Joystick (1988 - 2012)

1988 - 2012

dead france

joystick started on 9 november 1988 as a thirty two page weekly of cheat codes and reviews, went monthly in january 1990, and spent the next twenty two years being the french pc gaming magazine with a demo disc stuck to the front of it. the print run was 62,000 at the start and under 12,000 at the end. its publisher went into liquidation on 8 november 2012 and issue 260 appeared on the 23rd, the last one. three months later the paris commercial court sold the name to a company that used it to reissue old games.

~ the obit ~

On a 33.6k modem a sixty megabyte demo was not a download, it was a decision. You started it before going to bed and hoped nobody in the house picked up the phone. That arithmetic is the whole reason a magazine with a disc glued to the cover was not a magazine in the years I was learning what a PC could do. to be honest. It was a delivery mechanism, the articles came free with the plastic (roughly).

this is mostly told from the outside. Joystick was the French version of that object and one of the loudest anywhere. Marc Andersen put the first issue out on 9 November '88 as Joystick Hebdo, thirty two pages a week of cheat codes and reviews. it went monthly in January 1990 and stayed monthly for twenty two more years.

I do not read French and never bought a copy. either way. honestly, the title was locked behind a language I do not have. that is the honest distance here. What was not locked was the format. A demo disc reached a PC in Ankara exactly the way it reached one in Lyon, at the speed of somebody walking home from a shop, which in '98 was considerably faster than my modem.

It ran to issue 260, published on 23 November '12, two weeks after its own publisher went into liquidation (name escapes me). Twenty four years, from a weekly cheat-code pamphlet in the eight-bit era to a DVD-carrying monthly that had outlived the reason for the DVD (give or take).

~ the rap sheet ~

Born	9 november 1988, as Joystick Hebdo, a thirty two page weekly
Peak	62,000 copies at launch, cover discs carrying complete games
Killed	23 november 2012, issue 260
Lifespan	twenty four years
Made by	Marc Andersen, later Hachette Digital Presse
Killed by	the liquidation of its publisher, and broadband taking the disc's job

~ what it was ~

The house style was serious about games and unserious about everything else, long technical reviews delivered in a register that would get somebody fired at a corporate publisher. in fairness, french readers who grew up on it still describe the writing rather than the scores, which is close to the rarest thing you can say about a review magazine.

this part you had to be in the US for, and i was not (give or take). The physical package escalated the way they all did. for whatever reason. Floppy disks at first (close enough). for some reason. a CD-ROM. several CD-ROMs at once. finally DVDs carrying complete games instead of demos (dont quote me on that). That last stage ran until April 2012, seven months before the end, by which point the disc had become a courtesy rather than a reason to buy.

~ the cracks ~

this part i was not really around for, but anyway. for some reason. The ownership history reads like a chart of an industry losing confidence in print. Sipress ran it until Hachette bought it in June 1993, andersen left in November 1995. by then. The British publisher Future took it in May '03, passed it to Yellow Media in '09. it landed at a company called M.E.R.7 at the end of 2011 (roughly).

i wasnt close to this part of the story, still, circulation went the same direction. for some reason. Sixty two thousand copies at launch, under twelve thousand in the final year. Broadband had taken the disc's job and the web had taken the reviews. in those days. a monthly print schedule turned out to be a strange way to discuss a patch that shipped last Tuesday.

~ the funny part ~

this is mostly told from the outside. still, M.E.R.7 went into liquidation on 8 November 2012 and issue 260 came out on the 23rd. the magazine outlived its own publisher by two weeks. In February '13 the Paris commercial court sold the Joystick name to Anuman Interactive, which turned it into a label called Joystick Replay.

i was not paying attention by then, but anyway. for whatever reason. Joystick Replay reissued old PC games, Darkstone and Moto Racer among them, repackaged for machines that could no longer run them without help. A magazine that had spent twenty four years telling readers what was new spent its afterlife selling them what was old (if memory serves).

~ what it became ~

The French gaming press did not die, it dispersed. The writers went to websites and later to video. the tone survived considerably better than the format. back then. though, you can still hear Joystick's register in French games coverage, which is not a thing any balance sheet ever recorded.

The disc is the part with no successor. to be honest. though, for fifteen years or so, a magazine was the fastest connection most households had. the object you carried home from the newsstand outperformed the wire coming into the wall (or whatever it was called). Then the wire got quick and the object had nothing left to carry.

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