GameCentral
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
GameCentral (or GC) is a Teletext magazine broadcast in the UK, focused on video games. It replaced Digitiser in 2003. GameCentral can be found on ITV and Channel 4 analogue Teletext on page 305 and also on digital Teletext at Pg 805.
GameCentral is currently edited by David Jenkins with contributions from Roger Hargreaves. Previous editors have been former Edge magazine editor Tony Mott (currently editor-in-chief of that publication), and Steven Bailey.
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The content of GameCentral varies from day to day. The contents page lists the page numbers and headlines the content featured for that day.
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During the week, this page features the latest news from the video game industry. It is normally four pages long. At weekends, the page featues the '4-Players' article; a 400-word article written by a viewer of GC. They always vary in content, from 'Why graphics are more important than gameplay in games' to more recently 'Overlooked 2D Shooters.'
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This page is usually a seven page review (called Gametest) or preview (called Gamewatch) of a video game. Scores are given out of ten. At weekends, it is used to present a round-up of the summary pages of the reviews featured previously that week.
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This page is usually a review page on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. On Wednesdays it is home to the 'In the Middle' feature, an editorial piece written by either David Jenkins or Roger Hargreaves, more often than not pertaining to an issue raised in a review on the previous page, and very often written by the opposite person to who wrote the review. On Thursdays they use it to present a list of release dates for forthcoming games, with a line or two of comment for games released on the next day.
On weekends the game charts are featured here, these are currently; the all-formats UK chart, the Japanese chart, the US console chart, the GameCentral top 20 (a list of the editorial staff's favourite games of that year) and the viewer's top 20 (viewers can vote for their favourite games for this list, but only once a month, and votes are reset every month to make it fairer for games released at the end of the year).
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This page is the 'Inbox' and contains e-mails and text messages sent in by readers. The messages sent in are usually on any subject related to video games, although some 'off topic' correspondence does appear from time to time. The page used to be twelve pages long and updated daily, but recently has switched to being seven pages long and updated twice daily at 1.10am and 5pm.
During the week the GameCentral staff set the readers a topic and replies to that are featured at weekends, this is known as the 'Hot Topic'. For example, recent topics have included the high price of the Playstation 3, viewer's favourite video game characters, and also more recently people's favourite game to play at parties. There has been a recent trend for at least one person in the hot topic to mention the Sega game Shenmue (usually asking for a third game in the series). Other off-topic trends include discussion about ninjas, Transformers and ladders (the GameCentral team recently stated that they prefer wooden ladders to aluminium ladders in reply to someone mentioning this wikipedia article).
It should be noted that during E3, each and every page of GameCentral is used to cover the event.
