Computer & Video Games

Computer & Video Games — universally C&VG — arrived in November 1981, which is the fact that matters most about it. The Spectrum did not exist. The Commodore 64 did not exist. C&VG was founded on the proposition that games across all machines were a subject worth a monthly magazine, and it turned out to be right for twenty-three years.

Its own launch copy is characteristically pleased with itself: the magazine is “packed with new levels of stimulation for people who get fun out of computers”, and readers were promised “some free brain torture” on the cover.

Fast facts

• First issue: November 1981.
• Publisher: EMAP.
• Scope: multi-format from the start — arcade, console and home computer.
• Ran until: 2004 in print.
• In this library: 226 issues, 21,959 pages — the largest magazine holding here.
• Spectrum reviews: 347 scored reviews recorded in ZXDB.

Why it matters to this Vault

Two reasons, and the second is the more useful one.

It is a cross-check. Most of the Spectrum press reviewed the Spectrum, so when CRASH, Sinclair User and Your Sinclair disagree, they are three specialists arguing inside one world. C&VG reviewed the Spectrum version alongside everything else, which makes its score the one that reflects how a game looked against the whole market rather than against its own platform.

That shows up repeatedly in this pass. C&VG gave Chase H.Q. 97% and R-Type 93% — higher than the Spectrum press did — and gave Out Run 87% while CRASH landed on 72%.

It is also the competitive backdrop. Newsfield launched The Games Machine in 1987 specifically in response to a revamped C&VG, so the multi-format magazine C&VG had invented in 1981 was still setting the agenda six years later.

See also

• EMAP — the publisher, from issue 1 ⚠ contested; see that entry
• PAGE 6 — the next-earliest British computer magazine held here, by one month
• The Games Machine
• CRASH
• Sinclair User
• ZX Computing