Amiga Computing | Code Like It's 198x

Amiga Computing was on sale for the Commodore Amiga more than a year before Amiga Format existed, and it was still going more than three years after Commodore itself had gone bust. Its first issue, dated June 1988 and priced £1.95, came from Database Publications in Adlington, near Macclesfield. Its 117th and last, dated October 1997, came from the same business park under an American owner, and carried an advertisement urging Amiga users who could not wait any longer for new hardware to “think Apple”.

A Database publication

The first cover promised “a beginners’ aid to adventuring”, a competition to win an Amiga and “Commodore’s secret plans revealed”, under the line “A Database Publication”. Database had been publishing The Micro User for the BBC Micro since 1983, and it staffed the new title from the same house: Derek Meakin as managing editor, Simon Rockman as editor. The welcome page described a staff that “lives and breathes the Amiga — from days of careful planning with Superbase to long nights playing Arkanoid”. A database program and an arcade game, in one sentence: from the start Amiga Computing covered the machine as a working computer as well as a games machine.

By November 1988 the colophon carried an extra line: “Database Publications is a division of Europress Ltd”. Europress was the group Meakin had built, and for the next six years it was the magazine’s owner.

Editors

The mastheads name a long line of editors:

Simon Rockman, from the first issue into 1990.
Nic Veitch, by the autumn of 1990.
A team without a single editor in 1991, with Eddie McKendrick as features editor and Stevie Kennedy as technical editor; McKendrick was editor by November 1991.
Stevie Kennedy, from spring 1992 to mid-1994.
Paul Austin, from late 1994 into spring 1996.
Ben Vost, briefly, in May 1996.
Tina Hackett, by September 1996 to May 1997.
Neil Mohr, who had been coverdisk editor, from June 1997 to the final issue.

Inside the Europress group

In the spring of 1990 a deal between Database and Gollner Publishing of Chichester, publisher of Amiga Action, created Interactive Publishing, which ran Amiga Computing for fourteen months. In June 1991 the magazine announced that it was coming “under the banner of Europress Publications Limited”. Meakin, “who founded the group 21 years ago”, explained that with so many subsidiaries under different names “there was a growing danger of the parent group losing its identity”. The same news item listed the group’s other companies: Europress Interactive (Amiga Action, ST Action, Games-X), Europress Software (formerly Database Software and Mandarin Software, the publisher of AMOS) and Europress Trade Publications.

Later that year Europress took over CRASH and ZZAP!64 after Newsfield collapsed, and ran them from Ludlow through a new company, Europress Impact. The two businesses shared at least one name: David Wren, circulation manager on CRASH’s first Europress Impact masthead in December 1991, was circulation director on Amiga Computing’s mastheads into the IDG years.

Sold to IDG

The magazine’s Christmas 1994 issue reported its own sale, under the headline “AC joins IDG”. Amiga Computing “has been part of the Europress magazine empire for the last six years”, it said, and “along with 10 other magazines published by the group, it has been sold to IDG, the US-controlled multinational that forms the world’s largest computer magazine publisher.” The same issue’s colophon already read “Published by IDG Publications”. The editor, Paul Austin, stayed, and so did the Macclesfield office. By the final issue the publisher was IDG Media, and the address was Media House rather than Europa House, still at Adlington Park.

The American edition

IDG was already in the American Amiga market: AmigaWorld was published in New Hampshire by TechMedia Publishing, under the IDG banner. In 1995 AmigaWorld‘s subscriber list passed to Amiga Computing. The subscribers’ first copy, dated June 1995, was the British issue 87 with a letter welcoming them to “Amiga Computing US Edition” and apologising for delays “caused by complications in transferring the previous Amiga World database to us”. From July the American copies carried their own numbers, starting at “Issue 2”, were printed in the USA and cost $44 or $70 a year. They were made by the same Macclesfield team: the US issue 20, dated March 1997, has Tina Hackett as editor. The full arrangement is described in Magazines Across Borders.

The last issue

Commodore had collapsed in 1994, and in 1995 the German company Escom bought the Amiga; the covering letter to American subscribers that June said that “the future of the Amiga now looks much brighter”. Escom itself filed for bankruptcy in 1996. That December the magazine announced that its sister title Amiga Action would carry on inside it: “instead of finding System as our games section, you will find Amiga Action there instead”. The October 1997 issue announced itself with “THAT’S ALL FOLKS! Time and tide wait for no man, and sadly Amiga Computing must pass on”. The public-domain column, “the last ever Public Sector”, closed with “a fond farewell to all”, Dave Cusick took “his final stroll down Shareware Street”, and the adventure section printed its Big Red Adventure solution complete, “with this being the last issue and all”.

Sources

Amiga Computing issue 1, June 1988: cover (price, cover lines, “A Database Publication”), masthead (Derek Meakin, Simon Rockman), colophon, and the welcome page.
Amiga Computing November 1988 and January 1989: colophon, “Database Publications is a division of Europress Ltd”.
Amiga Computing mastheads: 1988–1990 (Simon Rockman); October 1990 (Nic Veitch); May and September 1991 (no editor; McKendrick, Kennedy, Austin); November 1991 and January 1992 (Eddie McKendrick); April 1992 to June 1994 (Stevie Kennedy); December 1994 to April 1996 (Paul Austin); May 1996 (Ben Vost; Neil Mohr as coverdisk editor); September 1996 to May 1997 (Tina Hackett); June to October 1997 (Neil Mohr).
Amiga Format issue 1, August 1989.
ACE issue 38, November 1990: AMOS, “from Mandarin Software”.
Amiga Action issue 7, April 1990 (Gollner Publishing replaced by Interactive Publishing), and issue 10, July 1990 (Interactive Publishing at Europa House, Adlington Park).
Amiga Computing issue 37, June 1991, p. 14: “Amiga Computing goes Euro” (Interactive Publishing, Europress Publications, Meakin’s quotation, the group’s companies).
CRASH issue 94, December 1991: masthead (Europress Impact, circulation manager David Wren).
Amiga Computing issue 81, Christmas 1994: “AC joins IDG” and the IDG colophon; issue 83, February 1995 (masthead).
AmigaWorld vol. 11 no. 4, April 1995: colophon (TechMedia Publishing, an IDG company).
Amiga Computing issue 87, June 1995, as sent to American subscribers, with the covering letter; Amiga Computing US Edition issue 2, July 1995 (cover, “PRINTED IN THE USA”, subscription rates) and issue 20, March 1997 (masthead).
Amiga Computing October 1996: Escom files for bankruptcy.
Amiga Computing issue 106, December 1996: Amiga Action to replace the System games section.
Amiga Computing issue 117, October 1997: “That’s all folks!”, the final Public Sector, Shareware and Big Red Adventure pages, the Apple advertisement, and the IDG Media colophon.