Julian "Jaz" Rignall has done it all. Video game champion. Magazine editor. Game producer. TV commentator. Website launch editor. Video game research analyst. During a career which began in the '80s and continues to this very day, Rignall has witnessed the evolution of an entire industry, and he's now written it all down in a massive 420-page book, The Games of a Lifetime, published by Bitmap Books.
In many ways, you could say I'm the wrong person to review such a project, as I make no secret of the fact that I'm a card-carrying Rignall fanboy. It's no exaggeration to claim that, had I not been exposed to his sterling work at such a tender age, I wouldn't be doing what I do today; magazines like Mean Machines, MegaTech and CVG are the reason I wanted to write about video games, and my first website, The Mean Machines Archive (RIP), was the stepping stone to me meeting my colleagues and Hookshot Media co-owners Darren Calvert and Ant Dickens. Without that, my life would look almost unrecognisable today, so it's fair to say I owe a massive debt to Rignall and the teams that worked underneath him.
With all of that fawning out of the way, let's look at this book. A chronological narrative which begins during his childhood years and takes us all the way up to the present day, The Games of a Lifetime isn't just Rignall's story—it's the story of the video game medium as a whole. Starting with exciting trips to the local arcade and life-changing encounters with home consoles and computers, this is a tale which sees one man's journey through an industry that helped shape him—and one which he helped shape in so many significant ways.
For example, Rignall's work on the likes of Zzap!64, CVG, Mean Machines and Nintendo Magazine System helped transform video games from a nerdy pastime into one of the most lucrative entertainment platforms on the face of the planet. He and his co-workers spoke about the latest titles in enthusiastic, knowledgeable tones; beforehand, it felt like video game magazines were populated by frustrated journalists who covered games because it was an emerging medium, but as Rignall's generation swooped in, gamers finally got the passionate experts they deserved.
It might seem like hyperbole, but for many UK-based CVG readers, it felt like the magazine single-handedly "discovered" Street Fighter II, and it was certainly the first British publication to put it on its cover. These people loved video games as much as their readers did, creating a bond of trust which meant their verdict was often treated as gospel.
Throughout 420 densely packed pages, Rignall takes us through the critical years of his life, detailing how his career progressed in intimate detail. Each chapter also devotes a chunk of space to the significant games he was playing at that time, giving the reader a fascinating insight into not just the life of one of the world's leading video game journalists but also how the industry itself was growing and maturing. Games such as Pac-Man, OutRun, GTA, Gran Turismo, WipEout, World of Warcraft, Red Dead Redemption and Horizon Zero Dawn are all mentioned, affording the reader a convincing impression of how the world of video games has evolved over the decades.
As anyone who has followed Rignall's career will know, he hasn't been writing about games for all of it. With the arrival of the PlayStation, Saturn and N64, he shifted from critiquing games to helping produce them. He joined Virgin Interactive and witnessed the industry from the other side of the fence—an adventure which sadly didn't have the best of endings as the publisher began to crumble after enjoying initial commercial success.
He then helped launch what we now know as IGN, one of the world's biggest entertainment websites, and since then has worked for GamePro, Walmart and even The Bank of America. His most recent role put to good use his decades of experience to help companies such as Sega and Bandai Namco fine-tune their games prior to release.
Long before all of that, however, Rignall was a young boy growing up in rural Wales. His initial furtive encounters with rudimentary TV games and coin-ops would hook him on interactive entertainment, and his entry into the industry he would later come to define was via video game championships (long before eSports were a thing) and tips and guides writing, something Rignall wryly observes is still as popular in games media today as it was back in the 1980s.
Joining the chaotic beast that was Newsfield—publisher of Zzap!64—set Rignall on his career path, and he would later move to EMAP and take the lead on CVG, one of the longest-running video game publications in the world. For many people—myself included—it was this phase of his career which really had the most impact.
Under Rignall's influence, CVG (and later, the peerless Mean Machines) focused attention on the flood of powerful, Japanese-made consoles that brought arcade-quality gameplay to the living room. The end result was an explosion of interest in the medium, so much so that Rignall-edited magazines regularly sold hundreds of thousands of copies each month, encouraging a horde of copycat publications which never really quite reached the same level of brilliance.
The Games of a Lifetime is neatly divided up into chapters which cover a particular year, but it's not entirely uniform; some years, such as 1984 and 1985, get multiple chapters, an indication of how much was happening not just in the games industry during this time, but in Rignall's life in general. Other years (such as the period between 2004 and 2010) are skipped entirely, which shows how even the legendary Rignall's connection with video games has waxed and waned somewhat.
A naturally gifted scribe, Rignall manages to make the abundant amount of text feel lively and engaging, weaving in his gaming experiences with real-life events such as cross-country (and globe-trotting) house relocations, motorcycle rides, DJ escapades, relationship break-ups and even the collapse of a previously rock-solid working friendship with the equally esteemed Steve Jarratt, launch editor on the likes of EDGE and Total. For those of us who grew up hanging on Rignall's every word and guffawing endlessly at his jokes, it's refreshing to see him let his guard down and discuss aspects of his life which, until now, have mainly been kept under wraps.
The book is packed with iconic imagery, much of which charts the development and evolution of video gaming as an artistic medium. Bitmap Books has even managed to enlist another British games media legend, Wil Overton, to create some new Mean Machines-style 'chibi' versions of Jaz. There are also contemporary photos of Rignall and his co-workers to gawp at. If I had one criticism, it's that there aren't enough photos—while game screenshots and artwork are naturally required in this kind of book, I would have loved to have seen a lot more photography from Rignall's history.
Ultimately, though, this is nitpicking of the highest order. Taken as a whole, The Games of a Lifetime is a resounding success. Granted, if you have no idea who Julian Rignall is and didn't grow up with his insight and guidance, the impact of this book is lessened, but I think anyone with even the slightest interest in video games will find it thoroughly entertaining.
It's an intimate, enlightening and captivating journey through the history of video games told by someone who has truly lived, breathed and celebrated the medium.
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