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Amiga Action

The Amiga games monthly that moved from Chichester to Cheshire

MagazinesSource-checked

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.

Amiga Action was a games magazine for the Commodore Amiga that began in Chichester, West Sussex, and ended up in a business park in Cheshire. Gollner Publishing launched it from Chichester in October 1989. Within a year it was being made at Adlington Park, near Macclesfield, alongside Amiga Computing, and the company name in its credits changed three times in five years. After 1996 it lived on only as the games section of that same stablemate.

A launch from Chichester

The first issue’s colophon gave the publisher as Gollner Publishing Ltd, Latham House, Quarry Lane, Chichester, with Hugh Gollner as publisher. Its own news pages announced the launch: Gollner, “one of the leading publishers of specialist computing magazines”, was “the company behind the stunning new magazine”, which promised “100% full colour” and coverage of arcade games, adventures and role-playing games. The first cover lines included “Psygnosis’ Beast reviewed”, “9 pages of news & previews” and “12 joysticks megatested”.

Amiga Action was not Gollner’s first games magazine. Its first editor, Steve Merrett, was introduced as “a long-term reviewer in our sister mag, ST Action”, who would go on writing for that magazine while editing the new one. He was twenty.

It arrived in a crowded month. Amiga Format from Future Publishing had started in August 1989, EMAP’s Commodore User was on its way to becoming CU Amiga, and Database Publications had been publishing Amiga Computing since June 1988.

Score sheets and a computer

Issue 1 explained how the magazine reviewed a game, and printed the form to prove it. One reviewer played the game and wrote the main review and captions; then the others played it “for hours” and added their own comments. Each reviewer also filled in a score sheet that broke the game into parts, such as smoothness, quality of animation, speed of movement and music, and marked each from 1 to 5, with a separate “overall gut feeling” score. “The two results are combined using a special piece of computer software, which calculates the final scores.”

From Gollner to Europress

In April 1990 readers were told that “the name Gollner Publishing has been replaced by the new-fangled sounding Interactive Publishing”, after what the magazine called “a mind-boggling merger”. The deal was with Database Publications, the publisher of Amiga Computing, which later recalled that Interactive Publishing had managed Amiga Computing too, for fourteen months. By the July 1990 issue Interactive Publishing’s address was Europa House, Adlington Park, Macclesfield, Database’s own building. Hugh Gollner stayed on as publisher.

The editors changed as well. By December 1990 Steve White was the magazine’s “team leader”, and by June 1991 he was named as editor.

In June 1991 Derek Meakin put all of his group’s companies under one name, and Interactive Publishing became Europress Interactive, the publisher of Amiga Action, ST Action and Games-X. Amiga Action’s June 1991 credits already read “Europress Interactive Ltd”; for a few months after, some issues still printed the old name. So Europress did not buy the magazine in 1991: it had been inside Meakin’s group since the spring of 1990, and in 1991 the group gave it a new company name.

IDG and the end

At the end of 1994 Europress sold eleven of its magazines to the American publisher IDG. Amiga Action’s March 1995 credits read “CREATED BY… IDG Media Ltd, Adlington Park, Macclesfield”, with Denise Wright as publisher; by June 1995 Paul Roundell was editor. The team stayed where it was.

In December 1996 Amiga Computing told its readers that “from our Christmas issue onwards we will incorporate our sister magazine, Amiga Action”, which it called “Britain’s most popular Amiga entertainment title”. Its old games section, System, was replaced by pages headed Amiga Action. According to a later secondary account, the separate magazine had run to 89 issues, the last dated December 1996.

Sources

  • Amiga Action issue 1, October 1989: cover, colophon, the launch news item, the team introduction (Steve Merrett, ST Action) and the review-format page with its score sheet.
  • Amiga Action issue 7, April 1990: colophon (Interactive Publishing Ltd) and the news item on the name change.
  • Amiga Action issue 10, July 1990, and issue 11, August 1990: colophons (Interactive Publishing Ltd, Europa House, Adlington Park).
  • Amiga Action issue 15, December 1990: credits (Steve White, team leader).
  • Amiga Action issue 21, June 1991: credits (Europress Interactive Ltd; Steve White, editor); issue 22, July 1991: credits (Interactive Publishing Ltd).
  • Amiga Computing issue 37, June 1991, p. 14: “Amiga Computing goes Euro” (fourteen months under Interactive Publishing; Europress Interactive and its titles).
  • Amiga Computing issue 81, Christmas 1994: “AC joins IDG”.
  • Amiga Action issue 68, March 1995, and issue 71, June 1995: credits (IDG Media Ltd; Denise Wright, publisher; Paul Roundell, editor).
  • Amiga Computing issue 106, December 1996: editorial announcing that Amiga Action would be incorporated from the Christmas issue; issue 107, Christmas 1996: the Amiga Action games pages.
  • Amiga Format issue 1, August 1989.
  • Wikipedia, “Amiga Action” (web, secondary): 89 issues, October 1989 to December 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga_Action

See also

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