Tell me that is not fucking awesome. Go ahead and try. You can't can you? Know why? BECAUSE IT'S FUCKING AWESOME. Game Informer is celebrating it's 200th issue with 8 different covers, including the Final Fantasy III (VI) crew, Link, Mario, Gordon Freeman, Tetris, Claude (the silent protagonist from Grand Theft Auto III), the Demon enemy from DOOM, and Samus Aran. It is also dishing up its Top 200 video game list as the successor to its Top 100 list from Issue 100.

My relationship with Game Informer started early. It was '92 or '93 when one day, while buying a game at Funcoland, the employee inquired whether or not we wanted a subscription to Game Informer, and after a bit of begging my mother, she agreed, and I took home the current issue that day and started receiving them monthly. I was a Game Informer junkie, I got to know the editors' tastes in games like the back of my hand, I sent in envelope art, and cheered when Andrew Reiner was in the Perfect Dark multiplayer. Of course, like all children of the cyber age, I soon started spending my time on gaming websites, with less time spent flipping the pages of gaming magazines, until eventually I let my subscription run out, and chose not to renew it.

I have to say though, I believe I will be purchasing Issue 200 of Game Informer. If not for the cover art, for the hope that maybe, for even a second, I can go back to the times when spoilers weren't lurking around every corner, when you had to wait a month, not an hour, to hear the latest gaming news, when I waited anxiously for the mail to come in hopes that the mailman had delivered the newest issue so I could take it back to my room, and devour every screenshot, every cheat code, every bit of information it held.

Then I will come back to Destructoid to see the 4 or 5 news pieces that developed in that hour.

[Via MolotovCupcake's Twitter]