A computer magazine could reach readers in another country in one of three ways. A local publisher could license it and write its own edition. The home publisher could simply send its own magazine abroad under a new cover number. Or a manufacturer could produce a club magazine once and translate it for each market. The arrangement decided how far the editions could drift apart. The Games Machine shows the extreme: Britain’s edition closed in 1990 after 34 issues, and the Italian edition was still being published in 2026, at issue 419.
The licensed edition
A local publisher buys the right to make its own version of a magazine, and staffs it.
Milan’s Edizioni Hobby licensed Zzap! from Newsfield in 1986 and The Games Machine in 1988. Both colophons carried a licence line; The Games Machine’s read “Su licenza di NEWSFIELD PUBLICATION” (under licence from Newsfield Publication). The Italian editions translated British articles, sometimes months late, and mixed them with reviews, news and letters written in Milan. They also set their own direction. The Italian The Games Machine opened by claiming to be the first magazine in Italy “interamente dedicata al divertimento elettronico ed ai sedici bit” (“entirely devoted to electronic entertainment and to sixteen-bit machines”).
Because the licensee was a separate business, the editions could part company, and these did. The British The Games Machine closed in September 1990. Newsfield went into liquidation a year later, and the Italian magazines appeared under a new publisher’s name, Xenia Edizioni, which one of their writers later described as the old publisher renamed. From October 1991 the licence line was gone. The Italian Zzap! lasted until December 1993; The Games Machine changed hands several times more and is still on sale.
How to recognise it: a licence line in the colophon, local staff on the masthead, and a run that stops matching the original’s.
The export
One publisher and one editorial team make the magazine; only the cover number and the small print change.
Amiga Computing took over American subscribers in 1995, after “the previous Amiga World database” was transferred to it. The first copy they received, dated June 1995, was the British issue 87 with an overseas cover price of £4.25, plus a letter welcoming them to Amiga Computing US Edition. From July the American copies were numbered separately, starting at “Issue 2”, and were printed in the USA with American subscription rates of $44 or $70 a year. The editor, Paul Austin, and the Macclesfield editorial office were the British magazine’s, and the July copy led on the reviews the covering letter had promised.
How to recognise it: a run that restarts its numbering while the parent keeps counting, with the same staff on both mastheads.
The manufacturer’s club magazine
Here the magazine is produced once, centrally, and translated.
Club Nintendo appeared in 1989 in English, German and Dutch. All three first issues run to twenty pages, all put Mark Smith at the head of the masthead and name Catalyst Publishing of Warwick for the design or printing, and all give the same advice on photographing a high score off the television screen. The main differences are the language and the club address: a PO box for British members, a Hamburg Postfach for German ones and a Postbus in Breukelen for Dutch ones. A German special edition of 1990, Club Nintendo Classic, named the arrangement: it was published by Nintendo of Europe GmbH “in Zusammenarbeit mit” (in cooperation with) the Japanese publisher Tokuma Shoten.
Not every manufacturer’s magazine worked this way, and the three examples differ in how close the publisher stood to the manufacturer:
| Published by | Made | |
|---|---|---|
| Club Nintendo | Nintendo of Europe, Nintendo’s subsidiary (named from 1990) | once, translated for each country |
| Atari Club Magazin | Atari’s German company in Hamburg | in Germany |
| Club Commodore | Microelectrónica y Control, Commodore’s exclusive Spanish distributor | in Spain |
Atari Club Magazin, which began in 1982, reads as a German production: it told members to watch for Atari advertisements in Stern, and described games its staff had been shown in America. Club Commodore, from Barcelona, was the loosest tie. It spoke for the distributor, with articles signed by the company’s publicity department, but it also printed technical material such as a Commodore 64 memory map, and a reader’s program that let a VIC-20 receive radio-teletype signals from radio amateurs and news agencies.
Where France drew the line
France had a state body that judged whether a computer magazine counted as journalism at all, and it drew the line somewhere else. In December 1986 ST Magazine told readers that the Commission paritaire, which granted the press registration that brought lower VAT and cheaper postage, had refused it. Magazines devoted to a single computer standard, the commission had decided, were “grosso modo, à des catalogues de publicité pour la marque” (“more or less, advertising catalogues for the brand”). The magazine answered in its editorial, “Non ! Non ! Nous ne sommes pas des journalistes !” (“No! No! We are not journalists!”), and complained that its subscribers would pay the price.
That test was about how narrow a magazine’s subject was, not who owned it. On it, an independent magazine about one computer counted as promotion.
In East Germany the state licensed computing journals into existence. Mikroprozessortechnik, launched in East Berlin in 1987, printed “Lizenz-Nr. 1710 des Presseamtes beim Vorsitzenden des Ministerrates der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik”: licence no. 1710 of the Press Office of the Chairman of the GDR Council of Ministers.
