Mega Visions Magazine reboot – Learn about our exciting news here

We’re here to share some exciting news about the future of Mega Visions and some changes that are in store for the magazine.

But before we get into that, we have had many new patrons over the past six months, so we want to provide some background to make sure everyone understands the context for the changes.

In our January update, we shared that Sketchcraft was stepping down from his role as Mega Visions art director to pursue other opportunities in his professional career. Because he played such a large part in our design process, it was necessary to make some big changes for how we create the magazine.

But as we sat down and looked at where we wanted to take Mega Visions, we realized our vision went far beyond merely redesigning the magazine, and we decided a “reboot” of sorts was in order.

Let’s break down all the changes bit by bit.

Magazine redesign

When we started our redesign, we were all in agreement that we wanted the new Mega Visions to still feel familiar but offer a fresh, new look and feel. With the help of our new designer, Dan (yay, go Dan!), we created the next generation of Mega Visions, which offers a cleaner, simpler design but still retains some of our original style.

For those who are worried about missing Sketchcraft’s awesome art in the magazine, fear not because he will continue doing our covers into the future. In addition to Sketch, we’ll keep adding awesome new artists to contribute interior work in each issue. Trust us, we have some exciting ideas in store!

There will still be some tweaks in the first few issues, but we’re excited about the new look and feel and hope you feel the same!

More efficient, regular printing, Fresher articles

We know the long wait between issues has been frustrating, so one of our top goals was to cut down our production time. We believe we’ve been able to achieve that through a more efficient design process; that means we’ll be able to make more issues in less time than before!

For the time being, we’ll continue our quarterly publishing frequency, but our goal is to shrink our design and layout time to eventually return to bi-monthly publishing. As our issues will print more frequently, an added benefit is the ability to cover more stories with a news element.

And once the world re-opens and conventions, expos, trade shows and press events open up, you can bet Mega Visions will be there covering it through our various channels, to include the magazine.

Expanded scope

At its core, Mega Visions will always be a SEGA-focused magazine, but there are so many awesome stories, developers, games and people that we want to share about that exist beyond SEGA. 

We want to share those stories with our readers, so that’s why beginning in our next issue, Mega Visions will cover developers, games and people across the entire industry, not just solely SEGA. Additionally, we’re really excited to cover more of the fantastic work going on in the indie game community, especially those games inspired by classic retro games we know and love.

Our goal isn’t to simply start covering random non-SEGA games but instead, our focus will expand our coverage on long-form feature content that will hopefully provide you just as much meanginful value to read as it might be to collect. These stories will range from delving deep into a game’s development history or taking an in-depth look at a deserving developer’s career and personal life.

We’ve already brought on several new writers and are excited to share more with you about this in the coming weeks.

Mega Visions Issue renumbering

Another important change we’re making is beginning with our next issue, we’re resetting our issue numbering back to Issue #01. Please let us explain why we’re making this decision.

We launched our Kickstarter about 5 years ago in June/July 2016 to fund six issues of an interactive, digital version of the magazine. We successfully completed all six issues, and beginning with Issues #07 through #09, we began printing physical copies.

However, because those first six issues integrated so many multimedia elements (ie audio interviews, videos, music, pop-up info boxes, etc), the process to convert them to print form would take too long to be commercially viable.

Most importantly, we’ve always wanted to offer our readers the opportunity to own a physical copy of Mega Visions Issue #01, and beginning with the next issue, we’ll be able to do just that. 

What happens to our old issues?

Our previous issues are incredibly important to us because they represent all the work it’s taken to get us here. The previous nine issues will not be forgotten and will become part of the Mega Visions Legacy issues.

More information will come in the coming months, but we do have some ideas to do something fun with our old issues.

What’s next for Mega Visions?

Mega Visions Issue #01 will start shipping this August in its all new look and format! You can learn more about all the exciting news by watching our upcoming podcasts and streams that will be announced here and on our social media channels.

We’re very excited to venture onto this next chapter, and we hope you stick with us for the ride! Be sure to follow us on Patreon for more updates.