US · 1989–1996
A well-regarded US gaming magazine from the early 1990s that carved out a niche with longer-form reviews, detailed strategy content, and a more analytical editorial approach than its mass-market competitors.
Game Players launched in 1989 from GP Publications and distinguished itself from contemporaries like GamePro and EGM by publishing longer review texts and detailed strategy coverage that assumed readers wanted to understand games rather than simply be told whether to buy them. The magazine went through several revisions — including separate editions for Nintendo and Sega platforms at different points — before settling into a consolidated format in the early 1990s. Game Players was respected among enthusiast readers for being willing to give mixed reviews to licensed games that other publications treated leniently, and for publishing letters and reader correspondence that engaged substantively with the editorial content. The magazine folded in 1996 as the market consolidated around fewer, larger publications with broader newsstand distribution, but its alumni contributed to several successor titles.