Crossing a border one program at a time
All three arrangements move a whole magazine. The Italian weekly PAPERsoft moved software one listing at a time. From 15 June 1984 it printed type-in programs and nothing else, and its contents page credited each listing twice: to its original author, and to the Italian who translated and adapted it (“trad. e adatt. di”). Readers in Italy could type in foreign programs with their text in Italian at a time when most imported games still arrived in English. When Virgin Games reached Italy in 1984, what it translated was the documentation: Computer Games reported that “tutto il materiale documentativo” (all the documentation) had been put into Italian. In December 1986 Commodore Computer Club was still warning adventure players that the American games “sono in lingua inglese” (are in English), and welcoming the Italian-language adventures that had begun to appear.
When the colophon says nothing
Each arrangement above can be identified because the magazine said what it was. The Italian The Games Machine printed its licence line. Club Nintendo Classic named Nintendo of Europe and Tokuma Shoten. Britain’s Nintendo Magazine System printed that Nintendo’s trademarks were used “under licence to EMAP Images Limited”.
Some magazines said less. Australian Personal Computer launched in Melbourne in May 1980 with a British “Editor (U.K.)” on its masthead and British contributors such as David Tebbutt and Sheridan Williams, but named no British magazine. By November 1980 its masthead stated that it was “Produced in Australia under licence from Felden Productions Ltd., England”, with a London editorial office at Sportscene Publishers (PCW) Ltd, the publisher of Personal Computer World, though it still did not say which magazine, if any, the licence covered. The Australian Nintendo Magazine System, published in Sydney by an Australian company, Trielle Corporation in 1994, said nothing. It shared its title with EMAP’s British magazine and did not mention EMAP, though its masthead credited five of the British magazine’s reviewers and its designer, Gary Harrod, and it carried a Nintendo copyright notice. It looks like a licensed edition, but it does not say so, so it cannot be counted as one.
The three arrangements are the ones these magazines document. Others existed, including co-editions and content-sharing deals, and a magazine that crossed a border without saying how cannot be sorted into any of them.
Sources
- The Games Machine (Italy) issue 1, September 1988, p. 7: colophon and Bonaventura Di Bello’s editorial; issues 34 and 35, September and October 1991: colophons. Zzap! (Italy) issue 1, May 1986: masthead; issue 84, December 1993: the closing editorial, including Fabio Rossi’s recollection of the publisher’s former name. See The Games Machine (Italy) and Edizioni Hobby.
- The Games Machine issue 34, September 1990: the last British issue.
- The Games Machine, “Edicola” (web, secondary): issue 419, July–August 2026. https://www.thegamesmachine.it/the-games-machine/edicola/
- Wikipedia, “Newsfield” (web, secondary): voluntary liquidation in September 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsfield
- Amiga Computing issue 87, June 1995, as sent to US subscribers: cover and the covering letter; Amiga Computing US Edition issue 2, July 1995: cover, masthead and colophon; Amiga Computing (UK) issue 88, July 1995: masthead.
- Club Nintendo issue 1, 1989, British, German and Dutch editions: contents, mastheads and the high-score photography advice; Club Nintendo Classic (German edition), 1990: colophon.
- Atari Club Magazin, 1982 and January 1983.
- Club Commodore no. 5, February 1983: the article from Microelectrónica y Control’s “Departamento de Difusión”; no. 6, March 1983: “RTTY para el VIC-20”, a contribution from EA3CIW; no. 7, April 1983: “Commodore 64 – mapa de memoria”.
- ST Magazine issue 6, December 1986: editorial on the Commission paritaire.
- Mikroprozessortechnik, Heft 1, 1987: colophon.
- PAPERsoft issue 1, 15 June 1984: cover and contents page.
- Computer Games (Italy) issue 5, September 1984, news, “La Virgin Games approda in Italia”: Virgin’s documentation translated into Italian.
- Commodore Computer Club issue 37, December 1986, p. 34: American adventures in English; Italian-language adventures such as the “Gialli Commodore” series.
- Nintendo Magazine System (UK) issue 7, April 1993: trademark notice.
- Australian Personal Computer issue 1, May 1980: masthead and contents.
- Australian Personal Computer vol. 1 no. 6, November 1980: masthead (London editorial office at Sportscene Publishers (PCW) Ltd, 14 Rathbone Place; “Produced in Australia under licence from Felden Productions Ltd., England”).
- MICRO (US) no. 37, June 1981: magazine directory listing Personal Computer World at Sportscene Publishers (PCW) Ltd, 14 Rathbone Place.
- Nintendo Magazine System (Australia) issue 11, February 1994: competition rules naming Trielle Corporation of Pitt Street, Sydney.
See also
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Software Crossed What Machines Could Not: follows individual programs through translation, magazine charts and foreign reviews, including PAPERsoft’s adaptation of Meteor Storm.
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Magazine distribution, the British domestic pattern