The Games Machine was the magazine that took Newsfield beyond single machines. The Ludlow company had made its name with CRASH for Spectrum owners and ZZAP!64 for Commodore 64 owners. In the autumn of 1987 it launched a magazine that reviewed games on every format, and then gave pages to laser tag, satellite television and the Fairlight synthesiser too. Its first editorial called it “a departure for Newsfield”, and argued that there was “a whole lot more to having fun with technology than playing computer games”.
Launch
Issue 1 carried “OCT/NOV 1987” on its cover and October 1987 on its masthead, with Graeme Kidd as editor and Gary Penn as co-editor. It went on sale in September: the C16/Plus 4 Handbook reported that “September 19th has seen the launch of yet another computer magazine, from the Newsfield stable”. The same item offered a motive. The Handbook wrote that Newsfield had been “angered by the success of a re-vamped Computer and Video Games”, and TGM was “Newsfield’s answer”. That is a rival’s reading of events, not Newsfield’s.
The cover promised evaluations of laser tag systems and “the new breed of consoles”, a look at Anglia Television’s Knightmare, and features on software sexism, free software, computers at the movies and fantasy role-playing. For the first two issues the magazine came out every two months. Issue 2 was dated December 1987 and went on sale on 19 November, and from issue 3, on sale on 21 January 1988, it was monthly.
Issue 2 showed the mix that followed. Under the cover line “Computer & Electronic Entertainment” it ran Mel Croucher on violence in software, Robin Candy on painting with Degas Elite on the Atari ST, Croucher again on satellite television, a series by Jon Bates on the “tapeless music studio” that began with the Fairlight CMI, and robots in films. At the centre sat “an incredible 38 pages” of reviews “across the formats”: “The next 38 pages are the core of THE GAMES MACHINE.”
Who ran it
The editor’s chair changed hands often, and the mastheads record each move.
- Graeme Kidd edited issue 1, October 1987.
- Oliver Frey, Newsfield’s co-founder and cover artist, was editor from December 1987, with Nik Wild as assistant editor and Roger Kean as editorial director. Frey was still listed in August 1988.
- Jon Rose was editor from September 1988 to April 1989.
- Roger Kean was listed as editor from May to December 1989, with Dominic Handy as features editor.
- Richard Monteiro was consultant editor by February 1990, first with Dominic Handy as assistant editor and later with Richard Eddy as deputy editor, and held that post to the last issue.
A March 1989 masthead named the magazine’s sister titles: CRASH, ZZAP! (by then covering the Commodore 64 and the Amiga), Fear for fantasy and horror, and Movie – The Video Magazine.
How it scored
Because it reviewed every version of a game, TGM judged a Spectrum conversion against the arcade machine and the 16-bit versions on the same page, and its Spectrum marks often came in below CRASH’s:
| Game | The Games Machine (Spectrum) | CRASH |
|---|---|---|
| Out Run | 61% (February 1988) | 72% (February 1988) |
| R-Type | 90% (February 1989) | 92% (December 1988) |
| Chase H.Q. | 91% (December 1989) | 95% (December 1989) |
Out Run shows the gap best. TGM decided that the game had been “squeezed into the Spectrum, but at the expense of speed”, while CRASH’s reviewers were split between “the best you could have expected” and “a poor translation of a great arcade game”. TGM could still be won over: it made Chase H.Q. a Star Player, and promised that “128K owners are in for a real treat”.
The end
Issue 34, dated September 1990, was the last. It carried a trailer for RAZE, a new magazine of “console and 16-bit computer entertainment” from “the publishers of CRASH, ZZAP! and THE GAMES MACHINE”, with a half-price subscription offer. RAZE launched with a November 1990 cover date and lasted until October 1991, the autumn in which Newsfield itself went into liquidation.
Some of the writers moved on together. In April 1990 Amstrad Action’s adventure column described a new adventure-club magazine, Harlequin & Steel, created by “a group of ex-Newsfield writers (mostly from The Games Machine)”.
The Italian edition
The name outlived the British magazine by decades. From September 1988 Edizioni Hobby of Milan published an Italian The Games Machine “Su licenza di NEWSFIELD PUBLICATION” (under licence from Newsfield Publication), translating some British material and adding its own. The Italian edition passed to Xenia Edizioni in 1991, dropped the licence line after Newsfield’s collapse, and carried on under later owners. It reached issue 419 in July 2026. See The Games Machine (Italy).
Sources
- The Games Machine issue 1, October 1987: cover (“TX: 001 OCT/NOV 1987”; cover lines), masthead (Graeme Kidd, Editor; Gary Penn, Co-Editor) and welcome editorial (“a departure for Newsfield”, “a whole lot more to having fun with technology”, issue 2 “on sale November 19th”).
- The Games Machine issue 2, December 1987, p. 5: masthead (Oliver Frey, Editor; Nik Wild, Assistant Editor; Roger Kean, Editorial Director), contents and “Issue Three … is on sale from 21 January – and thereafter each month”; p. 29, reviews introduction (“The next 38 pages are the core of THE GAMES MACHINE”).
- The Games Machine issue 3, February 1988: Out Run review, Spectrum 61%.
- The Games Machine issue 9, August 1988; issue 10, September 1988; issue 16, March 1989 (including the list of other Newsfield publications); issue 17, April 1989; issue 18, May 1989; issue 23, October 1989, p. 95; issue 25, December 1989, p. 97; issue 27, February 1990; issue 32, July 1990; issue 34, September 1990, p. 90: mastheads.
- The Games Machine issue 15, February 1989: R-Type review, Spectrum 90%.
- The Games Machine issue 25, December 1989, p. 76: Chase H.Q. review, Spectrum 91%, Star Player.
- The Games Machine issue 34, September 1990: contents and the RAZE trailer and subscription offer.
- C16/Plus 4 Handbook, volume 2 issue 2, 1987: editorial news column on the launch.
- CRASH issue 49, February 1988: Out Run review, 72%; issue 59, December 1988: R-Type, 92%; issue 71, December 1989: Chase H.Q., 95%.
- Amstrad Action issue 55, April 1990: adventure column on Harlequin & Steel.
- RAZE issue 1, November 1990, and issue 12, October 1991: see Newsfield.
- For the Italian edition, see the sources for The Games Machine (Italy).