I'm unsure how popular GameNOW magazine was, but over the course of two years, they pulled off one of the weirdest running gags I've seen in a game magazine, just to have fun at the expense of an irate reader who didn't like Final Fantasy VIII.
A little background: even though there were only 27
Not from US or UK, but all game magazines I can remember from the 90s and early 00s had that kind of snarky tone in some way really. They loved taunting their readers, and some even trash talked a lot.
In several of those, there was a specific character whose whole job was to answer reader’s mail in the most antagonistic way possible. Of course part of the game was readers expecting to be treated like shit, and writing in an exaggerated need rage and aggressive tone themselves.
IIRC even Nintendo Power had an acerbic fan mail section