Newsfield launched The Games Machine in Ludlow in 1987, and the British magazine lasted three years. Its Italian edition, which began in Milan in September 1988, lasted rather longer. It outlived the British original, then outlived Newsfield itself, dropped the licence, changed hands four times and is still on sale: issue 419 came out in July 2026.
Launch
Issue 1, dated September 1988, cost 5,000 lire for 124 pages. The colophon on page 7 named the publisher as Edizioni Hobby S.r.l., Via della Spiga 20, Milan, and carried the line “Su licenza di NEWSFIELD PUBLICATION” (under licence from Newsfield Publication). The magazine was still “in corso di registrazione” (being registered) with the Tribunale di Milano, the court where Milan’s periodicals were registered; later colophons give the registration as no. 587 of 19 September 1988. Subscriptions were for eleven issues a year, and the numbering skips August.
Two editorials shared the page. Roberto Ferri, the direttore responsabile (the editor legally answerable for the publication), described climbing over collapsed staff to reach his office, only for the printer to ring and say the editorial was missing. He thanked “gli amici della Newsfield che ancora una volta hanno creduto nelle nostre capacità” (“our friends at Newsfield, who once again believed in what we could do”). Once again, because Edizioni Hobby had been publishing the Italian Zzap! under Newsfield licence since May 1986.
The second editorial, by the executive editor Bonaventura Di Bello, set out what the magazine was for: “siamo felici di aver realizzato, prima in Italia, una rivista interamente dedicata al divertimento elettronico ed ai sedici bit!” (“we are happy to have produced, first in Italy, a magazine entirely devoted to electronic entertainment and to sixteen-bit machines!”). Whether it really was the first is the magazine’s own claim. The masthead listed a capo redattore (chief sub-editor), Stefano Monti, and six staff writers.
Translated and home-grown
The licence gave the Milan team the British magazine’s pages to draw on. Issue 1 carried Mel Croucher’s opinion piece on violence in computer games, with interviews including Clive Sinclair and Jeff Minter. Its introduction admitted that the article had been written before Christmas 1987 and that the Italian TGM was running it “anche se con molti mesi di ritardo” (“even if many months late”). A translated adventure review in the same issue still spoke from Shropshire, describing the authors of Mindfighter making the journey to Ludlow “per andare a trovare la redazione inglese di TGM” (“to visit TGM’s English office”).
Around that material the Italian staff wrote their own reviews, news, letters and opinions. It was a small operation. Fabio Rossi, who joined in 1988, remembered in 1993 that “per più di un anno Zzap! e The Games Machine li scrivevamo solo in due” (“for more than a year just two of us wrote Zzap! and The Games Machine”), with occasional help from Stefano Giorgi and Paolo Cardillo. Their equipment was a Mac, a Commodore 64 and an Atari ST running Macintosh emulation, and Di Bello had to lay out the pages as well.
When the licensor went
Newsfield went into voluntary liquidation in September 1991. Because the Italian magazine printed the same colophon every month, the change can be followed issue by issue:
| Issue | Publisher | Licence line |
|---|---|---|
| 33, July 1991 | Edizioni Hobby | “Su licenza di Newsfield Pubblications” |
| 34, September 1991 | Xenia Edizioni, Via Dell’Annunciata 31 | still printed |
| 35, October 1991 | Xenia Edizioni | gone |
Almost nothing else moved. The tribunal registration, Roberto Ferri as direttore responsabile, Stefano Gallarini as executive editor, the editorial office’s PO box (Casella Postale 853) and telephone number, the printer, the advertising agent and the distributor all carried straight across. Zzap! changed publisher in the same two months. Rossi later wrote that in 1988 the publishing house “si chiamava ancora Edizioni Hobby” (“was still called Edizioni Hobby”), which suggests that Xenia was the same firm under a new name rather than a buyer.
An Italian magazine
From October 1991 The Games Machine was Italian in everything but its title. Ferri stayed on as direttore responsabile through the 1990s; in September 1997, at issue 100, the masthead listed Massimo “Max” Reynaud as executive editor and Stefano Silvestri as capo redattore. By May 1999, issue 119, the magazine covered PC games such as Commandos, Thief and Baldur’s Gate, and offered subscribers a paper edition for 60,000 lire or one with a CD-ROM for 149,000.
Xenia sold the magazine to Future Media Italy in November 2005. Future sold it on to Sprea Media Italy in January 2007, and in 2014 it passed to Aktia, which still publishes it monthly.
Sources
- The Games Machine (Italy) issue 1, September 1988: cover (5,000 lire); p. 7, colophon (“Su licenza di NEWSFIELD PUBLICATION”, registration “in corso”, subscriptions of eleven issues), the editorials by Roberto Ferri and Bonaventura Di Bello, and the masthead; p. 41, Mel Croucher’s article on violence in games and its Italian introduction; the Mindfighter review.
- The Games Machine (Italy) issue 6, February 1989: colophon with “Registr. Tribunale di Milano N° 587 del 19/9/88”.
- The Games Machine (Italy) issue 33, July 1991; issue 34, September 1991; issue 35, October 1991: colophons.
- Zzap! (Italy) issue 84, December 1993: “Game Over”, the closing editorial and staff farewells, including Fabio Rossi’s recollection of the early staff, their equipment and the publisher’s former name.
- The Games Machine (Italy) issue 100, September 1997: masthead.
- The Games Machine (Italy) issue 119, May 1999: colophon, contents and subscription rates.
- Wikipedia, “Newsfield” (web, secondary): voluntary liquidation in September 1991. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsfield
- Wikipedia, “The Games Machine (Italy)” (web, secondary): the sales to Future Media Italy (November 2005) and Sprea Media Italy (January 2007), and the transfer to Aktia (2014). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Games_Machine_(Italy)
- The Games Machine, “Edicola” (web, secondary): issue 419, July–August 2026. https://www.thegamesmachine.it/the-games-machine/edicola/
See also
- The Games Machine, the British edition
- Zzap!64, the first Newsfield title licensed to Milan
- Newsfield, the licensor
- Edizioni Hobby, the first publisher
- Xenia Edizioni, the publisher from 1991
- MC-microcomputer, another Italian magazine