Magazines

576 KByte was a Hungarian games magazine published in Budapest by COMGAME from 1990 to the end of 2002. Its name added the Commodore 64's 64K to the Amiga 500's 512K, and it set its first readers a puzzle to work that out. It walked readers through Western games in Hungarian, opened its own games shop in 1992, ran a quiz show on cable television, and outlived the small-business form its publisher started as.

Future Publishing launched ACE in Bath in October 1987 as a multi-format games magazine for readers who took their games seriously, rating every game out of 1000 from a predicted interest curve. EMAP took it over in the summer of 1989 and ran it from London until the April 1992 issue, the last.

Acorn User began in the summer of 1982 as the official magazine for Acorn's Atom and the BBC Micro, published by Addison-Wesley for Acorn Computers. Redwood Publishing took it over in 1984, and Tony Quinn edited it through the BBC Micro's best years. It followed Acorn's machines to the Archimedes and the Risc PC, passed through Europress, IDG Media and Tau Press, and outlived Acorn itself, ending with issue 267 at Christmas 2003, when its title was merged into Qercus.

Amazing Computing began in 1986 at PiM Publications in Fall River, Massachusetts. Publisher Joyce A. Hicks and managing editor Don Hicks's magazine combined practical programming, applications, hardware and community software, continuing beyond Commodore's collapse before closing in 1999.

Gollner Publishing of Chichester launched Amiga Action in October 1989 as a sister to its ST Action. In the spring of 1990 a deal with Database Publications turned Gollner into Interactive Publishing and moved the magazine to Adlington Park, near Macclesfield; from 1991 it came out under the Europress name, and from the end of 1994 under IDG. It ran as a separate magazine until 1996, when Amiga Computing absorbed it as its games section.

Database Publications launched Amiga Computing in June 1988, more than a year before Amiga Format, and the magazine ran for 117 issues to October 1997. It passed from Database to the rest of the Europress group and, at the end of 1994, to IDG, whose British and American readers it served until it closed, more than three years after Commodore's collapse.

Amiga Format split from Future Publishing's ST/Amiga Format in the summer of 1989. It carried a coverdisk from the first issue, and in the first half of 1992 it had an audited circulation of 161,256. It ran for 136 issues, outlived Commodore by six years, and closed with the May 2000 issue.

Amiga Joker was a German Amiga games magazine founded by Michael Labiner, whose Joker Verlag published it from Haar, near Munich, from November 1989. By early 1992 it was printing 132,000 copies an issue. It reviewed games, followed the cracking and demo scenes in a monthly column, and interviewed the programmers behind the games. As the Amiga market shrank after Commodore's collapse it went bimonthly in the autumn of 1996, and that issue was its last.

Amiga Power was Future Publishing's games-only Amiga magazine. Launched by Matt Bielby with issue 1 in May 1991, it promised to review every game, to use the whole of its percentage scale, and to have 'none of this every game gets 80% stuff'. It ran for 65 issues and closed with the September 1996 issue.

Amiga Shopper was Future Publishing's magazine for the serious side of the Amiga: hardware tests, buyers' guides, programming and desktop publishing, and no games pages at all. It launched at 99p in April 1991 under Bob Wade, added a shareware cover disk in January 1993, and ended with issue 71, dated January 1997, when its subscribers were moved to Amiga Format.

A British Amiga magazine combining games with programming, graphics, hardware and practical advice. Antony Jacobson defended that mixture as a way to serve readers with different interests and levels of experience.

AmigaWorld began in 1985 as an American magazine devoted to Commodore's new computer. CW Communications/Peterborough's title combined explanations of the hardware with graphics, software, games and practical work, continuing to an April 1995 final issue.

Chris Anderson launched Amstrad Action from Somerton, Somerset, in October 1985 as the only title of his new company, Future Publishing. It reviewed CPC games with its Mastergame award from the first issue, carried a covertape on every issue from April 1991, and ran for 117 issues. The June 1995 issue looked like any other, with the next issue's on-sale date printed in it, but no further issue appeared.

