Meta charset="utf-8", yet 'ç' and others are converted to '?'

Question

UTF-8 is present in the header, but still most 'less common' symbols are not converted correctly.

Example: the game The Interactive Adventures of Dog Mendon�a & Pizzaboy --> that should be 'ç'

This is the part of the code where the problem occurs:

        <tr>
          <td> ".$date." </td>
          <td>{$row['game_name']}</td>
          <td>{$row['game_platformlist']}</td>
          <td>";
                $query="SELECT * FROM genre WHERE genre_id=".$row['game_genre']; 
                $genreresult=mysqli_query($link,$query);                                    $genrerow=mysqli_fetch_assoc($genreresult);
                    echo $genrerow['genre_name'];
                    echo "</td>
          <td>{$row['game_dev']}</td>
          <td>{$row['game_type']}</td>
          <td><a href=\"{$row['game_site']}\" target=\"_blank\"><img src=\"images/officialwebsite.png\" title=\"Official website\"/></a>
                            <a href=\"{$row['game_trailer']}\" target=\"_blank\"><img src=\"images/youtube.png\" title=\"Trailer\"/></a></td>
          <td>{$row['game_note']}</td>
        </tr>";

Is there a way to solve this problem? I tried iconv ISO-8859-1 but that didn't work.