My first experience of Jaz's brand of video game journalism came through the much-thumbed pages of the Mean Machines monthly video game magazine in the early '90s. I remember my first purchase of Mean Machines magazine vividly. I bought Issue 7 of Mean Machines from local Happy Shopper branded newsagents with The Simpsons, complete with Homer strangling Bart, on the front cover as the headline stars of that month's magazine.
Whilst reading the magazine from cover to cover I remember feeling like I had just become a part of a cool club of video games-loving pals. Jaz's writing and the rest of the Mean Machines staff writing (including Richard Leadbetter from Digital Foundry fame for example) was perfectly in sync with its audience.
You knew you could trust the reviews from Mean Machines as they knew their onions and Jaz and the gang were independent. In a future issue, there would be a cover giveaway of a miniature Jaz Figure which I cherished for many years and in some ways added to Jaz's legendary status in my own video gaming world.
It's now 2025 and Jaz has put virtual pen to paper to chronicle his lifetime in gaming by writing this wonderful book called "Games of a Lifetime" by Jaz Rignall.
