United Kingdom · 1992–1996
A British SNES magazine from Future Publishing, revered for its deep focus on Japanese games, anime, and import RPGs, and for Wil Overton's manga-style cover art — a publication that shaped a generation's love of Japanese pop culture.
Super Play was a British magazine dedicated to the Super Nintendo, published by Future Publishing from October 1992 to September 1996. In a UK market full of competent multiformat magazines, Super Play distinguished itself through an unusually deep and affectionate focus on Japan. It covered not just the games that reached British shelves but the wider Japanese market — including many role-playing games that were never officially released in the UK or Europe — treating import titles and the Japanese scene as central rather than exotic curiosities. That editorial obsession made the magazine a bridge to a culture most of its readers had little access to. Super Play covered the JRPG genre in real depth at a time when few of those games were localised, and, recognising the close ties between Japanese console RPGs and animation, it ran substantial coverage of manga and anime, much of it by the noted UK writer Helen McCarthy. For many British readers in the early-to-mid 1990s, Super Play was a first serious encounter with anime and with Japanese games they might never be able to buy — and it is credited with helping push forward the then-nascent UK market for anime. Visually the magazine was defined by artist Wil Overton, whose manga-influenced illustrations graced the covers and filled the interior. Overton illustrated every one of Super Play's 47 covers and eventually wrote for the magazine as well, giving it a distinctive, hand-drawn Japanese aesthetic that set it apart from the screenshot-heavy design of its rivals and became inseparable from its identity. That house style, combined with a witty, knowledgeable editorial voice, earned the magazine a devotion that has only grown in retrospect. Super Play's reputation as a legendary 1990s games magazine is secure. It was succeeded in 1997 by N64 Magazine — which carried over staff and Overton as art editor but was far less focused on imports and RPGs — and in 2017 Future produced a one-off Super Play revival to mark the SNES Classic Edition, an act of nostalgia that only underlined how fondly the original is remembered. Its influence lies in having taken Japanese games and culture seriously, and stylishly, for an English-speaking audience, years before doing so became mainstream.