Long before video game journalism became a profession large enough to support websites, television programs, podcasts, and entire editorial staffs, Edward J. Semrad was writing about games in the pages of a Wisconsin newspaper.
His timing makes his career especially important.
Semrad covered home video games during the early 1980s boom, continued writing while much of the American console business collapsed, reported on Nintendo before the Nintendo Entertainment System had established itself in the United States, and then became one of the defining editorial figures of Electronic Gaming Monthly during the magazine era of the 1990s.
Yet Semrad’s importance to video game history extends beyond the articles carrying his name. He was also a serious player, a photographer of games that had not yet been released, an international trade-show reporter, a recipient of prototype cartridges, and, perhaps unintentionally, an archivist.
Decades after some of the games he covered had disappeared from stores, materials Semrad kept from his career became evidence historians could use to reconstruct parts of the industry that might otherwise have been lost. The Video Game History Foundation has called him one of the relatively few nationally syndicated game reviewers working in the United States and has since digitized material from his personal collection.
The story of Ed Semrad is therefore larger than the story of one magazine editor. It reaches back to a time when simply convincing a mainstream newspaper to devote regular space to video games placed a writer near the frontier of an emerging form of journalism.
A Player Before the Magazine Editor
Semrad did not approach video games only as an outside observer.
Surviving issues of Electronic Games show that he was already competing for national recognition as a home video game player during the early 1980s. The magazine’s National Arcade Scoreboard listed an Ed Semrad of Waukesha, Wisconsin, with a score of 199,990 in Asteroids for the Atari Video Computer System. The same March 1983 scoreboard credited him with 4,717,850 points in Defender and 93,300 in Spacechase. Later rankings recorded even larger scores, including more than 27 million points in Defender.
That background matters because Semrad emerged as a critic during an era when the boundaries between enthusiast, expert player, journalist, collector, and industry insider were still being established.
Today, a video game reviewer can reasonably be expected to receive advance software, attend controlled preview events, communicate with public-relations departments, and work within an editorial system designed specifically around games. During the early 1980s, much of that infrastructure was still developing.
Semrad belonged to the generation helping create it.
His experience as a dedicated player gave him the vocabulary necessary to discuss games in ways that went beyond treating them as electronic novelties. Difficulty, responsiveness, graphics, strategy, challenge, replay value, and technical performance could be evaluated by someone who had already spent significant time trying to master the machines.
That perspective followed him into The Milwaukee Journal.
Video Adventures in the Milwaukee Journal
Semrad’s newspaper work is one of the most historically valuable parts of his career.
During the 1980s, he wrote a regular video game column for The Milwaukee Journal. Surviving columns show him moving across the home game industry rather than restricting himself to a single company or console. Atari, Coleco, Commodore, Sega, Nintendo, arcade conversions, peripherals, role-playing games, sports titles, action games, and strategy advice all appeared in his coverage.
The importance of that archive becomes greater when placed against the condition of the American video game business during the middle of the decade.
The conventional version of video game history often moves quickly from Atari’s collapse to Nintendo’s arrival. In the simplified telling, the American home console industry crashes in 1983 and remains largely dormant until the NES revives it.
Contemporary reporting complicates that picture.
Atari software continued to appear. ColecoVision owners continued buying games. Computers remained major gaming platforms. Sega entered American homes with the Master System. Smaller publishers tried to survive in a difficult retail environment. Enthusiasts continued playing, collecting, trading information, and looking for new releases even when major retailers had become wary of the console business.
Semrad was documenting that period while it happened.
During a Video Game History Foundation discussion about reconstructing Atari release history, historian Kevin Bunch described Semrad’s newspaper column as particularly useful because it continued through precisely those years. Bunch recalled finding Semrad reporting specific information about games appearing at Sears when other surviving sources were vague about when those products actually reached stores. Frank Cifaldi similarly emphasized how unusual it was to find a weekly game column extending through the industry’s troubled middle years.
For historians, those articles are more than old reviews.
They are dated evidence.
Reporting the Industry Through the Crash
This distinction becomes particularly important when studying the video game crash.
