Julian Rignall

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Caricatures of the staff writers were used to enhance the ZZAP!64 rating system. This became one of the magazine's best loved stylistic signatures.

Julian 'Jaz' Rignall (born in London, 1965) is a Writer/Editor whose achievements include publishing highly influential, market-leading gaming magazines and web sites, and managing the online presences of some of the world's largest multinational corporations.

Rignall's writing roots were founded in 1983 when he was still in school. Thanks to holding UK and World Record highscores on videogames such as Defender, Pole Position and Crossfire, and winning Computer and Video Games magazine's 1983 UK Arcade Championship, he leveraged his reputation as a top-class gamer to write gaming hints and tips for magazines such as Computer and Video Games and Personal Computer Games.

This freelance work paid off when, in early 1985, former editor of Personal Computer Games, Chris Anderson invited him to join the launch team for Newsfield Publications' seminal Commodore 64 magazine ZZAP!64.

As Staff Writer, he continued to display his gamesmanship as he repeatedly emerged the victor of the monthly ZZAP! Challenge, where readers challenged the magazine's reviewers to one-on-one gaming contests.

THe cover of issue 1 of Mean Machines

Thanks to his gaming notoriety and reputation as a fair and accurate games reviewer, Rignall became one of the most highly regarded and highest-profile gaming journalists of this period. In December 1987 he became Editor-in-Chief of ZZAP! 64, a position he retained until August 1988 (Issue 39) when he decided it was time to move on.

Rignall then settled at EMAP, England's second-largest consumer publishing company. He started at Computer and Video Games magazine, and within the space of a few issues became Editor-in-Chief, making the magazine his own by giving the newly-emerging Japanese consoles more coverage and downplaying the fading 8-bit generation of computers. He eventually decided that the console market was big enough to warrant a magazine of its own, and launched Mean Machines, which covered the top-selling videogame systems of the time, such as the Super Nintendo and Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Thanks to its irreverent, anarchic tone and style and extremely frank and candid reviews, the magazine became hugely popular, eventually becoming the biggest-selling multiformat publication in the UK. In 1992, Mean Machines was split into two separate publications, the Officially-endorsed Nintendo Magazine System and Mean Machines Sega. In late 1993, Julian launched his final British publication, the officially-endorsed Sega Magazine.

Rignall on a press day funded by Gremlin Graphics, promoting its Lotus Cars videogame release

In 1994, Rignall moved out of magazine publishing and into software development at Virgin Interactive Entertainment's studios in Irvine, Southern California. As Vice President of Design, he was in charge of product design, and licensing acquisitions from other game developers and publishers. While at Virgin, he contributed to such titles as Agile Warrior F-111X, Nanotek Warrior, Lion King, The Jungle Book and the highly anticipated, but never published Thrill Kill.

In 1997, he left Virgin and moved to San Francisco, USA, to join the Imagine Games Network (better known as IGN.com). As Editorial Director he was instrumental in leading the expansion of the network and guiding it to its market leadership position. The editorial tone and style that he helped establish in IGN's early years still continues to this day.

During 2002, Rignall decided to move out of the games business and into online retailing/marketing, and became Editorial Director at Walmart.com, where he was responsible for the content of the world's biggest retailer's online presence. In 2004 he moved to Haggin Marketing, a San Francisco advertising agency where he created highly successful print advertisements and other marketing vehicles for Dell, Inc.

Julian currently works as Vice President, Editorial Director at Bank of America, overseeing the editorial content of its web presences.