LAS VEGAS – Oct. 15, 2024 – EGM Media LLC proudly announces The Electronic Gaming Monthly Compendium, a new book and companion website that honors the legacy and rich content archive of one of the most influential and longest-running video game magazines ever to exist. Pre-orders for the book’s special first edition are available starting today, through a first-of-its-kind Kickstarter campaign, with exclusive backer rewards honoring EGM’s history.
Watch The Kickstarter Trailer Here
Over its 25-year print run, Electronic Gaming Monthly captivated tens of millions of readers around the globe with its opinionated, fearless, and often irreverent coverage of the world of video games. The EGM Compendium will combine meticulously curated excerpts from the magazine with modern insights and never-before-told stories to offer a detailed exploration of both the magazine and the broader gaming landscape.
Spanning over 320 pages of rich video game history, The EGM Compendium will chart the development of the most noteworthy games, franchises, cultural shifts, and industry trends from throughout EGM’s quarter-century of publication. With a long list of contributors that includes EGM alumni, current and former game developers, and modern gaming influencers, The EGM Compendium will also highlight the perspectives, memories, and insights of dozens of icons from across the gaming world.
The book will feature the following content:
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Exclusive Interviews and Roundtables: Former EGM editors, game developers, and influencers weigh in on the magazine and the games and events chronicled in its pages.
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In-Depth History: Write-ups of all 264 numbered issues of EGM tell the story of the gaming industry month by month, through a mixture of new and archival material.
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Go Deeper on the Biggest Stories: Longer features throughout the book will highlight some of the most important trends in gaming, charting the rise of notable genres, franchises, rivalries, and companies.
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Visually Dynamic Layout: No stodgy walls of text here. The design of The EGM Compendium will be every bit as interesting and varied to read as a great gaming magazine.
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High-Quality Print Edition: The physical version of the book will be printed in full color on premium paper in a hardcover format, making for a substantial addition to any gaming enthusiast’s library.
"As someone who read Electronic Gaming Monthly at its beginning and worked for it at its end, I feel honored to be able to help preserve its 25 years of history and heritage in this new book project,” said co-author Mollie L. Patterson. “Across all of those issues, there's so much to rediscover both about the video games industry and EGM itself, and we can't wait to share our efforts with everyone."
The Kickstarter campaign launches today, with a host of incredible pledge rewards that pay tribute to the EGM’s rich history. Depending on their pledge tier, fans new and old will be able to receive an exclusive edition of the book with a stylish slipcase, snag exclusive EGM-related goods, get a print copy of the previously “lost” issue #237 of EGM, and, as the ultimate stretch goal, even help fund a brand-new issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly.
"EGM was the first gaming magazine I ever subscribed to, and the passion and humor in each issue played an early role in shaping my love of video games and writing,” said co-author Josh Harmon. “To be able to work with Mollie on such an ambitious tribute to the magazine is a dream come true."
As a companion to The EGM Compendium and an optional reward for this Kickstarter campaign, EGM Media is also announcing The EGM Compendium Digital Archive. Built from a mix of print production files and magazine scans, this archive will mark the first official way to read every issue of EGM on the web. The team has hand-indexed each issue to build a fully navigable database of its contents, allowing you to easily track coverage of topics or people across multiple issues of the magazine. And when you find the article you're looking for, you can click to jump right into the issue to read it in its original layout.
For more information, visit the EGM Compendium Kickstarter campaign page.
About Electronic Gaming Monthly.
Electronic Gaming Monthly, published in print from 1988 to 2014, rose to prominence as one of the earliest and most successful magazines covering the second wave of console gaming. In an age before widespread internet adoption, the pages upon pages of info, rumors, screenshots, artwork, and unfiltered opinions that filled each issue of EGM quickly turned the magazine into a must-have resource for gamers everywhere.
As the gaming industry grew and the enthusiast media expanded along with it, EGM stood out from the crowd by building a distinctive voice: informative but irreverent, opinionated but fair, deeply connected to the gaming industry but never beholden to it. Across multiple owners, incarnations, and spin-off publications, EGM grew to define gaming for a generation of players, readers who’d rush to the mailbox or newsstand every month to see what verdicts the Review Crew would hand down or to read the latest scuttlebutt from Quartermann. Though the magazine ended its print run a decade ago, it still looms large in the memory of those fans.