Next Generation Magazine used to have a great web presence and a fantastic print magazine. Their web content was pure, controversial and mattered and their print magazine was not the screen-shot filled pabulum that plagued cheap rags like Gamefan.

Then came "Daily Radar." And that changed all that.

Here's a letter I wrote that got printed in Next Generation before the sucking began. It's the one with the Battlezone preview. This was back in 1997, so it's not as polished as the tripe I normally sling around here (no, really, it's not) so look as it as a sort of glimpse at one young net.reviewer's up-and-coming ability to express his hatred over a print and web medium. Or something.

Here's my list for the five worst game packages of all time, as experienced during my year and a half at an EB:

5) McKenzie & Co: OK, we're marketing a game towards preteen girls, the one segment of the population that couldn't care less about games. Fine. Why are the kids on the box so ugly, then?

4) Triple Play '98: Quick impression of every guy outside Missouri who bought a video game when TP '98 came out: "?????? Who the hell is that? Lankford? Brian Jordan? That ain't Ozzie Smith is it?"   Pat Hentgen wins 20 games on a virtual cellar dweller, Kirby Puckett plays his final season and the bandwagon Yankees win the World Series. So how the hell did this guy end up on my baseball game?

3) T2 Steering Wheel: Most consumers wouldn't see this problem, but we had to send a half dozen of the damn things back, it was physically impossible to get them back into the box after some redneck itchin' to play Monster Truck Madness more ree-list'illy took it out to play with in the store.

2) Bust A Move II: I hope the marketing mensa who had the bran wave of putting some disfigured, British, gray-hued freak on the box with his eyelids stuck open with toothpicks got fired. And, lucky us, it came out juuuust before the PlayStation adapted the smaller jewel case standard, so we got to display it nice and large.

1) Terry Bradshaw Fantasy Football: I didn't need to see Baldshaw on the cover of this orange, green and blue box in a pair of khakis so tasteless they made his ass look like it had more polygons than an AM3 board could handle. C'mon -- you're pitching to fantasy geeks. "Jenny McCarthy Fantasy Football" would have sold twice as many copies.

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