Newsfield Publications | Code Like It's 198x

Newsfield began by selling Spectrum games by post from Ludlow, a market town in Shropshire, and sent each order out with a catalogue of reviews. In 1983 a magazine distributor suggested that the catalogue could become a proper monthly. The result was CRASH, dated February 1984: “Crash Micro is published monthly by Newsfield Ltd, PO Box 10, Ludlow”. Over the next seven years the same small company launched magazines for Commodore 64 owners, Amstrad owners, multi-format gamers, horror readers and console fans, before it went into liquidation in the autumn of 1991.

The three founders were Roger Kean, who edited the first issues of CRASH, and the brothers Oliver and Franco Frey. Introducing its staff in November 1985, Amtix! said that Oliver “founded Newsfield together with his brother, Franco, and Roger Kean”. Oliver, a comic artist, painted the covers; Franco, Oliver’s younger brother, had studied at Zurich Polytechnic and was Amtix!’s Technical Editor.

Fast facts

Founded: 1983, in Ludlow, Shropshire, by Roger Kean, Oliver Frey and Franco Frey.
Origin: a mail-order business selling ZX Spectrum games, whose review catalogue became CRASH.
Magazines: CRASH (February 1984), ZZAP!64 (May 1985), Amtix! (November 1985 to April 1987), LM (from Christmas 1986), The Games Machine (October 1987 to 1990), Fear (1988 to 1991) and RAZE (November 1990 to October 1991), among others.
Italian licences: Zzap! (from May 1986) and The Games Machine (from September 1988), both published in Milan by Edizioni Hobby.
End: voluntary liquidation, September 1991.
Successor: Europress, whose Europress Impact continued CRASH and ZZAP!64 in Ludlow.

From catalogue to CRASH

Kean moved to Ludlow in October 1982, as he later recalled, and the mail-order company, Crash Micro Games Action, started in about April 1983, at a time when, he said, shops did not stock Spectrum games. Matthew Uffindell, a 17-year-old who came to the door to buy games and was given a job in mail-order dispatch, remembered that he was soon reviewing for the catalogue too. In June 1983, Kean recalled, the managing director of a magazine distributor told him that WH Smith would sell the catalogue if it became a monthly magazine.

CRASH issue 1 promised that every major review would be “undertaken by at least three reviewers”, “games players, not professional reviewers in the usual sense”. That rule, three named reviewers and their separate opinions, became the house style of Newsfield’s games magazines. So did Oliver Frey’s painted covers, and so did Lloyd Mangram, the staff writer who signed the letters pages of both CRASH and ZZAP!64 and did not exist. His initials gave Newsfield’s lifestyle magazine its name.

ZZAP!64 and Amtix!

ZZAP!64, launched with a May 1985 cover date, repeated the CRASH formula for the Commodore 64. Its first three issues were written in Yeovil, Somerset, by a team from the recently closed Personal Computer Games, before the editorial office moved to Ludlow. By May 1986 it was able to report that the Audit Bureau of Circulations figures made it the best-selling magazine in its field, and in October 1987 it reported an average sale of 77,483 copies a month.

Amtix! followed for Amstrad CPC owners in November 1985. It lasted eighteen issues. The April 1987 issue told readers that “this is the last issue of AMTIX!”: Newsfield was passing the title to Database Publications, which planned to fold its best features into its own Computing with the Amstrad.

Newsfield also had a hand in games themselves. In August 1986 ZZAP!64 announced a new software house, Thalamus, with ZZAP!’s Gary Liddon as its technical executive; the news pages called it “independent of Newsfield and the magazines”, while a competition in the same issue called it “the new Newsfield software house”.

Beyond the 8-bit titles

From 1986 Newsfield tried magazines well outside Spectrum and Commodore gaming.

LM first appeared as “Issue 0”, given away with CRASH’s Christmas 1986 special, and was named after Lloyd Mangram: the back-issue list called it “the magazine that bears Lloyd’s initials”. By March 1987 it was on its third issue, offering features on the band Level 42, video, record, film and comic reviews, and a practical guide to AIDS. Wikipedia counts four issues in all.
The Games Machine launched in October 1987 as a multi-format games magazine, with Graeme Kidd as editor. It ran for 34 issues, to September 1990.
Fear was announced in The Games Machine in the summer of 1988 as a magazine of fantasy, horror and science fiction in books, films and video, “Britain’s glossiest and most stylish Fantasy and Horror magazine ever”. It ran until 1991.
RAZE, launched in November 1990, promised “definitive coverage of console, computer and coin-op” entertainment, with reviews of “the very latest console and 16-bit computer games”. Its twelfth issue, in October 1991, was its last.

The Italian licences

Two Newsfield titles were published in Italy by Edizioni Hobby of Via della Spiga, Milan. Zzap! began there in May 1986 and The Games Machine in September 1988, whose first colophon read “Su licenza di NEWSFIELD PUBLICATION”. Its first editorial, signed by Roberto Ferri, thanked “gli amici della Newsfield che ancora una volta hanno creduto nelle nostre capacità”: the friends at Newsfield who had once again believed in the Italian team.

