December 5th marked the last day of GamePro.com, and the final issue was released in November. First published in 1989, GamePro enjoyed 22 years on the magazine racks, and also had a decent online presence. Perhaps only second to Electronic Gaming Monthly in the 90's, GamePro was one of the magazines that could always be found at a gamers house, drooling over new titles and reading reviews to see what title we wanted to scrounge up money for next.

click to embiggen

GamePro relied on a five-point rating system, and readers were familiar with faces that determined the point value, with 5.0 almost looking like an exploding head, and 1.0 being a head nodding off to sleep. Its had many different sections come and go over the years, with some of my favorites being Buyers Beware, Hot at the Arcades, Role-Players Realm, and The Bonus Levels.

The gaming magazine world has seen many classic magazines shut down after 2000, or change hands or make other concessions to stay alive. I miss the era of 300 page monthly gaming mags (stuffed full of at least 125 pages of ads). There was nothing like coming home with a new magazine, thumbing through it for over a week and always finding something new just from the sheer size of the mag. While GamePro will live on as a section of the PC World team, something has been lost with the death of both the magazine and website, and it will be sorely missed.

For those of you longing for the classic magazine feel, I highly recommend Retro Gamer Magazine, printed in the UK. You can get a paper subscription or save some cash with the digital version. It has the same feel of the 90's magazines and has a decent fan following.

And finally, in my last parting GamePro salute, I gotta thank them for the internet ProTip meme:

click to embiggen