A later historian knows which consoles survived, which companies failed, and which games eventually became classics. Semrad did not have that advantage. When he wrote about a new cartridge, an unfamiliar system, or a struggling publisher, the industry’s future remained unknown.
His columns preserve that uncertainty.
One 1985 article discussed the possibility that readers might possess rare Atari games, reflecting an industry in which cartridges that had once been disposable consumer products were already becoming collectibles. Other columns continued evaluating new releases instead of treating American console gaming as dead.
That persistent coverage helps reveal a market that contracted dramatically without disappearing completely.
It also placed Semrad in an unusual position when a Japanese company named Nintendo prepared another attempt to sell a home video game system to Americans.
Before Nintendo Ruled America
On October 5, 1985, Semrad published one of the most historically important articles of his newspaper career, “New Nintendo System Way Ahead of the Field.”
The title itself captures the situation.
Nintendo was not yet the dominant name in American home video games. The NES had not yet become the gray box sitting beneath millions of televisions. Super Mario Bros. had not yet transformed Mario into one of the most recognizable characters in entertainment.
Semrad was looking at the system before Americans knew how the story would end.
His article identified Nintendo’s planned software lineup and discussed games expected for the new hardware. Among the titles he named were 10-Yard Fight, Baseball, Excitebike, Golf, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Tennis, Wild Gunman, Wrecking Crew, and Super Mario Bros.
That column has become useful evidence in modern attempts to reconstruct the NES launch and even the complicated American release history of Super Mario Bros. Researchers examining when Nintendo’s games actually reached American consumers have repeatedly returned to Semrad’s October 1985 reporting because it preserves what Nintendo was presenting before the launch had become legend.
It is an excellent example of why contemporary journalism matters.
Marketing memories change. Corporate histories simplify messy launches. Release dates are copied from one database to another until estimates begin to look like established facts.
A newspaper printed on October 5, 1985 cannot know what later historians want it to say.
It simply records what a reporter knew on October 5, 1985.
Semrad Was Not a Nintendo Cheerleader
His early enthusiasm for Nintendo did not make Semrad an unquestioning supporter of the company.
As the NES expanded, his criticism could be direct.
In August 1986 he published “Nintendo Fails to Get Its Action Together,” evidence that his assessment of the system could change when he believed Nintendo was falling short. The contrast with his enthusiastic 1985 preview is useful because it demonstrates the difference between reporting on an impressive piece of hardware and automatically endorsing everything its manufacturer did.
By 1987, however, Nintendo’s software library was rapidly giving Semrad more to cover.
His columns included strategy features for Super Mario Bros., a favorable review of Konami’s Castlevania, coverage of SNK’s Ikari Warriors, exercise software, racing games, and other releases arriving during the NES expansion.
One particularly notable article appeared on August 1, 1987.
Semrad reviewed The Legend of Zelda and awarded it a perfect 10.
The following week he returned with tips for players having trouble with the game. Other columns enlisted local players and recognized high scorers or accomplishments, giving his coverage a community element that anticipated some of the reader interaction later associated with dedicated gaming magazines.
The surviving “Video Adventures” archive documents this remarkable run of material. In 1987 and 1988 alone, Semrad wrote about Super Mario Bros., Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda, Ikari Warriors, Section Z, 3-D WorldRunner, Deadly Towers, Athena, Wizards & Warriors, Wonder Boy, Metal Gear, Life Force, Super Mario Bros. 2, the Power Pad, and Phantasy Star, among many others.
Seen individually, these are reviews and strategy columns.
Seen together, they are a running record of the American console industry’s reconstruction.
From the Newspaper to Electronic Gaming Monthly
By the end of the 1980s, the gaming press was changing.
Nintendo’s success had demonstrated that the American home console market had returned. Sega was building its own challenge. NEC entered the American market with the TurboGrafx-16. Japanese games increasingly shaped what American players wanted to know about, while the coming 16-bit competition created demand for information that general newspapers could not realistically provide in sufficient volume.
Dedicated video game magazines had room to grow.
Semrad became part of one of the most important of them.
