In July 1988 Future Publishing launched ST/Amiga Format, a magazine for owners of the two new 16-bit home computers, and stuck a 3.5-inch floppy disk to the front of it. The disk was the selling point. ACE, Future’s games magazine, announced that each month’s disk would be full of utilities, games and demos, and the first issue was already asking readers to send in their own programs “to fill our cover disk each month”.
Until the mid-1990s most British magazines for the Amiga and Atari ST came with a disk, and some with two. The disks carried playable demos of new games, utilities, public-domain programs, readers’ own work and, for a few months in 1991, whole commercial games, until the software publishers objected. They were the 16-bit successors of the cover tapes on 8-bit magazines, and they gave way in turn to CDs and DVDs.
Fast facts
- Early examples: ST/Amiga Format issue 1, July 1988, and The One, whose first issue in October 1988 had a disk of playable previews.
- Capacity: “880K of programs” on Amiga Format’s first disk; ST Format squeezed its disk to 780K.
- Made by: outside compilers and duplicators, named on the magazines’ disk pages.
- Limits: from 1 August 1991 no full-price games, under an agreement with ELSPA, the publishers’ trade body.
- Successors: cover CDs from 1995 (CU Amiga) and 1996 (Amiga Format), and later DVDs on PC magazines.
One disk every month
Future split ST/Amiga Format in two in the summer of 1989, and both halves kept a disk. Amiga Format carried one from its first issue, whose disk held “880K of programs”, including a playable demo of The New Zealand Story. ST Format’s first disk held a demo of Mirrorsoft’s Bloodwych, the complete GFA BASIC interpreter and a formatter that squeezed more onto each floppy. Filling it never got easier: in its last issue the staff remembered “trying to fit 850K of compressed files on to a 780K Cover Disk every month”.
The other publishers followed. EMAP’s The One had a disk from its first issue in October 1988. CU Amiga promised in May 1990 that “each month CU will be bringing you the very best in all-Amiga cover disks”, and by 1991 an issue often came with two. The competition sold magazines. In the first half of 1992 Amiga Format sold an audited average of 161,256 copies a month, and in October 1993 CU Amiga announced an audited 111,408.
Who made them
A cover disk was not something the magazine ran off in the office. The One printed its supply chain on its disk page: “Coverdisks compiled by Grants Computing”, with faulty disks going to a separate firm, PC Wise of Merthyr Tydfil, in August 1993. By January 1995 the returns address was Diskxpress in Bourton-on-the-Water, with its own telephone helpline. The editorial office kept well out of it. Readers with a bad disk were told, in capitals, “PLEASE DON’T SEND THEM TO US!”, and in 1993 more bluntly: “any coverdisk problems sent to us will remain unanswered.”
The 8-bit tapes had worked the same way, with duplication firms such as Ablex and Spool handling the returns.
What readers were told
A cover disk was a working disk that readers were expected to write to, and to ruin. Amiga Format’s disk page in December 1990 put its advice in capitals: “BACK UP YOUR COVERDISK IMMEDIATELY!!! … [MAKE] SURE YOU WRITE-PROTECT YOUR DISK BEFORE USE!”
Nor was every disk guaranteed to run. In May 1993 Amiga Format admitted that “all the contents have been tested on all Amigas, but if you have a slightly weird one (2Mb of chip RAM on a 1.3 machine, or all four floppy drives) you may have to disconnect your expansions to get the Coverdisk to work.”
A market for readers’ programs
The disk did not only carry publishers’ demos. It bought original work from readers. In December 1990 Amiga Format advertised for “Workbench [ha]cks, demos, utilities, games, game [con]tests” for its disk: “You could earn up to £800!” ST/Amiga Format had asked for the same from its first issue.
Competitions fed the disk too. In May 1993 Amiga Format’s disk carried Charlie Chimp, the winner of the GamesMaster AMOS programming competition, but only “a three level demo of the full 30 level shareware game”, with “instructions on where to send the £5 shareware fee… built into the game”. The magazine explained why: “the full game almost completely fills a disk.” (See Shareware and Public domain software.)
Whole games, and the publishers’ reaction
For a few months in 1991 the disks carried complete commercial games. Amiga Format gave away Interphase with its January 1991 issue, and Amiga Power launched in May 1991 with Bombuzal on its disk and the promise of a complete game every month.
