The magazine was published monthly (most recently from its headquarters in Oakland, California) with October 2011 being its last issue, after over 22 years of publication.

GamePro's February 2010 issue introduced a redesigned layout and a new editorial direction focused on the people and culture of its gaming.

Gamepro was first established in late 1988 by Patrick Ferrell, his sister-in-law Leeanne McDermott, and the husband-wife design team of Michael and Lynne Kavish.

They worked out of their houses throughout the San Francisco Bay Area before leasing their first office in Redwood City, California at the end of 1989.

The later addition of John Rousseau as publisher and editor-in-chief Wes Nihei, as well as renowned artist Francis Mao, established Gamepro as a large, profitable worldwide publication.

[5] Francis Mao, acting in his role as art director for the nascent GamePro, contracted game illustrator Marc Ericksen to create the premiere cover for the first edition of the magazine.

In 1993, Patrick Ferrell sent Debra Vernon, VP of marketing, to a meeting between the games industry and the Consumer Electronics Show (CES).

Early in its lifespan, the magazine also included comic book pages about the adventures of a superhero named Gamepro who was a video game player from the real world brought into a dimension where video games were real to save it from creatures called the Evil Darklings.

Gamepro also appeared in several international editions, including France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Brazil and Greece.

While losing some of the more dated elements of the magazine, the new arrangement focused on five main insertions: HD game images, more reviews and previews per issue, www.gamepro.com community showcase, user contributions and insider news.

[7] Under Davison's direction, the magazine and website were redesigned in early 2010 with an editorial shift toward focusing on the people and culture of gaming.

Plans included partnering with sister company IDG TechNetwork to build a "boutique online network of sites.

In September 2010, Gamepro Media announced a new alliance with online magazine The Escapist offering marketers joint advertising programs for reaching an unduplicated male audience.

In November 2010, Julian Rignall joined Gamepro Media as its new vice-president of content, replacing John Davison, who resigned in September 2010.

[11] In February 2010, the magazine's main sections were:- At first, games were rated by five categories: Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, FunFactor, and Challenge.

Starting in October 1990, each score was accentuated with a cartoon face (The Gamepro Dude) depicting different expressions for different ratings.

In the January 1997 issue, they published a list of "The Top Ten Best RPGs Ever" which consisted of the following games:[14] Later in 2008, GamePro published another list of "The 26 Best RPGs of the All Time", the top ten of which consisted of the following games:[15] GamePro is credited with coming up with the concept of "Protip", a short piece of advice as if spoken by an expert usually attached to an image, which was explained by former writer Dan Amrich that as part of their editorial process, they were encouraged to caption the three-to-seven images used in an article with such advice.

The apparent advice, which is common sense and self-evident for players of first-person shooters like Doom, was widely mocked and created a meme of similarly obvious ProTips added as captions to pictures.