Edge | Code Like It's 198x

Edge told its first readers what they were getting before they reached the contents page. “Yes, Edge is expensive,” the opening page of issue 1 admitted in October 1993, but it promised the whole story, “not just a handful of intro screenshots and a mouthful of garbled rumour”, and added: “above all, we take videogames seriously.” Future Publishing had built its business on magazines for one machine each; Edge covered every console, computer and arcade board, and cared as much about how games were made and sold as about how they played. It has been published every month since.

Fast facts

Publisher: Future Publishing, Bath (now Future plc).
First issue: October 1993, “Issue one”, with the cover line “The future of videogaming” and the price printed as “£three”.
Founding editor: Steve Jarratt, issues 1 to 9 (October 1993 to June 1994).
Later editors: Jason Brookes (from July 1994), Tony Mott (from 1998, and for most of the next two decades), João Diniz Sanches (to late 2003), Margaret Robertson (2006 to 2007), Alex Wiltshire (2012 to 2013), Nathan Brown (about 2015 to 2020), Jen Simpkins (2020).
Reviews: Testscreen, marked out of ten, with five as the average.
First ten out of ten: Super Mario 64, in issue 35 (August 1996).
Issue 400: 2024.

Issue one

The first cover listed the formats Edge would follow: Mega Drive, Super Nintendo, PC, Amiga, PC Engine, Neo Geo and 3DO. Its big story was the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer: “Only one magazine in the UK has been permitted inside the 3DO company”, the editorial boasted, and the report began on page 48. Another feature explained how Psygnosis had made its CD-ROM shoot ’em up Microcosm, and Testscreen reviewed games including a Japanese import of Street Fighter II Turbo at £90. The editorial page gave the magazine’s reason for existing in money: “The UK market for games is now worth over £600 million”.

The staff list, headed “People on Edge”, named Steve Jarratt as editor, Jason Brookes as production editor and Chris Anderson, Future’s founder, as managing director. Jarratt had joined ZZAP!64 as a reviewer in April 1987, introduced as a 24-year-old who “used to be an industrial chemist”, had edited Commodore Format in 1990 and 1991, and had started the Nintendo magazine Total! with Andy Dyer in 1992.

One voice

Edge spoke as Edge. Its first contents pages said “Edge rates the current batch of new releases” and “Edge spoke to the visionaries”: the magazine, not a named writer, was the one with the opinion. It got close to the people making games. In June 1994 “Edge was allowed inside Sega’s headquarters” to interview Yu Suzuki, head of AM2, about his arcade work. Over the following decade its interviews and letters pages became a record of the industry thinking aloud: in October 1995 a reader wrote that “the days of the bedroom coder are as good as over”, and in April 1997 Infogrames’ president Bruno Bonnell told Edge that Ocean, which Infogrames had bought, would become its “action-based label, directed primarily at teenagers and arcade fans”. It reported on its own owners too: in January 1995 it told readers that Anderson had sold Future to Pearson.

Jarratt left the editor’s chair after nine issues. From July 1994 Jason Brookes was editor, with Jarratt listed as consultant editor; by then he had become editor of Amiga Format, which announced him in June 1994. The masthead’s tagline had changed too, from “The future of videogaming” to “The future of interactive entertainment”.

Five is average

Edge’s marks became the thing it was best known for. Jarratt later explained that “after several years struggling with review scores, I knew that I really wanted to try and have ‘five’ as a proper benchmark average, with higher scores reflecting the quality titles.” He did not set out to make ten “some sort of Holy Grail”; he wanted Edge to be “fair”, and “was sick of seeing the ‘seven as average’ thing”. A chart on the office wall reminded reviewers what the numbers meant: six equalled competent, eight excellent. Ten, the magazine admitted in 2003, originally “did not equal revolutionary — it simply said ‘Miyamoto’.”

It was a long wait. “It took 35 issues and three full years before Edge awarded its first ten”, to Shigeru Miyamoto’s Super Mario 64 in August 1996. The second, Gran Turismo, “caused the most outrage” and made the magazine “question its own criteria”. By its tenth birthday, in October 2003, only two more games had joined them: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Halo. “One racing game, one platformer, one adventure game and one shooter.” The same article described how a ten was reached, after “days of playtesting, more debate and then a heated argument”, with the reviewer holding the casting vote.