The software publishers had watched the same thing happen to the 8-bit tapes, and their trade body, ELSPA, the European Leisure Software Publishers Association, stepped in. Its general secretary, Roger Bennett, told Amiga Power in August 1991 that publishers feared “a magazine cover-mount war starting similar to that which has developed in the 8-bit market”, and that covermounts denied software houses the later compilation and budget releases on which they relied. Amiga Power announced that “no more complete commercial games will appear on our coverdisks for the foreseeable future”. ACE dated the ban on full-price games from 1 August 1991, and Amiga Format’s review of the year recorded: “No more free games from mags.” The Cover tapes entry tells that story in full.
The rule lasted. In June 1994 ST Format told a reader who wanted full games on its disk: “We’d love to but unfortunately ELSPA’s (European Leisure Software Publisher’s Association) regulations do not permit magazines to give away full games on the grounds that it is too damaging to software publishers. After all, if we started giving away games, you would be less likely to spend money on them.” A month later The One reported that complete games were back on the agenda for a meeting of ELSPA, reporting a feeling that giving them away “wouldn’t damage industry profits as it may have done a few years ago”. The main topic, though, was violence on cover-mounted games, since ELSPA was launching its own age ratings. Roger Bennett said: “We’d like to see magazine publishers show the same degree of responsibility as the games companies.”
Serious software was a different matter. By 1992 CU Amiga’s disks carried programs that had been sold at full price, such as Gold Disk’s MovieSetter, and in February 1995 it celebrated “coverdisk no. 100” with the file manager Directory Opus 4.
CDs, and the end of the floppy
As CD-ROM drives spread, the magazines moved on. CU Amiga offered a CD edition alongside the floppy one from November 1995, and Amiga Format followed in June 1996, calling its first CD “quite an experimental project”. ST Format gave away its last cover disk with its final issue in September 1996. Acorn User, which carried a cover disc for Acorn’s RISC OS machines, found in December 1999 that an 800K floppy was too small: 97 per cent of its readers had CD-ROM drives, so the monthly disc’s contents moved to its website, with a CD on the cover every third issue.
The idea outlived the floppy by more than a decade on PC magazines. PC Gamer’s British edition began with a floppy, added a CD from its eleventh issue and later a DVD, and announced in August 2011 that it would drop the disc from issue 232 in favour of more pages. Retro Gamer, a magazine about old games launched in January 2004, carried a coverdisc of its own in its early years.
Sources
- ACE issue 9, June 1988, p. 8: news of Future Publishing’s new 16-bit magazine and its monthly cover disk.
- ST/Amiga Format issue 1, July 1988: contents page and cover disk pages (requests for readers’ software, pokes on the disk).
- ST/Amiga Format issue 13, July 1989: the split into Amiga Format and ST Format; see the Future Publishing entry. Amiga Format issue 1, 1989: “880K of programs” and The New Zealand Story.
- ST Format issue 1, 1989: the first disk. Issue 59, June 1994, p. 96: letters (ELSPA’s regulations). Issue 86, September 1996: the final cover disk and “850K of compressed files on to a 780K Cover Disk”.
- The One issue 1, October 1988: the cover disk of playable previews. Issue 59, August 1993, p. 4: Grants Computing and PC Wise. Issue 70, July 1994, p. 14: “Covermounts to go whole” (ELSPA’s meeting, Roger Bennett). Issue 76, January 1995, p. 8: Diskxpress and the returns instructions.
- Amiga Format issue 17, December 1990, p. 99: the £800 offer and the back-up advice. Issue 18, January 1991: Interphase. Issue 30, January 1992: “The Amiga Year” (“No more free games from mags”). Issue 46, May 1993, p. 6: Charlie Chimp and the compatibility note. Issue 85, June 1996: the first CD. Audited circulation for January–June 1992: see the Amiga Format entry.
- CU Amiga May 1990, p. 3 (the first all-Amiga cover disks); July 1991 (two disks); September 1992 (MovieSetter); October 1993 (ABC of 111,408); February 1995, cover (coverdisk no. 100); November 1995 (the first CD edition).
- Amiga Power issue 1, May 1991: Bombuzal. Issue 4, August 1991: “ELSPA talks! Covermounted games — right or wrong?”, interview with Roger Bennett.
- ACE issue 48, September 1991: letters page (the ban from 1 August 1991).
- Acorn User issue 214, December 1999: “No cover disc?” and the reader survey.
- PC Gamer (UK edition): Wikipedia, “PC Gamer”, citing “PC Gamer Video Blog – The Making of Issue 232”, PCGamer.com, 23 August 2011 (web, secondary). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Gamer
- Retro Gamer: see the Retro Gamer entry.