On the Subject of PCZone

Kelly Brook

I was slightly saddened to hear of the recent demise of PCZone magazine. That's right, "magazine". You know, bits of paper with words printed on them and glued together and sold in shops. Yes, shops - places where you would go to buy porn before the internet was invented. You know, porn - pictures of bare ladies printed in magazines and then dumped in the woods for kids who weren't old enough to buy them to find.

Slightly saddened, but perhaps more surprised that PCZone had survived this long. It was a must-buy for me back in the 90s, being significantly superior to the competing (and shit) PC Format. One of PCZone's most notable contributors was Charlie Brooker who started out as a cartoonist before emerging as one of the magazine's most memorable writers, and who has since gone on to become an established name in British TV and radio comedy, and who has been mercilessly ripped-off by that derivative, talentless hack "Yahtzee" Croshaw.

And lest we forget, PCZone was responsible for the magnificent Colin Culk, who's occasional videos were hidden away on the cover CDs.



Can't be arsed to link them all, just search youtube for Colin Culk, they're all on there.

Nostalgia aside, I won't really miss PCZone that much. I don't recall when I last bought an issue but the chances are it's been well over a decade. You could argue that's there's still a market for intelligently written, irreverent games-related journalism, but the fact is today's gamers are mostly fucking retards with single digit attention spans who think Zero Punctuation is a masterpiece of satire rather than repetitive, tiresome cuntery. In that sense the passing of PCZone is sad because its demise is a symptom of a broader malaise.