Early issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly identify Edward J. Semrad as an associate editor, placing him alongside the staff during the magazine’s formative period. His role increased in the following years, and surviving issues identify him as an editor before he eventually became editor-in-chief.
The move was logical.
At The Milwaukee Journal, Semrad had already been doing many of the things a dedicated gaming magazine required. He reviewed software, tracked hardware, attended to technical details, communicated with experienced players, followed upcoming products, and treated games as an industry worthy of continuing coverage.
At EGM, those instincts could be applied on a much larger scale.
The EGM Review Crew
For readers who grew up with gaming magazines in the 1990s, Semrad became especially recognizable through EGM’s review system.
Instead of presenting a single supposedly definitive opinion, the magazine’s Review Crew placed several critics beside one another. Readers could see disagreement on the page and gradually learn each critic’s preferences.
Semrad became one of those recognizable critical voices.
The structure acknowledged something that game criticism had increasingly discovered: two experienced players could play the same game and arrive at very different conclusions.
A technically impressive title might leave one reviewer bored. A difficult game might appear challenging to one critic and unfair to another. An arcade conversion could be impressive to someone familiar with the hardware limitations while disappointing another player comparing it directly with the original machine.
That made the personality of the critic important.
Semrad’s newspaper career had already been built around the idea that the writer knew games well enough for readers to trust his judgment. EGM magnified that relationship nationally.
His opinions were no longer confined principally to Wisconsin newspaper readers. They were reaching the rapidly expanding audience of a dedicated gaming publication at exactly the moment when Nintendo, Sega, NEC, Atari, SNK, and eventually Sony were fighting for attention.
Chasing Games Around the World
Semrad’s editorial work involved more than sitting in an office with stacks of cartridges.
One of the defining characteristics of EGM during its early years was its hunger for information from outside the United States.
Japanese trade shows were especially important. American players increasingly knew that major games could exist in Japan months before they reached North American stores, if they reached them at all. A magazine capable of showing those games early gained an enormous advantage.
Semrad became deeply involved in gathering that material.
Frank Cifaldi of the Video Game History Foundation later described Semrad as both a perfectionist and a completionist. If a game appeared at a trade show, Semrad wanted evidence of it.
This created a technical problem.
There were no convenient digital screenshot buttons for a journalist standing in front of an unreleased console game in 1991. To publish clear images, someone had to photograph a television or monitor without producing reflections, distortion, scan lines, or other visual problems.
Semrad became exceptionally skilled at it.
His interest in photography combined with modified video equipment and an almost obsessive desire to document software. The Video Game History Foundation describes him using a homemade device nicknamed the “cone of silence” while photographing games at trade shows. Another editor could play while Semrad positioned his camera against the display and captured images.
When a game was represented only by video footage, he waited for the necessary frames.
When photography was prohibited, he sometimes looked for ways to photograph material from farther away.
Cifaldi even recounts an occasion when Semrad rerouted the video signal from a demonstration station through a camcorder so footage could be recorded and later turned into magazine coverage.
These stories sound almost absurd in an era when thousands of screenshots can be distributed electronically before a game launches.
In the early 1990s, however, obtaining the image could itself be journalism.
Photographing Games That Disappeared
Semrad’s determination produced an unexpected consequence.
Some games he photographed were never released.
Others changed significantly before reaching stores.
As a result, EGM sometimes preserved visual evidence of software that later disappeared from the commercial record. The Video Game History Foundation has noted that there are unfinished or unreleased games for which photographs taken by Semrad represent some of the only surviving evidence that a particular version ever existed.
Footage from the 1991 Tokyo Toy Show demonstrates how this process worked.
Semrad can be seen photographing an in-development version of Mega Man 4. Material captured during that trip later became historically useful because it showed content that changed before the finished game reached consumers.
What had originally been created to fill the pages of next month’s magazine eventually became evidence for historians studying development.
That transformation is one of the recurring themes of early video game journalism.
A screenshot was news in 1991.
Thirty years later, it could be an archival artifact.
EGM2 and the Expansion of the Magazine Era
By the middle of the 1990s, gaming magazines had become large businesses.
