"I Read it for the Articles"

Over at The Armchair Empire - Infinite we recently published an interview with Pamela Horton, a.k.a. Miss October 2012, who it turns out really is a fan and player of video games. She even has aspirations of getting into the industry on the development side (specifically, character design).

What I really enjoyed with this interview was the fact I did some actual research. Well, maybe more accurately, confirmed something with a source.

During the course of the interview, Ms. Horton mentioned she'd had a letter published in an old issue of Nintendo Power when she was twelve. Not that I was sceptical, but it's one of those things that could be said off the cuff (i.e. filler) in order to create an air of credibility.

1. Math. She's 24. If the letter was published when she was 12 that would put the publishing date at ~2000.
2. Narrowed down the issue numbers in 2000 and see if there were scans of those issues to be had online.
3. Some shady as hell sources for magazine scans so I gave that up and directed a Tweet to Phil Theobald, one of the editors at Nintendo Power. I asked if they had a database of mailbag names they could dig into to try to find Ms. Horton's name. No database.
4. Mr. Theobald asked for some of the pertinent details and based on that went through the library of Nintendo Power magazines from 2000 and located the issue in question: November, issue #138. ("Hey You, Pikachu!" is on the cover.) He took a picture of the evidence and Tweeted it to me.

Exhibit "A"

It took a few days from start to finish for the research to end positively, but for some reason that bit of texture, that published evidence, brought the article to another level for me.

Now it wasn't just what Ms. Horton had to say that was being used as evidence that she was into video games; I had something that pointed to the fact she was a gamer stretching back to childhood. She wasn't being "packaged" and "marketed" in that regard. Playboy wasn't playing up that part of her life as some kind of come-on to attract the 18 - 35 male demographic. Ms. Horton's love of games is genuine.

That part felt really good. I just wish I had more opportunities to write and research articles like this or the four-part Radical Entertainment feature I wrote at the beginning of this year.