When it was reported that EGM had finally capsized, it was like sweet justice for all the corrupt, self-proclaimed "unbiased" garbage they brainwashed people with over the years. It's no surprise that when EGM was at its peak, wasting page upon page on trash talk and E3 VIP shenanigans, BADCP was born from years of compacted disgust. As some would say, karma came to collect, and this is what they got (for years of bad "journalism"). But justice is rarely served in this day and age, and it would appear karma has not yet come to collect. Not long after their apparent demise, however, reports came through the wire. Reports that they weren't dead yet. That somehow, some way, they had been thrown a lifeline. Apparently, prayers for their demise weren't answered as promptly as it had appeared.

I knew my enemy because I (like many others) actually read EGM back when they did a decent job covering the video game industry (before it became "cool"). Even if most of it was presented in blurry screenshots, it was still cool because it added to the excitement and anticipation of all the cool stuff that came out back then. They even did a good job covering imports to keep an eye on; I found out about import-only Turbo Grafx 16 games like Street Fighter II - Champion Edition and Gradius II through the features EGM provided on them. Back before the "Intorwebz" was "serious bizness," rare import game coverage was much appreciated (especially for people who lived nowhere near a game store that sold imports). Their features were better, too. I can still remember standing in the magazine aisle, looking at the features they did on Super Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat II; images ingrained, imprinted in my brain from when I was young, my family too poor to buy a fucking thing. Funny how when I finally got a dime to spend, nothing they put out was worth the paper it was printed on (let alone a dime itself). There was a time when EGM was considered a legitimate gaming publication, but that credibility was lost when they "matured" by hiring just any dumbass "journalist" off the street.

Out with the old and in with the new? It was more like out with the decent and in with the bullshit. The magazine became a breeding ground for ignorance with a collection of nitwits, nerds, dweebs, nerds, losers, asswipes, bottom-feeders, dolts, dickwads, turds, and parasites talking loads of shit about things they knew nothing about. Rejects with names like "Shew," Krispy," and "Mansmilk" knew hardly a thing about games (or their genres), yet they had so much to say. Overall, they did a great job...misinforming the public as they unfairly "reviewed" countless games across various platforms. And don't forget their columns of recycled garbage and meaningless rambling that were a complete waste of the paper they were printed on. I don't care about some nerd shaking his cob to E3 booth girls.

But more importantly, why the fuck would anybody take advice on anything (let alone games) from some motherfucker called, "Krispy?" If his brothers "Soggy" and "Slimy" wrote for EGM, would people listen to them, too? What the fuck; does anyone have a mind of their own? Evidently not (because they lasted this long), and I can't believe all the people who were duped by these idiots. Truly loyal fans can smell out a lie like fresh shit, and all the lies EGM told over the years stunk to high hell then, and still do now. The magazine had turned into nothing more than a machine to manipulate sales and profit, with white-collar criminals "Shew" and "Krispy" at the helm. I've wanted to plant my fist between their eyes for a long, long time.

The most obvious is when Capcom put out several high-quality games across the baord, and EGM couldn't acknowledge the incredible amount of quality from a single developer in a single year. They turned to finding fault in trivial crap that nobody cared about, and then used the rating scale disproportionately. The absurdity reached its peak when Strider 2 (a PlayStation masterpiece) was panned just for having infinite continues, and Tech Romancer (a highly-underrated PlayStation-based mech fighter) because of the way Capcom rendered plumes of smoke. This was how they treated the sequel to their 1989 "Game Of The Year" (Strider)? If they had any loyalty, Strider 2 would have been their 1999 "Game Of The Year." These are just the Capcom examples; so many other great games from so many other great developers got lost in the cracks of EGM's unfair "professional reviews."

But they were too busy fumbling with trivial matters (that include trying to remember actual game titles). They would make comparisons to games they didn't even know the names to, and in more cases completely misinform the public on gameplay and contents! There are too many to list, but some prime examples of this can be found in shit they wrote on Capcom's VS fighting games. They scored Street Fighter Alpha 3 Saikyo Dojo (a DreamCast masterpiece) low back then, and now anything that's Capcom fighting is all the rage? And to add insult to injury, they paid no respect to the downloadable content the game offered; a feature common and praised now, but not so common and without praise back then. After years and years of badmouthing SF, it was sickeningly hypocritical of them make SFIV the cover of their last issue (yeah, the one that never actually made it to the printing press). I call bullshit on a legion of fakes and cons who deserve to be prosecuted for conflict of interest.

I know that they're "only games," but did they? I tell it like it is; straight. On this site, we admit that we're biased, and proud of it. Did they? No. Until the end, they were incredibly biased, but never admitted to it. It was ridiculous seeing them claim that they reviewed games so "fairly," and everyone believed it. They'd sit there and rate two games from the same genre, bash one based on certain points, and then turn around and praise the other without even subjecting it to the same points applied to the former. It was shit like this that baffled readers and developers alike, and I hope it was one of the things that lead to their collapse. With the shadow of doubt and suspicion cast on their "professional reviews," the bottom had to fall out some time, and it finally did in 2008.

with their editorial integrity on the line after being caught red-handed for taking bribes, Criminal-in-Chief "Shew" spews out some shit about game companies involved in foul play. He names off Ubisoft, Sony, and Midway, but leaves out EA and Square (both of which are notorious for their smug, "win at all costs" attitude and shady business practices). Yeah, because "foul-play" is a new concept, there are only three companies guilty of it, and they are definitely the ones he named. Give me a break. Pathetic idiots far and wide sat in slack-jawed belief and gave "kudos" while he packed shit down their throats. And it wasn't any better back in the day; anyone who was a part of the scene in the 16-bit era remembers how high EGM was hanging Bubsy's nuts. The game was fucking atrocious, yet for reasons nobody could understand, it was backed by such mad hype. A plethora of other games of the time were more deserving of attention for their artistry and ingenuity than Bubsy was. From this case alone, it's not hard to see that even in the 16-bit era, something was going on behind the scenes and it wasn't pretty. Ironically, Bubsy wasn't so popular with EGM years later.

Questionable EGM personas reveal foul play, too. Sushi-X was intuiging, and made things more interesting back in the day, but then there's all the shit that surrounds the persona. A former member of EGM candidly reveals how the persona was passed around like a blunt from staffer to staffer, the Gameboy-hate associated with it, and how it was a "swing reviewer who would pan something the other guys liked." All of this is highly suspect, and I'm not alone in questioning the integrity of how they mislead consumers. This revealation alone shows how games were not fairly reviewed in two ways; for either being on the Gameboy platform, or for simply being popular. But didn't they tell us they were fair and unbiased? And they sit there and call us "fanboys" for being loyal fans, when we're the ones who built the industry into what it is now. Not them. We have stayed stedfast and played our part in the industry through thick and thin as they sat back and "did cooler stuff" until a job at EGM was thrown (up) into their lap. Random losers who just started playing video games as part of their job duties as a "gaming journalist" have absolutely no room to say a thing about the quality games developers put hard work into. Nothing.

EGM might have been something back in the 8-bit and 16-bit days, but let's not forget all the shit they've done since then. Even if they returned, it wouldn't last long (with the wide use of the Internet, combined with karmic retribution). EGM, know that we hated you. I tell it like it is, and I tell it straight:

Stay. Fucking. Dead.