Semrad’s career grew with them.
In July 1994, Sendai Publishing launched EGM2, a companion publication to Electronic Gaming Monthly. Archival records identify Semrad as editor of the new magazine. Early issues covered an industry exploding outward across the Super NES, Genesis, Sega CD, 3DO, Jaguar, Neo Geo, 32X, arcade hardware, Japanese imports, and the approaching Sega Saturn and Sony PlayStation.
The scale of those magazines reflected how dramatically the world had changed since Semrad’s newspaper beginnings.
Only a decade earlier he had been writing during a period when retailers were trying to dispose of unwanted cartridges and commentators questioned the future of home video games.
Now magazines could devote hundreds of pages to upcoming software.
Video gaming had not merely recovered.
It had become too large for one magazine to contain comfortably.
Leaving EGM
The business surrounding EGM eventually changed as well.
Sendai Publishing’s gaming properties were acquired by Ziff Davis in the 1990s, bringing the magazine into another stage of its history. Archival histories of Semrad’s career indicate that he later moved into a chief correspondent role and departed EGM in 1998 after spending most of a decade helping shape the publication.
By then, video game journalism was almost unrecognizable compared with the environment in which he had begun.
There were numerous dedicated magazines, established review systems, professional public-relations departments, international reporting networks, recognizable gaming journalists, and an audience large enough to sustain extensive coverage.
The internet was also beginning to threaten the monthly publishing cycle that had made magazines like EGM so powerful.
Semrad had worked through nearly the entire transformation.
The Games in the Basement
The final chapter of Semrad’s historical importance did not become clear until much later.
During his years reviewing games, companies routinely sent him cartridges.
Some were ordinary retail products. Others were advance review copies or unfinished builds. A few represented games that never reached stores at all.
Semrad kept many of them.
In 2021, Frank Cifaldi and Kelsey Lewin of the Video Game History Foundation were invited to examine the video game material Semrad had accumulated. The physical collection remained Semrad’s, but he allowed the preservationists to inspect and digitally document the cartridges.
What they found transformed old review material into archival material.
The collection contained prototypes for Atari, Sega, and Nintendo hardware. Preservation specialists compared the software with known retail releases and existing prototype data, while material was distributed to researchers including Hidden Palace, SMS Power, and AtariProtos for further study.
Among the surviving material was an unreleased American localization called Crazy Land, dated May 27, 1991. The Japanese game was eventually released in Europe as The Trolls in Crazyland, but its planned American version never reached consumers. Semrad’s cartridge helped preserve evidence of that abandoned release.
Other prototypes represented games that did reach stores but survived in developmental form, allowing researchers to compare unfinished software with the final product.
A reviewer’s clutter had become a historical collection.
The Lost Sony Game
One discovery made the value of Semrad’s archive particularly clear.
Sony’s early American video game publishing operation once planned to release an NES game called Super Sushi Pinball. It was promoted alongside other planned titles but never appeared commercially.
For decades, it was effectively lost.
The Video Game History Foundation eventually discovered what may be the only surviving copy of the game in Semrad’s collection. With his permission, the cartridge was digitized and preserved.
The significance reaches beyond one obscure NES game.
Sony would later enter the hardware business with the PlayStation and become one of the most important companies in video game history. Super Sushi Pinball belonged to an earlier stage, when Sony’s American gaming presence was still centered on publishing software for other companies’ machines.
Without a review cartridge retained by a journalist, one piece of that history might have remained little more than an advertisement for a game no one could play.
From Disposable Review Copies to Historical Artifacts
The Semrad collection illustrates a larger preservation problem.
Video game companies did not necessarily create prototypes with history in mind.
A review build existed to get coverage before release. Once the article appeared and the final cartridge reached stores, the prototype could seem useless. Publishers sometimes requested materials back. Magazines discarded them. Employees took them home. Offices closed. Companies merged. Storage rooms were emptied.
Software disappeared.
The same could happen to photographs, press releases, promotional tapes, correspondence, magazines, handwritten notes, and trade-show documentation.
Semrad kept enough material that historians could recover pieces of this vanished working environment decades later.
