J Nash

This is a fine example of what AP did best: the purposeful joke. Cam's precision in his deboning of the hype/desperation cycle surrounding new consoles foreshadowed the catastrophic triumph a few years later of the unquestioningly loyal Official mags, who are paid by the manufacturers to - quite deliberately - lie to the readers, who themselves are (as far as anyone can tell) happily complicit in the mooing zealotry with no interest in anything as mood-spoiling or last week as critical evaluation of what they're spending their cash on.*

(In a sense, this cosily profitable loop of deceitful back-slappery marks the long-awaited maturity of games mags into REAL ACTUAL MEDIA; ie, tabloid newspapers.)

This is, of course, quite distinct from the non-denominational evangelist rally of (Verge - Ed), which flashed on every new thing that you hadn't seen yet as the best EVARR, but lost interest the moment it was available to buy; which comically perpetual baton-twirling was also guyed in the random underlining and accurate white space of the feature's Verge section. Brill.

In short, Whatever Happened To... ? was channelling the spirit of Kangaroo Court in a wider beam of lighthouse justice, which makes it a bit of a shame that my contribution to this chimingly popular article was to splinter one of the best jokes. Stupidly failing to see the rhythm of the gag, I subbed Cam's example of a previous best console in the universe (the famously hyped 3DOGOONBUYONE) to the clunky, literal syllable transposition of 3DGOONBUYONE (it's all in the pecking motion with "Go"). Cam didn't spot the change until the mag came back from the printers, at which point he explained what I'd missed with professional resignation at the needless meddling (though, queerly, my flat did explode two nights later) and I resolved NEVER AGAIN to do this sort of thing, but probably did starting later that afternoon.

Tellingly, the reader letters about the feature mentioned the 3DOGOONBUYONE, so obviously they thought it was a typo. Phew.

The article concludes with speculation about the Grand Tomorrow of various things, including, scampishly, AP and the Amiga.