Hobby Press launched Amstrad Semanal in Madrid on 3 September 1985, a weekly for the computer it called the boom of the year, modelled on its Spectrum weekly Microhobby. It ran for a hundred issues and nearly 4,000 pages, paid readers up to 100,000 pesetas for their programs, and in September 1987 turned monthly as Amstrad Personal, to cover Amstrad's PCW and PC as well as the CPC.

Newsfield launched Amtix! for Amstrad CPC owners with a free 16-page Issue 0 at the 1985 Personal Computer World Show, followed by issue 1 in November 1985. It brought the CRASH and ZZAP!64 review formula, and its own Accolade award, to the Amstrad. After eighteen numbered issues Newsfield passed the title to Database Publications, and the April 1987 issue was the last.

The quarterly magazine of Atari's members' club in West Germany, published from Hamburg by Atari Elektronik GmbH. The surviving issues run from a Christmas 1982 special that sold E.T. as the film opened in German cinemas to Christmas 1984, when readers were asking what would become of the VCS under Atari's new owner. Later accounts date the first issue to 1980 and the last to 1985.

Atari ST User began in March 1986 as a companion title that came with Database Publications' Atari User, and became a magazine in its own right from April 1987. It moved with its publisher from Stockport to Adlington Park near Macclesfield, passed through the Europress group's changing company names, and had gone by the end of 1994.

APC launched in May 1980 from Carlton, Victoria, with 'Australia's first micro magazine' on its cover, five months after MICRO-80 began in Adelaide. Its early by-lines were British: it was produced under licence from an English company, Felden Productions, and its London editorial office was at Sportscene Publishers (PCW), the publisher of Personal Computer World. It grew into what its own covers called Australia's top-selling computer magazine, passed to ACP and later to Future, and is still published as APC.

Bajtek began in September 1985 as a supplement to the youth daily Sztandar Młodych, with the stated aim of fighting 'microcomputer illiteracy' in Poland. It printed 250,000 copies a month at its height, reported prices from the computer markets, lent its name to one, and survived the end of the state press by turning its staff into a cooperative. The last regular issue appeared in the autumn of 1996.

IPC's multiformat games magazine ran for twelve issues, from April 1984 to March 1985. Tony Tyler's monthly mixed software reviews and industry reporting with listings, comic art and experiments in giving readers programs on cassette and flexi-disc.

BYTE's first issue, dated September 1975, set out a magazine for people building and using personal computers. Carl Helmers's balance of hardware, software and applications placed circuit diagrams, programming explanations and working projects in the same journal. The American print magazine lasted until July 1998.

A free technical magazine for the Commodore 64 and 128, sent out by email and FTP. Craig Taylor announced it on Usenet in February 1992, and 21 issues followed under three editors until February 2002. Its Demo Corner, written by Pasi Ojala, set out in plain text how demo effects such as FLI, sprite stretching, DYCP and open borders worked.

Club Commodore was a monthly bulletin for owners of Commodore's VIC-20 and CBM computers, published in Barcelona from late 1982 by Microelectrónica y Control, Commodore's exclusive distributor in Spain. Written largely by the distributor's own staff, it printed memory maps, a cipher program, radio-teletype projects for radio amateurs and electronics calculations, and its December 1982 issue wished readers a happy new year in Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician.

Club Nintendo was the magazine of Nintendo's European fan club, published from 1989 in English, German and Dutch editions. The first issues were one magazine in three languages, edited by Mark Smith and produced in England. By 1992 the German edition was being made by Nintendo of Europe in Großostheim with its own staff; it was still being published at the end of 1998.

Michele Di Pisa launched Commodore Computer Club in Milan in September 1982, as a supplement to his magazine Computer, calling it Italy's first single-brand personal computing magazine. Its first issue previewed the Commodore 64, interviewed the singer-songwriter Dario Baldan Bembo about the PET he used for his music, and paid contributors in boxes of cassettes. In 1991 it dropped Commodore's name, became Computer Club and then Personal Computer Club, and its publisher renamed it Inter.net in 1995.

