A
video games magazine published by
EMAP during the first half of the 1990s, the first UK magazine dedicated to covering the
Sega Mega Drive format (later followed by
Future Publishing's
MEGA). Megatech's cover bore the strapline '
Mega Drive Hyper Gaming
Technique'- this was a reference to the magazine's early philosophy to explore the actual gameplay of popular and notable games with extensive
maps and
walkthroughs and the encouragement of reader participation.
For most of its run Megatech was edited by Paul Glancey, a veteran of the celebrated 8-bit era magazines such as Zzap!64 (and now working at Eidos Interactive). Most of the magazine's content was written by Mark Holmes and Tom Guise (frequent butt of jokes in several EMAP magazines, and the original writer of the Cackman column in CVG). Presumably a portion of the content was written by freelancers, who were not prominently credited.
The magazine's graphic designer was Jeff Zie, who managed to infuse the magazine with a very distinctive pseudo-branding, complete with skull logo (a stylised 'M.T.') and fairly extensive use of game concept art and a few specially commissioned pieces. The magazine had a line of merchandise which included a black long-sleeve t-shirt with the skull logo. They once ran a print advertisement which showed the logo shorn into the back of someone's hair (although I don't think they ever revealed who this hapless individual was).
The first 20 or so issues each had 84 colour pages with decent binding and a very glossy cover. Later issues expanded to 132 (stapled) pages with a larger page format, basically the same as Mean Machines Sega and Nintendo Magazine System. Ironically, the magazine hit the end of its run just as the Sega Mega Drive entered its golden age (1993-1994), unable to attract a large readership in the face of the competition. (Sadly, it was probably the magazine's sister publication Mean Machines Sega that took most of its readers.) When the axe fell, EMAP sold off the magazine to one of their competitors, who managed to keep it going for a few months with a dwindling page count and erratic distribution.
The magazine's writing style was refreshingly short on hyperbole, and had a drier sense of humour than the 'Viz'-style humour of Mean Machines and CVG. The magazine eschewed the old standby of having 'comedy' characters hosting regular sections- with the exception of one character who seemed to be intended as a parody of that phenomenon: Mystic Matthew, a psychic baby that 'predicted' the contents of next month's issue. There was also an obsessive running gag about KFC's Popcorn Chicken for a few issues, although in the end I think they managed to get Tom Guise to take his medication.
Incidentally, 'Megatech' was also the name of a Sega arcade board that allowed players to chose from a selection of Sega Mega Drive games.