Infinite Lives » Periodicals

Kill Screen, issue #1: the No Fun Issue

Jenn Frank — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 23:15:07 +0000

Hi, mom. Hi! It’s me! Yeah, hi!

What? No, I haven’t taken the GRE yet. Hang on, hey, I was calling to tell you—hmm? My driver’s license? Um, nuh-uh, I didn’t renew it. But I—huh? Well, I mean, probably. No, I mean, I’ll get the oil changed, I think I can do that for twenty bucks at the Car-X. What? Yes, we are. No. Yes. Yes. Probably a movie or something. No, I think I’ve actually stopped losing weight. What? Well, ramen and granola, mostly. OK. OK. OK. I don’t think so? OK.

Hey, I was actually phoning to tell you about my article in the magazine. What? No, my article. Well, the magazine is called Kill Screen—uh, no, it’s a video game magazine, I guess “kill screen” is like a video game, uh, term.

But it’s Kill Screen, issue number one, the “No Fun Issue,” and my column is about gender and sex and sexism and uh genderism, and the magazine is twenty dollars. What? No, I get one copy. No, I just get the one copy of it. No. No, I’m keeping my copy. You have to buy your own copy. No. No. Yes. Hmm? Well, even though you can kind of already read my piece online for free, you know, the magazine is published like quarterly, and it’s ad-free and glossy and ninety-six pages long, so since this is a really nice magazine or whatever, like, I couldn’t just publish the old version of the column. So I added a lot to the original piece and we all workshopped it, and so it’s like a really different article now, in some ways, but I think in good ways.

Anyway, I guess that’s all. OK. OK. I will. Mhm. Yes. OK. I will. I will. OK! Talk to you later. OK. OK. Talk to you later. Bye! OK. OK, bye! Yes. I will. Bye!

Kill Screen Magazine – Issue One: The No Fun Issue

Retro WIRED: Martha Stewart talks computers (1998)

Jenn Frank — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 11:43:06 +0000

Retro WIRED is a continuing retrospective of WIRED Magazine, 1996-2000.

By the mid-2000s, we’d realized we preferred to hide our game consoles. The 360’s faceplate, for instance, could be made to match the furniture, while the Wii was a slim, discreet box. The PS3 irked consumers: it was big and bold, all black gloss and chrome shine, totally undisguisable.

In the post-yuppie 1990s, though, we brashly displayed our technology. Ikea TV stands, with their frosted glass doors, deliberately paraded every component and console within, concealing only the wiring. Surround-sound speakers were mounted in the corners of the room or perched on willowy spires.

In Wired 6.08 (August 1998), Kevin Kelly—then Wired Magazine’s executive editor—tried to find the politest way to ask Martha Stewart whether she were actually ashamed of her computer. Stewart, herself an unlikely computer whiz, insisted that computers needn’t be ugly.

Are you of the school that says flaunt your computer equipment, or hide it?

[Martha Stewart] Oh, absolutely put it out in the open. Or hide it in the most effective way possible. My office at home is an office in a closet.

So you hide it?

Well, no, it is always out, except when I am having a dinner party—then I roll the shelves back in and close the door without disturbing anything. I want real practicality and real simplicity. So, invisible, appropriate, and simple, simple, simple.

What’s the appropriate color to go with computer beige?

Why are you thinking only of beige? I have a beautiful new black computer with all black components. And, I have a very beautiful new silver one. I think computers certainly could be more appealing aesthetically and fit into rooms nicer.

Any thoughts on smart houses?

I am restoring a house now that was a 1962 Bunshaft modern. I’ve gutted it and am now installing silence.

Also in this issue of Wired Magazine:

A review of Interplay’s The Ultimate RPG Archives
Those of you used to modern games—thin on depth, thick on bells and whistles—will be either pleased or distressed by this anthology, depending on your tastes. You will also be introduced to the joys of boot disks and the alphabet soup of EMS, EMM, XMS, IRQ, et cetera.

[...] ...My recommendations: The Bard’s Tale Trilogy for major-league munchkin hack&slashing, Dragon Wars or Wasteland as an example of the best 8-bit games, and Ultima Underworld I to see a program doing most of what Quake does, eight years earlier.
“The Y2K Solution”

“Throughout history, prophets and visionaries have spent their lives preparing for the end of the world,” writes Kevin Poulsen. “But this time veteran software programmers are blazing the millennial trail. The geeks have read the future, not in the Book of Revelation, but in a few million lines of computer code.”

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1. “Now, Retro Game Challenge is hot!”

1-Up MegaZine #3

Jenn Frank — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 09:12:06 +0000

Raina Lee introduces issue #3 of 1-Up thusly:

Welcome to 1-Up MegaZine, Issue #3. For those new to 1-Up, our publication represents the ghost of video game future; a world where secret golden coins and power-ups emerge out of the ruins (broken blocks), and everyone can live as many lives as they earn.

It’s a good introduction, encapsulating the dreamy-eyed intellectualism of the zine as a whole—and, for that matter, shedding light on the wherefores of this very website’s title.

1-Up is targeted at, we suspect, a particular kind of gamer. She is a cradle-to-grave gamer, to be sure, but because of the videogame industry’s current climate, she is cornered into that horrible niche called “casual” (or in Nintendo’s lexicon, “latent”) gaming. She intellectualizes and externalizes the videogames of her youth precisely because they are so internalized: her individual videogame experiences are woven into her earliest memory.

We deliberately say she, because not only does 1-Up MegaZine—for all its universality, gender-neutrality and cosmic synchronicity—focus on its many female readers and contributors, but the zine itself seems strangely feminine. It is sensitively written, meticulously constructed, and wholly lovely.

In many ways, the zine reminds us of PekoPeko: a Zine About Food. Both have gorgeous screenprinted covers (and until issue 3 of 1-Up, they were bound similarly); both feature intelligent, sensitive writing; both are labors-of-love that have effectively ceased to be published; both are tough to find, and purchasing an early issue is pretty much a matter of chance. If memory serves, both also have featured articles by Wired’s Chris Baker.

1-Up Issue #3 is loosely, thematically bound by Street Fighter 2, and each issue comes with a funny little “trading” card attached, which depicts one in a series of “Imaginary Street Fighter Characters.” Issue #3 also includes interviews with Scottish rockers Bis and legendary gamer Billy Mitchell, as well as a revelatory piece by cartoonist Martin Cendreda.

We regret that the zine is so difficult to get ahold of (after a failed attempt at online purchase, we picked our copy up at Giant Robot’s SF location), but you’ll likely find 1-Up MegaZine well worth the search.