Article 28—Studio E brochure (1994)
Most of the press kits and promotional
materials in my video-game ephemera collection were made by
publishers or developers to introduce their products to
retailers or the press. This brochure has a
completely different purpose: It was made by developer Studio E
to pitch its services to potential publishing partners.
 | ||
I once met Studio E vice president Joel
Seider when he was working at Atari on Pinball Jam for the Lynx. I
remember the office being decorated with posters and life-size
cardboard standees of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark, because one
of the two real-life pinball machines represented in the Lynx
game was Bally/Midway’s Elvira
and the Party Monsters. And I
remember Joel’s desk being littered with physics books
that he had procured from the local library, because he was in
the process of coding the ball’s movement and wanted
to ensure that it was realistic. He would
eventually work on programming Accolade’s original Bubsy game, a hit
that definitely boosted the credentials of Studio E when the
company was founded.
 | ||
If you’re wondering why Seider is the
highest-ranking executive mentioned in this brochure,
it’s because the identity of the company president was a
bit of a trade secret when Studio E was originally formed. The
only obvious clue to the mystery behind Studio E was its office
address. I was working at VideoGames magazine at the time, and I knew that 1920
Highland Avenue in Lombard, Illinois was also the headquarters
of our competitor, Electronic Gaming
Monthly. (I once hand-delivered a
résumé to that building, not long before I moved
to California to work on VideoGames
& Computer Entertainment.) EGM’s publisher
Steve Harris was also the man behind Studio E, and his
editorial team produced the magazine under the same roof where
Studio E produced games like Mohawk
& Headphone Jack (Super NES) and
VMX Racing (PlayStation). As a matter of fact, longtime EGM
editor Martin Alessi was credited as one of the designers of Mohawk & Headphone Jack.
There was some outrage in the VideoGames office when
we learned that EGM could potentially review games that its editors
had actually developed, but I don’t think the
conflict of interest was ever a hot-button
issue for the industry in general. We’d heard rumors for
years about a guy who simultaneously worked for both Atari and EGM, and nobody seemed
to think that was a big deal. Come to think of it, I worked for
two different people who pitched game design documents to
several different publishers while they were employed as
full-time video-game magazine editors.
 | ||
I guess it has always been an accepted
maxim that many game journalists aspire to become game
developers. My friend Ara Shirinian was one of the
hardest-working and most prolific contributors to Tips & Tricks
magazine, but after he landed a position in game development,
he admitted that he had always viewed his job of writing about
video games as nothing more than a stepping stone to his
ultimate goal of creating them. Harris had the balls to just go
ahead and do both things at once. As much as that tweaked my
sense of morality, I stopped thinking about it after he sold EGM to Ziff-Davis. If
I remember correctly, he got out of the game-magazine business
before any of the Studio E games reached the review stage.
And—God bless ’em—I actually liked Mohawk & Headphone Jack!
______________________________________________________
© 2011 Chris Bieniek. Certain video
game images, characters and logos on this Web site are
copyrighted or trademarked by their respective publishers.