Verdict Reviews
No-scandal, no-embargo-favours game reviews scored out of 10 safety pins. We buy our own copies so the verdict stays ours.
New review every Tuesday & Friday
Sydney // Est. 2017 // Independent
Press Start On Australia’s Loudest Gaming Zine
Cut-and-paste game reviews, esports post-mortems, hardware teardowns and retro deep-dives — photocopied straight from a Darlinghurst back room and stapled together with opinions we refuse to soften.
Issue #58 out now
By The Numbers
The Print Run So Far
0.0MMonthly readers across AU & NZ
0+Reviews published, zero sponsored scores
0Volunteer contributors on the masthead
0 yrsStapling issues since 2017
What We Do
Columns, Coverage & Chaos
Every issue is assembled by hand and posted online the same night. Here is what lands in the mailbox and on the feed.
Esports Post-Mortems
Grand-final breakdowns of the Melbourne Esports Open and OCE ladders — draft reads, choke points and the plays that actually mattered.
Weekly during active splits
Hardware Teardowns
We crack open handhelds, mechanical boards and capture cards on the bench, then rate repairability, coil whine and value in AUD.
Monthly long-read
Retro Corner
CRT-lit revisits of Amiga, PS1 and arcade cabinets, plus preservation notes for anyone hoarding carts in a Newtown share-house.
Fortnightly column
Speedrun Spotlights
Frame-by-frame chats with OCE runners chasing world records, including route diagrams you can actually follow.
Ties in with weekend marathons
Zine Membership
Back the print run: risograph issue posted to your door, sticker sheet, and Discord access to editorial planning.
From AUD $9 / month · print from AUD $84 / year
The Crew
Who Staples It Together
A rotating masthead of players, tinkerers and loud opinions working out of the Darlinghurst studio.
Editor-in-Chief & Reviews
Marlo T.
Started the zine on a borrowed photocopier in 2017. Will fight you over frame-pacing and the correct way to hold a d-pad.
Esports Desk
Priya N.
Ex-amateur support main turned analyst. Covers every OCE grand final with a spreadsheet and far too much cold brew.
Hardware & Teardowns
Dez K.
Runs the solder bench. Has opinions about thermal paste that could clear a room and repair guides that could save one.
Retro & Preservation
Frankie L.
Keeper of the CRT wall. Archives PAL-region oddities and writes the Retro Corner column between arcade repairs.
Reader Mail
Torn From The Postbag
Real letters and DMs from readers across the country. Handwritten, then photocopied onto the wall.
Your teardown of the Steam Deck OLED saved me $200 — I fixed the drift myself instead of buying a new controller. No other AU site bothered with the repair angle.
The only review that called out the day-one patch nonsense without softening it for a preview code. I trust your scores more than the big outlets now.
Got the risograph print issue in the mail and it is genuinely beautiful. Framed the cover art. Membership is the easiest $9 I spend each month.
Followed your speedrun route diagram for the any% and shaved four minutes off my PB on the first night. Ridiculously clear write-up.
The esports post-mortem after the Melbourne Open final read like it was written by someone who actually watched every game. Because you did.
Retro Corner sent me down a rabbit hole restoring my dad’s old Amiga 500. The preservation notes were exactly what I needed.
FAQ
Questions, Answered Loudly
The things landing in our inbox most often. If your question is not here, the postbox is always open.
Membership
The AUD $9 / month tier unlocks our editorial Discord, early access to reviews, and a monthly sticker drop. The AUD $84 / year print tier adds the physical risograph zine posted to any Australian address, plus everything in the digital tier. You can cancel any time from your account page.
Right now the physical zine ships within Australia only, because riso print runs are small and postage abroad gets expensive fast. International readers can grab the full digital issue as a high-resolution PDF the same day it prints.
Yes. Choose the gift option at checkout and we’ll send a printed card and a start date of your choosing. Gift print subscriptions include the current issue if it is still in stock.
Our Coverage
We accept review code so we can cover games at launch, but we never accept payment for a score or a placement, and every sponsored post is labelled in bold at the top. When we use publisher code instead of a retail copy, we say so in the review.
Everything is scored out of 10 safety pins against what the game is trying to be, not against an imaginary perfect title. We re-review after major patches when a game has meaningfully changed, and the updated verdict sits alongside the original.
Absolutely — that is how half the masthead started. Send a short pitch with an angle and a rough word count to our contact form. We read every pitch and reply within about a week, and we pay contributors for published pieces.
Visiting & Contact
The studio at 58 Burton Street is a working space rather than a shopfront, but we run open zine nights roughly once a month where you can watch an issue get assembled. Dates go out first to members and then on the site.
The editorial desk is staffed Monday to Friday, 10am to 6pm AEST. Email is the fastest way to reach us and we usually reply within one business day.
Contact
Send Us A Letter
Story tips, pitches, corrections or just to argue about frame-pacing — fill in the form or reach the desk directly.
- Phone+61 2 9360 5314
- Email[email protected]
- Studio58 Burton Street, Darlinghurst NSW 2010
- Desk hoursMon–Fri, 10am–6pm AEST
Darlinghurst · Sydney · NSW 2010