His collection therefore preserves not only games but part of the process through which games became public knowledge.
A prototype sent to a reviewer connects developer, publisher, journalist, magazine, and player.
It is an artifact of communication.
Why Edward J. Semrad Matters
There is an understandable tendency to tell the history of video game journalism through the largest dedicated magazines and websites.
Semrad’s career shows why the story needs to begin earlier.
Before Electronic Gaming Monthly, before the mass circulation magazine wars of the 1990s, and before video game criticism became a recognizable profession, Semrad was documenting games in a mainstream newspaper.
He was there while Atari software still mattered.
He was there during the years usually compressed into the phrase “video game crash.”
He was there before the NES had proven itself.
He reviewed The Legend of Zelda when it was simply a new game rather than a monument of the medium.
Then he moved into EGM and helped cover an industry expanding faster than almost anyone could comfortably document. He photographed unfinished games at Japanese trade shows, reviewed releases for a national readership, edited magazines containing hundreds of pages of gaming material, and accumulated cartridges that companies had sent him because his opinion could influence consumers.
Years later, those same cartridges began answering historical questions.
That may ultimately be the most fitting way to understand Edward J. Semrad’s place in video game history.
His career began with playing games seriously enough to appear on national scoreboards. It developed into writing about them seriously enough for a newspaper to give them regular space. It expanded into editing one of America’s defining video game magazines.
And eventually, simply because so much of what passed through his hands survived, Ed Semrad helped preserve a part of the history he had spent decades recording.
Sources & Further Reading
Cifaldi, Frank. “The Prototypes in Ed Semrad’s Basement.” Video Game History Foundation, December 9, 2022. https://gamehistory.org/ed-semrad-roms/ Video Game History Foundation
Video Game History Foundation. “Living Atari’s History with Kevin Bunch.” Video Game History Hour, episode 13, January 6, 2021. https://gamehistory.org/ep-13-living-ataris-history-with-kevin-bunch/ Video Game History Foundation
Semrad, Edward J. “New Nintendo System Way Ahead of the Field.” Milwaukee Journal, October 5, 1985. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=ODsaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UioEAAAAIBAJ
Semrad, Edward J. “You Might Have a Rare Game in Your Collection.” Milwaukee Journal, August 31, 1985. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=fGkaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UioEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7097%2C10642764
Semrad, Edward J. “Nintendo Fails to Get Its Action Together.” Milwaukee Journal, August 9, 1986. https://archive.org/details/i-am-error-the-nintendo-family-computer-entertainment-system-platform
Semrad, Edward J. “Stumped by ‘Super Mario’? These Suggestions May Help.” Milwaukee Journal, April 11, 1987. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “Local Video Wizards Master ‘Super Mario’s’ Intricacies.” Milwaukee Journal, April 18, 1987. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “Konami’s ‘Castlevania’ a Superb Challenge.” Milwaukee Journal, June 27, 1987. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “NES’ Superb ‘Zelda’ Rates a Perfect 10.” Milwaukee Journal, August 1, 1987. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “Trouble with ‘Zelda’? These Tips May Help.” Milwaukee Journal, August 8, 1987. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “SNK’s ‘Ikari Warriors’ Is as Good as They Get.” Milwaukee Journal, August 15, 1987. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “‘Gear’ a 10+ Beauty from Konami Spinoff.” Milwaukee Journal, August 20, 1988. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “‘Super Mario 2’ Isn’t the Best.” Milwaukee Journal, October 15, 1988. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “‘Power Pad’ Isn’t Worth It.” Milwaukee Journal, November 26, 1988. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “‘Phantasy’ Is Costly, Difficult, Excellent.” Milwaukee Journal, December 3, 1988. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “‘R-Type’—Sega’s Best Ever.” Milwaukee Journal, January 7, 1989. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
