziff Davis in 1995, sold to EGM Media in 2009, then folded shortly after before a brief digital revival.