Joe Epstein

A devotee of arcade fighting games since first seeing a Street Fighter 2 cabinet in a bowling alley in his childhood, Joe discovered the nascent fighting game scene in the late 90s through ancient internet meeting spots like alt.games.sf2 and fighters dot net. He started traveling to and helping run tournaments throughout the early to mid aughts. Through this he connected with BradyGames, where his first project was an official guide for Street Fighter Alpha Anthology on PlayStation 2.

From there, Joe wrote dozens of official guidebooks for BradyGames till its absorption by Prima Games, then for Prima Games till the printed game guide industry all but ended. He wrote for almost every genre of game and for almost every major game company, with a particular focus on fighting games; at this point, nobody has written more officially-endorsed English-language fighting game guides than he has. After the end of Brady/Prima, Joe transitioned into designing game combat and narratives (most notably in Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, with the Power Ranger version of Street Fighter's Chun-Li, and in Mortal Kombat 1, with guest fighters Homelander, Ghostface, and T-1000).