Rising Star Blog

This week, I have been reading Weekly Famitsu. Unless you’ve been hiding from the internet for the past few years, you will no doubt already be aware of Famitsu: it is the most popular videogame magazine in Japan. This latest issue contains over 250 pages of news, columns, cheats, reviews, comics, interviews, features, and Famitsu’s famous panel reviews, which, compared to the epic length of British game reviews are haiku-like in their brevity. I was a bit taken aback, though, by the old geezer on the front: a 68-year-old Bosnian called Ivica Osim. That’s until Google told me that Osim was, until recently, the manager of the national Japanese football team and is now the cover star of Sega’s PSP football management sim, (the unnecessarily lengthily titled) J-League Pro Soccer Club wo Tsukurou! 6: Pride of J. 

Even with a semi- anonymous old codger on the cover, though, Famitsu is bought by half a million people every week. That’s about ten times the most popular British videogame magazine, even though Japan’s population is only twice that of Britain’s – it’s even more than most British broadsheets. At one point in the late ‘90s, Britain’s Official PlayStation Magazine achieved a circulation of over 450,000 off the back of the console’s success, but really, Britain has nothing to compare to the enormous and enduring popularity of Famitsu. 

In the old days, before the internet, Famicom was basically the one and only source for any self-respecting videogame magazine with an interest in Japanese games: editors would take out subscriptions or pick copies up from the Japanese store in Colindale and write up any breaking news (whether they could read the Japanese or not). Back when I worked on Edge we would gaze at the super-precise print quality of the screenshots with envy, and discuss the circulation figures with open-mouthed amazement. Now though, Japanese games news breaks in the time it takes to cut and paste (ie. less than the blink of an eye), and those glory days are over. These days it’s websites and blogs who have taken over the unofficial role of repackaging Famitsu’s news for western gamers.

So while I’d love to tell you what the people at Famitsu have to say about the new, bigger DS, or about Final Fantasy, or Bayonetta, or what’s going on in the latest Ishihara and secret of TERA-O comic strip, by the time you read this it’s probably already been cut and pasted all over the internet. Sorry!

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