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576 KByte

Hungary's games monthly, named for a Commodore 64 plus an Amiga

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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.

576 KByte set its first readers a puzzle: Mit jelent az újság címe? What does the magazine’s title mean? The answer, printed two issues later, was a sum. An Amiga had 512 kilobytes, a Commodore 64 had 64, and together they made 576. Those were the two machines the magazine was for, and between 1990 and 2002 it became, by the account of the Hungarian technology site HWSW when it closed, the country’s longest-running games magazine.

Fast facts

  • Published: Budapest, monthly from 1990 to December 2002, with a combined July–August issue each summer. Its ISSN was 0865-8226.
  • Publisher: COMGAME, at first a gazdasági munkaközösség (Gmk) and from the mid-1990s a limited company (Kft).
  • First editors: Balogh Zsolt and Jámbor Árpád.
  • Price: 79 forints for the first issue; 138 forints by January 1993.
  • Machines: the Commodore 64 and the Amiga at first, then PC games and consoles.

The first issue

The first issue reached readers in June 1990, later than planned; its top-ten charts, one for the C-64 and one for the Amiga, are headed May 1990. The editorial addressed the buyer as an owner (Tisztelt 576 KByte Tulajdonos!, “Dear 576 KByte owner”) and claimed the magazine was az első színes, számítógépes programokkal foglalkozó újság, the first colour paper about computer programs. Its aim was specific: to publish complete and detailed descriptions of any program whose kezelése vagy játszhatósága, handling or playability, would otherwise be difficult or impossible, and shorter reviews where that was not needed. It promised not to repeat games already described elsewhere.

That meant walkthroughs. The opening article on UBI Soft’s Iron Lord takes the reader through the game step by step, naming the on-screen options in English, GIVE, BUY, HERBS, DISCUSS, inside Hungarian prose, much as a reader with an English-language game in front of them would meet them. The rest of the issue covered The Champ, Boxing Manager, Oil Imperium, Dragons of Flame, Persian Gulf Inferno, Fighter Bomber, Carrier Command and Deluxe Paint. By the third issue the magazine was labelling each screenshot C64 or AMIGA and, after letters from readers, had started giving games scores, which it had first thought too subjective to print.

The masthead is a small record of how publishing worked in Hungary in 1990. COMGAME was a gazdasági munkaközösség, an “economic working community”: a small partnership of private individuals, legal since 1982, without legal personality of its own. The magazine came out through the Mechanical Engineering Scientific Society (GTE), and Magyar Posta distributed it, on the 15th of each month. Subscription notices still name COMGAME Gmk in November 1995; by April 1997 the publisher is COMGAME Kft, a limited company. The Gmk form itself was abolished by a 1997 company law and ceased to exist in 2000.

A shop, and a television quiz

In May 1992 the magazine announced a fortnightly computer-games quiz on the national cable channel TV TÉVÉ, starting in June. Contestants would be tested on the games 576 KByte had covered, and each programme’s winner would take home a computer.

That October, COMGAME opened the 576 KByte Shop on Pozsonyi út in Budapest. The magazine’s report in December was proud and a little breathless. Balogh Zsolt, now the business’s managing director, told the opening crowd and a television camera that he wanted a national chain; the speaker from CHIP magazine praised its aim of selling jogtiszta, legally licensed, programs at prices Hungarians could afford, against the “chaos” of the home market. Machines readers knew only “from the satellite channels or from the adverts in Western magazines”, the Neo Geo among them, could be bought there, and tried out first. The shop’s slogan was nálunk játszva vásárolhat: with us, you shop by playing.

After the Amiga

As the market changed, so did the magazine. According to later accounts it took up PC games in 1992 and consoles in 1993, and at the end of 1997 it split: 576 Konzol took the console coverage and 576 KByte became “the PC gamers’ magazine”. The December 2002 issue looked like any other, with subscription prices for the coming year. In January 2003 HWSW reported that no more issues would appear; subscribers were to receive the Hungarian GameStar instead, while 576 Konzol carried on. A relaunched 576 KByte, from another publisher, ran from November 2008 until 2010.

Sources

  • 576 KByte issue 1 (1990): masthead (publishers, editors, address, Magyar Posta, the 15th of the month, ISSN); editorial; contents; the Iron Lord walkthrough; top ten “1990/MÁJUS”; the title puzzle; price 79 Ft.
  • 576 KByte 1990/3: editorial (the late first issue, C64 and Amiga labels, scores); the answer to the title puzzle (“AMIGA = 512 KBYTE, C-64 = 64 KBYTE, 576 KBYTE”); price 79 Ft.
  • 576 KByte 1990/7 and 1991/1: mastheads (COMGAME Gmk, 1026 Budapest, Fillér u. 47/b).
  • 576 KByte January 1993 (IV. évfolyam 1. szám): cover price 138 Ft.
  • 576 KByte May 1992: the TV TÉVÉ quiz.
  • 576 KByte December 1992, p. 2: the opening of the 576 KByte Shop.
  • 576 KByte November 1995, April 1997 and December 1999: COMGAME Gmk, COMGAME Kft and COMGAME “576” Kft in the masthead and subscription notices.
  • 576 KByte December 2002: editorial; subscription prices for the following year.
  • HWSW, “Megszűnt Magyarország legnagyobb múltú játékújságja, az 576 KByte”, 20 January 2003 (web, secondary): thirteen years on the market, the closure, GameStar, 576 Konzol. https://www.hwsw.hu/hirek/19534/megszunt-magyarorszag-legnagyobb-multu-jatekujsagja--az-576-kbyte.html
  • Benyó blog, “576 történelmi áttekintő”, 28 October 2008 (web, secondary): June 1990 launch, the PC-only magazine from December 1997, 576 Konzol from January 1998, closure in December 2002 and the move to GameStar, the November 2008 relaunch. https://benyoboy.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/576-tortenelmi-attekinto/
  • “576 KByte”, Hungarian Wikipedia (web, secondary): the platforms by year, the 2008–2010 relaunch and its publisher. https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/576_KByte
  • “Gazdasági munkaközösség”, Hungarian Wikipedia (web, secondary): the form introduced from 1 January 1982 and abolished under the 1997 company law, ceasing in June 2000. https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gazdasági_munkaközösség

See also

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