Future Publishing launched Commodore Format in October 1990, eight years into the Commodore 64's life, with a covertape on every issue. Within a year it claimed to outsell ZZAP!64, which it outlived. Seven editors later, it closed with issue 61 in October 1995, by then a magazine as much about readers' own programs, PD and serious software as about new commercial games.

COMPUTE! began in the autumn of 1979 as 'The PET Gazette With A New Name', published by Robert Lock's Small System Services of Greensboro, North Carolina, for owners of 6502-based computers. It printed programs for several machines in every issue, invented the MLX and Automatic Proofreader checkers to catch typing mistakes, and grew from a print run of about 32,000 copies an issue in 1981 to more than 300,000 in 1983, the year ABC bought it. It dropped its type-ins in 1988, passed to General Media in 1990 and ended with the September 1994 issue.

COMPUTE! Publications of Greensboro, North Carolina, launched Compute!'s Gazette in July 1983 for VIC-20 and Commodore 64 owners, with a first print run of 175,000. It gave readers the Automatic Proofreader, MLX and SpeedScript, sold its programs on an unprotected monthly disk from May 1984, and peaked at an average of about 295,000 paid copies in 1985. It became a section of COMPUTE in 1990, went disk-only in January 1994 and ended in 1995; the name was revived in 2025.

Computer & Video Games, or C&VG, appeared in November 1981, before the ZX Spectrum or the Commodore 64 was on sale, and covered games on every kind of machine, from home computers to arcade cabinets. EMAP published it for twenty years. It started the Golden Joystick Awards in 1983, crowned an arcade champion who later became its editor, and spun off Mean Machines. Dennis Publishing owned it from 2001, and its last print issue appeared in 2004.

Russell Sipe started Computer Gaming World in Anaheim, California, with a bi-monthly first issue dated November-December 1981, when most of its readers played wargames on the Apple II and TRS-80. It went monthly in 1988, was bought by Ziff-Davis in 1993, and under editors Johnny Wilson, George Jones and Jeff Green became the leading American PC games magazine. In late 2006 it was renamed Games for Windows: The Official Magazine, which left print in 2008.

Newsfield's CRASH ran for 98 issues from February 1984 to April 1992, reviewing ZX Spectrum games with three reviewers per game, painted covers by Oliver Frey, and a letters page signed by a man who never existed.

David Ahl started Creative Computing in late 1974 as a bimonthly for teachers and students, a year before the Altair. It grew into a monthly read by about 100,000 people by 1980, printed BASIC games, early descriptions of the Z-machine and interviews with the industry's founders, and was sold to Ziff-Davis in 1982. Ziff-Davis closed it with the December 1985 issue.

Commodore User began in 1983 as a magazine for VIC-20 and Commodore 64 owners, passed to EMAP in 1984, and through 1989 and early 1990 turned into CU Amiga. It gave away Amiga coverdisks every month from May 1990 and later a CD, and EMAP closed it with the October 1998 issue, when it still claimed to be the best-selling Amiga magazine in the world.

Drean Commodore was a Buenos Aires monthly, published by Editorial PROEDI from December 1985, for owners of the Commodore 16, 64 and later 128 that the Argentine company Drean built under licence at its plant in San Luis. It called the machine by the name on its case, la Drean Commodore 64, toured the factory, reported the company's launches and user centres, and saw its own cover price triple in two years of Argentine inflation.

Edge was launched by Future Publishing in Bath in October 1993, edited by Steve Jarratt, as a games magazine for adults who wanted to know how the industry and its technology worked. It spoke in a single anonymous voice, used a marking scale on which five meant average, and waited three years to give its first ten, to Super Mario 64. It passed its 400th issue in 2024 and is still published by Future.

