Short answers, pulled from the story.
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. The team worked out of homes across the San Francisco Bay Area before leasing their first office in Redwood City, California at the end of 1989.
GamePro ended monthly publication with its October 2011 issue after more than 22 years of publication. The magazine and website officially shut down on the 5th of December 2011, following a brief and unsuccessful attempt at a quarterly format.
ProTips were short captions placed on article images, phrased as expert advice. A widely shared image purporting to show a GamePro caption from a 1993 Doom review, reading "PROTIP: To defeat the Cyberdemon, shoot at it until it dies," went viral as a meme for its self-evident obviousness. That specific image was later revealed to be a fake, created as an April Fools' joke for the fansite doomworld.com.
Yes. In 1993, GamePro's VP of marketing Debra Vernon attended a meeting between the games industry and the Consumer Electronics Show and identified an opportunity. Company president Patrick Ferrell then partnered with the IDSA to launch E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, which became one of the largest trade show launches in industry history.
GamePro originally rated games across five categories including Graphics, Sound, Gameplay, FunFactor, and Challenge on a scale of 1.0 to 5.0. After 2002, the category system was replaced by a single overall star rating on the same scale, with an Editors' Choice Award given to games earning 4.5 or 5.0 stars.
GamePro operated international editions in France, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Turkey, Australia, Brazil, and Greece. Some editions shared North American content while others shared only the name and logo. Despite the closure of U.S. operations in 2011, the magazine continued to operate in France, Germany, and Spain.