Jason Streetz

My Stint With Electronic Gaming Monthly

In June of 1994, I found myself with a job at Sendai Publishing Group, publishers of the then-and-now reknown publication Electronic Gaming Monthly, aka "EGM". I would work there until sometime in mid 1997 (I think). I got the job through a connection I had: Andy Baran, a vanguard of the professional gaming world, a classmate in high school, and an employee of Sendai. I actually knew Andy through some shared friends who all played role playing games. One night he mentioned they were hiring, and next thing I know I'm reporting to their office, playing video games for a living!

  • More on my profession

    The Birth of EGM2
    Given the rise in video games at the time, it seems that EGM just didn't have enough pages each month to cram all the action in. Thus, the birth of EGM2 : a sister publication to EGM that would focus more closely on the strategies of beating and mastering games, whereas EGM would continue on with its focus on news and highlight material, in addition to its "Fact File" coverage of popular games of the time.

    I was hired along with a few others to populate the staff of EGM2. Over time, the two more-or-less distinct groups of editors (EGM's and EGM2's) blended and merged until we all worked on both magazines.

  • egm.1up.com: What's become of EGM

    When specifically?

    My time with EGM ran issues 59-78, and EGM2 issues 1-24. About 1994 to early 1997.

    I kept a copy of most of the issues I worked on. Here's some pictures of them.

    In addition to these, I worked on the 1994 and 1995 summer Fighting Guide specials, and an EGM3d mag.

    Who was Sushi-X?

    I had no idea then, I have no idea now.

    Moving on.

    Samples of My Work on EGM/EGM2

    Below you can find samples of my work for EGM and EGM2. For each of the layouts below, an editor (in this case, me) had to: In other words, each of the "Fact Files" or strategy guides, special features, etc you saw in EGM/EGM2 were very much "all the editor" in terms of WHO did all the work for the final printed pages. Below you can find a few favorites among the pages done by yours truly!

    EGM2 October 1995

    Megaman X7

    I did a number of MegaMan/MegaManX pages for EGM and EGM2, but this one is my favorite.

    EGM2 November 1995

    Lunar Eternal Blue for SegaCD

    I played many, many games while at EGM. I can honestly say, I never really "got into" any of them the way I did Lunar Eternal Blue for SegaCD. I loved playing through this game, and I've always been a bit proud of this particular sequence of pages. I can't say its the best or most complete strategy or walk-through, but I nevertheless really like my work on this game.

    Yoshi's Island, for Super Nintendo

    When my buddy Scott got hired, we sometimes tag-teamed a game. He'd play through the game, as he was much faster and better at it than me, and I'd do alot of the layout and graphic work, as that was my specialty. Yoshi's Island was one such game. He burnt through this game all on his own, while I worked on the graphics, artwork and layout. Given a game of this size, the overall quality as a result was perhaps better than a single editor could have accomplished in the same time!

    EGM2 December 1995

    Earthworm Jim 2, for Super Nintendo and Genesis

    Didn't much care for the game, but hey -- I liked my pages for it, hehe.

    Floating Editor Heads?

    Within several 1995 issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly and EGM2 could be found "floating heads": pictures of various staff members' heads strewn about "Interface", the letters-to-the-editor section found in the beginning of each issue. I'm honestly not quite sure how this started, but I'm guessing it was some bored and/or wired copy editors having fun during a deadline?


    A good chunk of the editorial staff at the time were found on the bottom of an Interface page once or twice. Here are floating heads of : Andy Baran, Danyon Carpenter, David Ruchala, Ron Marciniak, Jason Streetz (ME!), Scott Parus, Scott Augustyn, Terry Minnich, and Tim Davis. To the right were stuffed animals from the copy editor's desk, I think.


    That was Andy.


    Here's Scott and Danyon.


    And finally, me, Jason.