Electronic Games grew out of a column in Video magazine and was launched by Reese Publishing in New York with a Winter 1981 first issue. Arnie Katz, Bill Kunkel and Joyce Worley wrote it for players, reviewed arcade, console, computer and hand-held games side by side, and ran the Arcade Awards. A new editorial team took over in 1985 and renamed it Computer Entertainment; the three founders revived the title in 1992.

Famicom Tsūshin began in February 1985 as a games section of ASCII's computer magazine LOGIN, became a fortnightly magazine of its own in June 1986 and a weekly in July 1991, and around the turn of 1996 renamed itself Famitsu. In its Cross Review four reviewers each mark a game out of ten. The first perfect 40 went to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in 1998; by the magazine's 40th anniversary in June 2026, 34 games had one.

Illegal was a paper fanzine about the Commodore 64 cracking scene, edited in West Germany by Jeff Smart from 1986 to 1991. It printed scene news, interviews and charts ranking the cracking groups, and in 1988, while Smart was a member of the Swedish group Triad, Commodore User described it to British readers.

Marshall Cavendish's weekly part-work of 1984–85: 52 parts, more than 1,600 pages, bound in four binders, teaching BASIC, machine code and games programming on the Spectrum, Commodore 64, Acorn and Dragon machines side by side. Its search for games to go with it cost Imagine Software an advance it could not repay.

MCmicrocomputer was an Italian computing monthly published in Rome from September 1981 to June 2001. Paolo Nuti and Marco Marinacci started it, with the new publisher Technimedia, as a continuation of the magazine Micro & Personal Computer. It ran 218 issues, opened the MC-Link online service in 1986, passed to Pluricom in 1999 and closed with that company in 2001.

EMAP launched Mean Machines in October 1990 as an all-consoles magazine, edited by Julian Rignall, with nothing about home computers in its pages. It covered Sega and Nintendo machines and by 1991 claimed audited sales of over 50,000 a month. After 24 issues it split in two: from October 1992 EMAP published Mean Machines Sega and Nintendo Magazine System in its place.

Micro Sistemas launched in October 1981, published in Rio de Janeiro by ATI and edited by Alda Surerus Campos, calling itself the first Brazilian publication devoted exclusively to microcomputers. Its first issue opened on the death of John Lennon and put DISMAC's D-8000 on the cover. It ran to 1997 under three publishers, with Renato Degiovani as editor through the early 1990s, and returned in 2021 with a fortieth-anniversary issue.

MICRO-80 was published from a post office box in Goodwood, South Australia, from December 1979, five months before APC called itself Australia's first micro magazine. It bought its programs from readers, sold every issue's listings on cassette, followed the TRS-80 into Dick Smith's System 80 clone, and by 1982, under its editor Ian Vagg, had agents in Britain and New Zealand.

Mikroprozessortechnik, known as MP, was a monthly journal for East German engineers, launched in January 1987 by VEB Verlag Technik for the Kammer der Technik with a greeting from the minister for electrical engineering and electronics. It taught C, dBASE-compatible REDABAS and the Soviet-bloc 8086 to developers, printed well over 50,000 copies, and in 1990 recorded the end of the GDR in its own masthead: a new licensing authority, articles shared with West Germany's c't, and a cover price that changed from 5 marks to 5 Deutschmarks.

Mikroszámítógép Magazin, or µM, was the magazine of Hungary's John von Neumann Computer Science Society. It began with a single issue in 1983, went monthly in 1986, was co-published with the Communist Youth League's central committee from 1986 to 1988, and sold about 18,000 copies. Facing heavy losses, the society handed it to the Cédrus company in 1990, which relaunched it as Alaplap.

EMAP launched Nintendo Magazine System in Britain in October 1992, when it split Mean Machines into Sega and Nintendo titles. Julian Rignall's team made it; Nintendo licensed its characters and trademarks and the magazine called itself the official Nintendo magazine. It kept its issue numbering as it became Nintendo Magazine and then Nintendo Official Magazine. An Australian edition with the same name was published in Sydney and later Melbourne.

