Amstrad Action
Future Publishing's first magazine, and the CPC's longest run
117 issues from October 1985 to June 1995, and the title Future Publishing was founded to print. Its Mastergame award ran from the first issue, and it outlasted the machine it covered.
Amstrad Action ran for 117 issues, from October 1985 to June 1995 — a decade covering a machine that was discontinued partway through it. This library holds the full run.
It was Future Publishing’s first magazine, published from Somerton in Somerset. The company that would go on to print ACE, ST/Amiga Format, 8000 Plus, PC Plus and New Computer Express began with a magazine for a machine that had been on sale for eighteen months.
The Mastergame was there from issue one
Most magazines settle their award after a few issues. Amstrad Action ran Mastergame from the first, awarding it in October 1985 to Melbourne House’s Way of the Exploding Fist — “our action-packed Mastergame”. The name appears on 197 pages of the run held here.
Fast facts
- Publisher: Future Publishing Ltd, Somerton, Somerset.
- Run: issue 1 (October 1985) to issue 117 (June 1995).
- Award: Mastergame, in use from issue 1.
- Machine: the Amstrad CPC, throughout.
- Sibling titles: ACE, 8000 Plus, PC Plus, New Computer Express, ST/Amiga Format.
Outlasting the machine
The CPC stopped being a current machine long before 1995, and the magazine kept going anyway — which makes its later issues a rare thing: sustained coverage of a platform after the industry had moved on. Its final issue describes itself as “a magazine of over ten years’ standing”, and records the cover price rising with the cost of paper and printing.
⚠ The last issues are thinly evidenced here beyond the magazine itself. What is certain is the span: 117 issues, October 1985 to June 1995.