Both titles moved to Xenia Edizioni in September 1991, still “Su licenza di Newsfield Publications”. From October 1991 the Newsfield line was gone from both colophons. Neither magazine stopped: the Italian Zzap! ran until December 1993, and the Italian The Games Machine is still published today.

Liquidation

Newsfield’s directors signed for voluntary liquidation in September 1991. CRASH told the story afterwards in its own style: the staff arrived at “CRASH Towers” on 17 September 1991 to find “a spaceship that looked an awful lot like a redundancy cheque”. The same issue reported that Future Publishing, the publisher of rival Your Sinclair, had tried to buy CRASH and ZZAP!64.

Both magazines missed their November 1991 issues. A ZZAP! reader who had written in October noted that “there was to be no November issue”, and the December issues came from a new company, Europress Impact, still in Ludlow. ZZAP!’s December issue put it plainly: “Newsfield is no more”. The masthead of CRASH listed “Roger ‘Sir’ Kean” as publisher.

Europress Impact kept both titles going for a while. CRASH ran to April 1992 and then joined Sinclair User. ZZAP!64 ran to November 1992, with Kean as publishing director, and was relaunched in January 1993 as Commodore Force, which ran until March 1994. Europress Impact also launched its own Ludlow titles, among them N-Force, Amiga Force and SNES Force, with Kean as publishing director; SNES Force’s masthead still listed Oliver Frey as art director in 1994.

Afterwards

Kean and Oliver Frey, partners in life as well as in business, stayed in Ludlow. In the late 1990s Frey was publishing director of Thalamus Publishing, which published illustrated history books, several of them written by Kean and illustrated by Frey; the two later ran their own imprint, Reckless Books. In 2017 Kean edited a crowdfunded CRASH Annual 2018 with a cover by Frey. Frey died in August 2022 and Kean in January 2023.

Sources

CRASH issue 1, February 1984, pp. 5 and 9: “Crash Micro is published monthly by Newsfield Ltd, PO Box 10, Ludlow”; the editorial on three reviewers.
ZZAP!64 issue 1, May 1985, pp. 7–8: the Yeovil editorial office, the Personal Computer Games team and CRASH selling “like hot cakes”; issue 4, August 1985: the editorial address in Ludlow; issue 13, May 1986: the ABC figures for July to December 1985; issue 16, August 1986: Thalamus and Gary Liddon; issue 30, October 1987: the ABC average of 77,483.
Amtix! issue 1, November 1985: staff profiles, including the founding of Newsfield and Franco Frey’s background; issue 18, April 1987: “End of the Road”, the title passing to Database Publications.
CRASH issue 38, March 1987: back-issue price list, “Christmas Special (including LM Issue 0)”; issue 39, April 1987, pp. 5 and 41: LM as “the magazine that bears Lloyd’s initials”, and the advertisement for LM issue 3, on sale 19 March.
The Games Machine issue 1, October 1987 (Graeme Kidd as editor); issue 7, June 1988 (the announcement of Fear); issue 34, September 1990.
RAZE issue 1, November 1990 (“A Newsfield Publication”; the launch advertisement); issue 12, October 1991.
Zzap! (Italy) issue 1, May 1986; issues 58 to 60, July to October 1991: colophons. The Games Machine (Italy) issue 1, September 1988, p. 7: colophon and Roberto Ferri’s editorial; issues 34 and 35, September and October 1991: colophons.
CRASH issue 93, October 1991; issue 94, December 1991, pp. 5 and 10: Europress Impact, the redundancies, Future’s bid and Kean as publisher; issue 98, April 1992, p. 12: the merger with Sinclair User.
ZZAP!64 issue 79, December 1991 (“Newsfield is no more”); issue 80, January 1992 (letters: “there was to be no November issue”); issue 90, November 1992 (masthead with Kean as publishing director; Commodore Force).
N-Force issue 6, December 1992; Amiga Force issue 2, February 1993; SNES Force issue 9, February 1994: mastheads.
ZZAP!64 issue 107, March 2002: history of the magazine, including Newsfield’s start as a mail-order supplier of Spectrum games.
Retro Gamer issue 2, 2004, p. 46: Matthew Uffindell on the mail-order business and the first reviews.
Out-of-Print Archive, “Roger Kean interview” (web, secondary): the move to Ludlow in October 1982, Crash Micro Games Action (about April 1983) and the WH Smith approach (June 1983). https://www.outofprintarchive.com/articles/interviews/out-of-print/Roger_Kean_interview.html
Wikipedia, “Newsfield” (web, secondary): the founding year, the voluntary liquidation in September 1991, LM’s four issues, Fear’s run to 1991, and Commodore Force ending in March 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsfield
Wikipedia, “Oliver Frey” (web, secondary): Thalamus Publishing and Reckless Books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Frey Dates of death, the CRASH Annual 2018 and the partnership: see the sources for Roger Kean, Oliver Frey and CRASH.