Editors and editions

Brookes edited Edge until 1998, and by the August 1998 issue Tony Mott was editor. Mott would run the magazine, as editor or editor-in-chief, for most of the next two decades. João Diniz Sanches was editor until the end of 2003; Margaret Robertson, games editor by 2005, became editor in 2006; Alex Wiltshire was editor by early 2013, and Nathan Brown was games editor by the end of that year. Brown edited the magazine for five years until April 2020, when his deputy Jen Simpkins took over; she left at the end of that year, and public sources since name Mott as editor again.

Edge also travelled. From 1995 to 2002 some of its material appeared in the United States in Next Generation, published in San Francisco by Imagine Publishing, a company owned by Chris Anderson. An Australian edition began in October 2004 with the cover line “The future of electronic entertainment”.

Still published

Edge is still a monthly print magazine from Future plc in Bath, publishing thirteen issues a year. In January 2015 Future announced that the Edge website would be folded into GamesRadar. It reached issue 400 in September 2024, thirty-one years after the first.

Sources

Edge issue 1, October 1993: cover (“The future of videogaming”, “Issue one”, “£three”, the formats), opening page (“Yes, Edge is expensive”, “we take videogames seriously”, the £600 million market, the 3DO story), contents (Microcosm, Testscreen, “Edge rates…”, “Edge spoke to the visionaries”), Street Fighter II Turbo review (£90 import), “People on Edge” (Steve Jarratt, editor; Jason Brookes, production editor; Chris Anderson, managing director; Future Publishing, 30 Monmouth Street, Bath).
ZZAP!64 issue 24, April 1987: “Dig the new breed” (Steve Jarratt, 24, “used to be an industrial chemist”). Commodore Format issue 2, November 1990: masthead (Steve Jarratt, editor). Total! issue 1, January 1992: “brought to you by Steve Jarratt and Andy Dyer”.
Edge issue 9, June 1994: “People on Edge” (Jarratt, editor); the Yu Suzuki interview. Issue 10, July 1994: “People on Edge” (Jason Brookes, editor; Jarratt, consultant editor), cover line “The future of interactive entertainment”.
Amiga Format issue 60, June 1994: “New editor Steve Jarratt”.
Edge issue 16, January 1995: the sale of Future Publishing to Pearson. Issue 29, February 1996: letters page (Next Generation and Imagine Publishing).
Edge, October 1995: reader’s letter on the bedroom coder. Issue 44, April 1997: interview with Bruno Bonnell.
Edge issues 57, April 1998, and 61, August 1998: “People on Edge” (Brookes, then Tony Mott, as editor). Issue 129, November 2003: masthead (João Sanches, editor). Issue 150, June 2005: masthead (Mott, editor; Margaret Robertson, games editor). Issue 167, October 2006: masthead (Mott, editor-in-chief; Robertson, editor). Issue 250, February 2013: masthead (Alex Wiltshire, editor). Issue 260, December 2013, and issue 263, February 2014: masthead (Mott, editor in chief; Nathan Brown, games editor).
Edge issue 128, October 2003: “Perfect 10?” (Jarratt on the scoring; the office chart; “35 issues and three full years”; the four games awarded ten; how a ten is decided).
Edge Australia issue 1, October 2004: cover.
MCV/Develop, “Jen Simpkins is the new editor of Edge magazine – with Nathan Brown departing to freelance in the industry”, 9 April 2020 (web, secondary). https://mcvuk.com/business-news/jen-simpkins-is-the-new-editor-of-edge-magazine-with-nathan-brown-departing-to-freelance-in-the-industry/
VGC, “Edge magazine editor Jen Simpkins announces departure”, 11 November 2020 (web, secondary). https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/edge-magazine-editor-jen-simpkins-announces-departure/
Wikipedia, “Edge (magazine)” (web, secondary): Mott as current editor; Next Generation, 1995–2002; thirteen issues a year; the website’s move to GamesRadar in 2015; issue 400 in September 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edge_(magazine)