NGC Magazine


NGC Magazine was a British magazine specialising in Nintendo video game consoles and software. It was first printed in 1997 and ran until 2006. It was the successor to Super Play, a magazine that ended in September 1996. Many of the staff and the style of that publication persisted at N64 Magazine. In November 2000, N64 Magazine merged with Nintendo World, a magazine that was published by the same company, Future plc. NGC Magazine ceased publication in 2006. Its successor, NGamer, was renamed Nintendo Gamer in January 2012, until publishing its final issue the following September.
NGC Magazine was at the time of its closure one of the longest-running gaming magazines in the UK. It was on many occasions first for news, due in part to having no official connection to Nintendo and therefore no restrictions on what it could report.

Staff

The staff of NGC Magazine varied over the years. Memorable staff members included Jonathan Davies, James Ashton, Jes Bickham, Dan Geary, Tim Weaver, Wil Overton, Mark 'Greener' Green, Martin 'Kittsy' Kitts, Andrea Ball, Dr Mark Cousens, Zy Nicholson, Geraint Evans, Justin Webb, Miriam 'Mim' McDonald, Steve Jalim and Paul 'Shedwards' Edwards.
The magazine took usual light-hearted digs at each of its own staff; Jes was regularly lampooned due to his bald head; Mark Green had an evil alter-ego named Dark Mark; Andrea Ball was apparently permanently covered in grease and fake tan, and also had a reputation for carrying a constantly trademarked "Big Stick™"; Dr Mark Cousens was mocked for his apparent lack of a Nintendo Entertainment System console; Tim Weaver was famed for his patented Emotionless Stare; and James Ashton was ridiculed mercilessly in the magazine's pages for continually failing to pass his driving test. To this very day, he drives his Ferraris on a provisional license. Geraint was often also the subject of jokes, due to his Welsh origins, with regular pokes at him and his culture and lifestyle.

Thematic humour

The many popular, satirical, running gags revolved around:
  • Nintendo executive and design staff – Shigeru Miyamoto, Hiroshi Yamauchi, Satoru Iwata, David Gosen, and Reggie Fils-Aimé.
  • Having the readers send in weird things to win stuff: Luigi papier-mache statues, photos of people dressed up as game characters, and pieces of alternative wisdom known as 'Sense Talks'. One famous competition asked readers to send in "tat" of their own in exchange for over £1000s worth of tat from the N64 offices. Among the N64 tat was a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Turok, star of several N64 games, along with two wigs that apparently belonged to Jes Bickham: the caption read "Make no mistake: when you see Jes striding down the street in his size threes wearing these hairpieces, you know he means business". This competition was repeated when NGC later reached its final issue.
  • Random nonsense on popular love/hate-relationship characters: Toad, Luigi, Sonic, Tingle, Diddy Kong, Krystal, Lex Luthor, Yoshi, Kirby, Jango Fett, and Jar Jar Binks.
  • 'Bonus Letters'. This could also include the titles at the top of fully printed letters, which took certain amusing words from the body of the letter and printed them in large, bold text to draw the reader's attention. This tradition, and the one above, have been continued in NGCs successor Nintendo Gamer.
  • Made-up and ridiculous words such as "blork", "grackler", "interweb", and "wah!". "Grackler" is particularly infamous; in response to a competition in issue 16, a ghost story was received, part of which read "one nit when i was sleppin a grackler cam". The entire sentence became part of N64 tradition, and it was eventually decided that the term should be used as a noun when referring to an exceptionally ugly person. For example, when the football game FIFA 99 was reviewed, a picture reference was made to the extremely horrible texture-mapping on the players' faces, with the caption "Grackle Vision, Gr-Grackle Vision, Grackle-Grackle Vision," in reference to the popular UK children's TV show ChuckleVision. "Wah!" is based on Wario's exclamation upon being hit by a shell in Mario Kart 64.

    Wil "FuSoYa™" Overton

was the magazine's chief artist and was held in a somewhat reverential light by the magazine's readers; this could possibly have been brought about because some of the magazine's readers had followed him from Super Play magazine and felt a sense of loyalty to him, but the N64 staff themselves would more than likely say it was because Overton ensnared them all in the tangled mass of electrical wiring masquerading as hair that he keeps atop his head. Overton came in for much more than his fair share of insults and jokes, but he was a vital part of the reason that N64 Magazine stood out so much on the shelves: his manga-styled cover art was different from anything on other magazines, and his years of experience, love for RPGs and generally somewhat eccentric nature were comforting for many hardcore gamers.
As a measure of this eccentricity, he was also known by the pseudonym "FuSoYa™". FuSoYa was a wizard character from the game Final Fantasy IV. Overton, a devotee of Final Fantasy, added a ™ symbol to the character's name, and a legend was born: FuSoYa™, his "beardy, RPG-loving alter-ego", as N64 Magazine described him. FuSoYa™ appeared sporadically, sometimes to promote a competition, other times in response to queries in the magazine's letters section; his monstrous visage was a comforting sight to many.
Overton eventually moved to Rare, where he worked as an artist for several years. He later returned to do some character design artwork for NGamer, including the cover of the final ever issue.

Regular features

NGCs recurring features included:
  • End64/GC: A random page signifying the end of the magazine. Typically featured abstract Nintendo-related subjects. Examples included a fake magazine article of Lara Croft Vs Joanna Dark, a Nintendo Internet forum with fanboyish morons, and a newspaper obituary for the Nintendo 64.
  • I'm the Best: A league for readers competing against each other in N64 challenges.
  • Grintendo: A small joke section whereupon a reader's joke is put to test against the Team, movie stars, and Pikmin.