Nintendo of America launched Nintendo Power in July/August 1988 to replace its free Fun Club News, with Gail Tilden as editor in chief and the Fun Club's 'president', Howard Phillips, among its senior editors. It covered only Nintendo's machines, filled its pages with maps, tips and previews, went monthly in 1991, and gave away copies of Dragon Warrior to subscribers. Future US took over publishing in 2007, and the last issue came out in December 2012.

PAGE 6 began with a first issue dated December/January, around the turn of 1983, as a bi-monthly from Stafford for Atari 400 and 800 owners, started through the Birmingham User Group and edited by Les Ellingham. It added the Atari ST in 1986, took over Database Publications' Atari User title at the end of 1988, became New Atari User in 1989, and was still edited by Ellingham when issue 85 announced the 'final countdown' in autumn 1998.

PAPERsoft was a Milan weekly of program listings, published by J.soft with the collaboration of Gruppo Editoriale Jackson from 15 June 1984 to the end of 1985 at 1,000 lire an issue. Its first year credited almost every program to an English-language author and a named Italian translator, and the originals can be traced to Compute!, SoftSide and Sinclair User. In April 1985 it split into separate editions by machine.

PC Player was a German PC games monthly founded by Heinrich Lenhardt and Boris Schneider, first dated January 1993. Within two years it was Germany's best-selling computer games magazine, with 140,729 copies sold in the last quarter of 1994. It passed from DMV to the WEKA group in 1998 and was bought by Future Verlag, the German arm of Future Publishing, in 1999. Future closed it after the June 2001 issue.

Personal Computer Games was a British games magazine for every home computer, published in London by VNU Business Publications for fifteen issues from Summer 1983 to February 1985. Chris Anderson edited it from early 1984; when VNU closed it, its staff and readers went on to ZZAP!64, Future Publishing's Amstrad Action and, later, ACE.

Compupress of Athens launched Pixel in October 1983 as a magazine of type-in program listings, because a questionnaire in its sister title Computer για Όλους showed readers wanted more ready-made programs. It went bimonthly in 1984 and monthly in 1985, filled Panathinaikos's ground for a reader party in 1987, and closed with its 133rd issue in June 1996 as its readers moved to PCs and to Compupress's PC Master.

Računari began as Računari u vašoj kući, a special edition of the Belgrade magazine Galaksija dated January 1984, written by Dejan Ristanović. It carried complete instructions for building a home computer, Voja Antonić's Galaksija, and grew into a monthly computing magazine that ran until the end of the 1990s.

Retro Gamer was launched by Live Publishing of Macclesfield in January 2004 as a one-off that became a regular magazine. Live went bankrupt in 2005 with issue 19 finished but unprinted; Imagine Publishing bought the title from the receivers that October, and Future has published it since buying Imagine in 2016. Darran Jones has edited it since 2005.

Diskmags were magazines that demo and cracking groups wrote, coded and copied onto floppy disk for each other: news, party reports, interviews, arguments and the charts that ranked every group. They ran on the C64 from the late 1980s and on the Amiga and PC through the 1990s, and some are still published.

ECC Publications' companion to Sinclair User ran 35 issues from May 1982 to September 1985. It began with forty type-in programs for the ZX80 and ZX81, went monthly in 1983, passed to EMAP in 1984 and closed because, its editors said, professional and budget software had made a listings magazine unnecessary.

Sinclair User ran from April 1982 to April 1993. It launched covering the ZX81 before the Spectrum went on sale, answered readers' machine-code questions, graded games on value for money, and absorbed CRASH a year before it closed.

ST Format was the Atari ST half of Future Publishing's ST/Amiga Format, which split in two in the summer of 1989. Its first issue, dated August 1989, went on sale on 20 July with a double-sided disk on the cover. It claimed to be Britain's best-selling ST magazine within a year and a half, and it closed with issue 86, dated September 1996.