Semrad, Edward J. “Nintendo Licenses New Games, Bides Its Time on 16-Bit Unit.” Milwaukee Journal, July 11, 1989, 8D. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=4GgaAAAAIBAJ&sjid=7SsEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6939%2C2963419
Semrad, Edward J. “‘Thunder’ Shows Unlicensed Games Can Be Good.” Milwaukee Journal, March 13, 1990, 5D. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=7MYdAAAAIBAJ&sjid=CywEAAAAIBAJ&pg=6948%2C4356065
Semrad, Edward. “‘Mega Man’ as Good as They Come.” Milwaukee Journal, September 25, 1990. https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=C58aAAAAIBAJ&sjid=HCwEAAAAIBAJ&pg=7143%2C1081986
“National Arcade Scoreboard.” Electronic Games, March 1983. https://www.digitpress.com/library/magazines/electronic_games/electronic_games_mar83.pdf
Electronic Gaming Monthly, no. 2, July/August 1989. Video Game History Foundation Digital Archive. https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/4c15d6f0-29e5-4dcc-8550-9d7d4c32080f
Electronic Gaming Monthly, no. 8, 1990. Video Game History Foundation Digital Archive. https://archive.gamehistory.org/item/7812ccb2-9b64-4345-9312-8bda963921b1
Electronic Gaming Monthly. February 1991. https://www.archives.tg-16.com/EGM/EGM_1991_February.pdf
Video Game History Foundation. Electronic Gaming Monthly Archive. https://archive.gamehistory.org/folder/89024108-47f9-4718-a679-83a8710716d9
Hidden Palace. “Ed Semrad Lot.” December 2022. https://hiddenpalace.org/Ed_Semrad_Lot Hidden Palace
Hidden Palace. “Semradical!” December 9, 2022. https://hiddenpalace.org/News/Semradical
Hidden Palace. “Crazy Land (May 27, 1991 Prototype).” December 9, 2022. https://hiddenpalace.org/Crazy_Land_%28May_27%2C_1991_prototype%29 Hidden Palace
Hidden Palace. “Shadow of the Ninja (Oct. 16, 1990 Prototype).” December 9, 2022. https://hiddenpalace.org/Shadow_of_the_Ninja_%28Oct_16%2C_1990_prototype%29 Hidden Palace
Dayton, David. “Super Mario’s Release Date Is Missing!” The Mushroom Kingdom, October 18, 2010. https://themushroomkingdom.net/smb_release.shtml The Mushroom Kingdom
Altice, Nathan. I AM ERROR: The Nintendo Family Computer / Entertainment System Platform. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262028776/i-am-error/
Cifaldi, Frank. “The NES Launch Collection.” Video Game History Foundation, February 27, 2017. https://gamehistory.org/nes-launch-collection-1985/
Cifaldi, Frank. “Super Sushi Pinball.” Video Game History Foundation, December 25, 2023. https://gamehistory.org/super-sushi-pinball/
Vazquez, Suriel. “Footage of Cut Mini-Boss from Mega Man 4 Surfaces.” Game Informer, June 24, 2017. https://gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2017/06/24/footage-of-cut-mini-boss-from-mega-man-4-surfaces
Retromags. “Electronic Gaming Monthly.” Accessed October 14, 2026. https://www.retromags.com/publications/united-states/electronic-gaming-monthly/
Retromags. “EGM2.” Accessed October 14, 2026. https://www.retromags.com/publications/united-states/egm2/
Old School Gaming Relics. “Video Adventures Archive.” Accessed October 14, 2026. https://www.osgrelics.com/video-adventures
McFerran, Damien, and Jack Yarwood. “‘Pixels to Pages’ Is a Remarkable New YouTube Documentary Covering the History of Electronic Gaming Monthly.” Time Extension, December 4, 2025. https://www.timeextension.com/news/2025/12/pixels-to-pages-is-a-remarkable-new-youtube-documentary-covering-the-history-of-electronic-gaming-monthly
Carlson, Coury. “‘Pixels to Pages: The Story of Electronic Gaming Monthly’ Documentary.” RetroRGB, December 14, 2025. https://retrorgb.com/pixels-to-pages-the-story-of-electronic-gaming-monthly-documentary.html
Pixels to Pages: The Story of Electronic Gaming Monthly. My Life in Gaming and Game Sack, 2025. YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E010OPY1Tzw