ST Magazine launched in Paris in September 1985, the year the Atari 520 ST went on sale, published by Pressimage. Because it covered only one make of computer, France's Commission paritaire refused it the press accreditation that brought lower VAT and cheap postage; in 1987 it told readers to stop subscribing, and in late 1989 it added 64 pages on the Amiga, the Mac and the PC to win the accreditation. It passed to the Atari dealer La Terre du Milieu in 1997 and stopped in 1998.

Future Publishing's Super Play covered the Super Nintendo through UK games, Japanese and American imports, role-playing games and anime. Its original run comprised 47 issues from November 1992 to September 1996, with illustrated covers by Wil Overton.

Newsfield launched The Games Machine from Ludlow in the autumn of 1987: a multi-format games magazine from the publisher of the single-machine CRASH and ZZAP!64, with room for laser tag, satellite TV and synthesisers as well. It ran for 34 issues to September 1990, when its last issue trailed Newsfield's next magazine, RAZE. Its Italian edition, begun under licence in 1988, is still published.

Edizioni Hobby of Milan launched The Games Machine in September 1988 under licence from Newsfield. The British magazine closed in 1990 and Newsfield in 1991; the Italian edition passed to Xenia Edizioni, dropped the licence credit in October 1991 and carried on as an Italian magazine. It is still published, by Aktia, and reached issue 419 in July 2026.

Database Publications of Hazel Grove, Stockport, launched BBC Micro User in March 1983 as an independent magazine for the BBC Micro, and renamed it The Micro User three months later. The same house went on to publish Atari ST User and Amiga Computing as part of the Europress group. The Micro User ran under that name until 1992, when it became Acorn Computing.

EMAP launched The One in London in October 1988 as a games magazine for the Atari ST and Amiga, with PC versions noted alongside, edited by Gary Penn. In May 1991 it split into The One for ST Games and The One for Amiga Games; a year later the ST edition went into ST Action and the ACE team took over the Amiga one. EMAP ended it in July 1995, and Maverick Magazines of Oxford carried on The One Amiga into 1996.

Wireframe was Raspberry Pi Press’s games magazine, launched in November 2018. It put developer interviews and criticism beside practical articles about programming, art and design. The first issue paired its Gris cover with game history and a Python particle-effects example; issue 70 was the last print edition in January 2023.

Argus Specialist Publications launched Your Commodore in October 1984 as a listings magazine for every Commodore machine, merged Sportscene's Your 64 into it a year later, and relaunched it as the games magazine YC in 1990. Argus sold it that summer to Alphavite Publications of Milton Keynes, and the last known issue is dated October 1991.

The British Your Computer began with a June/July 1981 issue edited by Duncan Scot. IPC's magazine brought computer reviews, reader programs, BASIC explanations and hardware projects together across the home-computer market.

Your Sinclair (YS) ran for 93 issues from January 1986 to September 1993. It began as a rename of Your Spectrum, moved from London to a shed in Bath, and was the last of the big three Spectrum monthlies to close.

Your Spectrum ran for 21 issues from January 1984 to December 1985, published by Sportscene Specialist Press from 14 Rathbone Place, London. It began as a bi-monthly for owners who wanted to go 'beyond basics', with machine code, hardware projects and its own extended BASIC, and turned towards games under Kevin Cox in 1985. Its last issue announced the change of name to Your Sinclair.

Argus Specialist Publications launched ZX Computing in summer 1982 as a quarterly of programs, hardware tests and machine code for the ZX80 and ZX81, edited by Tim Hartnell. It went bi-monthly within months, followed its readers to the Spectrum and the QL, became ZX Computing Monthly in March 1986 and closed with the June 1987 issue.

ZZAP!64 ran for 90 issues from May 1985 to November 1992, reviewing Commodore 64 games with three named reviewers whose separate opinions were printed on every review, and a Gold Medal for the best game of the month. Newsfield published it until its collapse in 1991; Europress Impact carried it on and relaunched it as Commodore Force in 1993.