The old computer magazines

[Famous Mortimer]

I am looking for a comedy thing from an old computer magazine, to frame as a pressie to an old friend who had this picture on his wall for years as a kid. It's a still from "Aliens" with joke speech bubbles where Hudson goes "game over man, game over!" to which Ripley replies "Oh, for heaven's sakes Hudson, just put 20p in and get an extra credit!" (not, admittedly, a great joke, but we loved its rubbishness).

So, I thought it might be in Crash! Spectrum magazine, so I downloaded its entire run, started in the year of Aliens' release and got to scrolling through the pages.

Issue 28, May 1986, page 40. "Crash TV!", a small comic strip about if various TV shows were like computer games, or something. Fawlty Towers and the Two Ronnies were mentioned, but no Goodies. Astonishing only when I reveal the artist's name is none other than DSMO's very own [banned troll] / Nelson Swillie, writing under the name his parents gave him. That was a bit of a shock!

So, any other favourite computer mags as a kid? Mine was Zzap! 64, still the finest of the lot I reckon. But share stories! Link to pictures of really awesome game adverts!

[madhair60]

My era was Sega Power/Total etc.  Sega Power was particularly great, especially towards the end of the Mega Drive's life when they had nothing to write about, so just filled the pages with stupid jokes and almost no game coverage.  Game Zone was good for that, too.  massive 5-page reviews, thousands of words, nothing about the actual game.

[MojoJojo]

Amiga Power here. All my old issues got thrown away a couple of years ago. Although rereading the one issue I have left, it's not as funny as it used to be.

[Sivead]

[Blumf]

I have a load of Your Sinclair and Crash cover tapes laying about here somewhere, unfortunately not the magazines.

I also have a line-feed attachment for a PCW8256 printer.

[Jemble Fred]

This is quite a nostalgic collection, hopefully it will grow – but more likely, the bosses at Imagine Publishing (Paragon as was) will sue the site's owners and tell them to remove everything. http://outofprintarchive.com/magazine_catalogue_UK.html

This October half-term will be the 20th anniversary of my first ever paid work on a games magazine – reviewing 50 NES games for the Christmas special of N-Force, rating each game out of five Christmas Puddings. I got about £20 for that – and being 13, wasn't quite at the stage where it all went on cider.

And within the month, I will be accepting a sizeable redundancy after 7.5 years on an Xbox magazine! It's official – games magazines really are part of a lost (or maybe that should be 'get lost') world now. Over twenty years, I've worked on, ooh... about 15-20 different titles, comprising SIX gaming generations. But it's been a slow death for the industry, and there's probably at least a decade of slow painful deterioration still to go until the concept of opinions on videogames being printed on woodpulp goes the same way as slavery, beef dripping and amusing TV sketch shows.

[Consignia]

For me, it was Amstrad Action or nothing.

David Mitchell's let self go.

[Famous Mortimer]

This is quite a nostalgic collection, hopefully it will grow – but more likely, the bosses at Imagine Publishing (Paragon as was) will sue the site's owners and tell them to remove everything. http://outofprintarchive.com/magazine_catalogue_UK.html

I've got tons of things they don't, it would seem -  d'you think they'd appreciate an email? Although the lazy chuffs could just get on a torrent site like I did.

I'm also looking through the magazines for any letters / pictures of geeky kids who would go on to become famous. It's (not) fun! Problem with my initial quest is, I can't just ask my mate what magazine he got the picture from as it'd ruin the surprise.

[Steve Lampkins]

It would have been Amiga Power Format. As mentioned here.

[Famous Mortimer]

I knew as soon as I saw the link that I'd have posted in that thread. Sorry (for having no memory). It also appears I can't remember whether my Mum sent a photo in to Zzap!, or got on the high score table. On reflection, she didn't, but kept taunting me that she would.

Right, now time to see if I can secretly scroll through those magazines at work.

[Jemble Fred]

Zzap's Ian Osborne is working just one floor above me – I could go and ask him, but there's only a 60% chance he'd remember such details.

[Famous Mortimer]

Zzap's Ian Osborne is working just one floor above me – I could go and ask him, but there's only a 60% chance he'd remember such details.

I have the entire run of the mag anyway, I could just dig in to them and check. It's already reminded me of "The Sentinel", one of the first games I ever bothered to complete.

I don't think my thing is in Amiga Format, as it seems to late on to have been on my friend's wall...maybe Amiga Action will reveal better results.

Fred, go and say hello to him anyway.

EDIT: I would buy anything recommended by these people:

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/magazines/C+VG/Issue093/Pages/CVG09300042.jpg

[Small Man Big Horse]

I'm also looking through the magazines for any letters / pictures of geeky kids who would go on to become famous. It's (not) fun! Problem with my initial quest is, I can't just ask my mate what magazine he got the picture from as it'd ruin the surprise.

I used to regularly get published in Amiga Power, indeed the fuckers still owe me a joystick to this day for winning letter of the month. One time a friend and I tried to take over the letters page by sending in about thirty letters, and we managed to get 10 or so printed which wasn't bad - they spotted what we were doing (as we used names from the crew of Reservoir Dogs for some reason) but still went ahead and printed them...

[Operty1]

I remember that Your Sinclair used to supply the goodies back in the day. Cover games such as Chaos and Rebelstar 2 would absorb the summer holidays. Proper rose tinted spectacles thinking of the days spent playing those. Towards the end of the spec days i'm sure the mag was pretty much giving away free full price games on the cover tape.

After that i think CVG was the main mag i bought, and from that, any mag that was produced involving Julian Rignall and Gary Harrod for some reason. At the time these were the names i trusted in video game jouranlism. I remember a great short lived magazine involving Gary Harod called Maximum, a proper hardcore gamers mag, only lasted about 6 issues. I wish i hadn't chucked it all in the recycling bin.

[turnstyle]

I got my name printed in Commodore Format twice.

To date, my biggest achievement.

[Consignia]

I had my name printed in the debut issue of PC Attack. The extremely short lived PC Gaming magazine from around '95, I think.

[pigamus]

I was always totally rubbish at computer games, so I use to love Jon North's POKEs (fnarr!) on the Your Sinclair cover tape. That way I could give myself infy lives on Treasure Island Dizzy and pretend that I wasn't actually a complete spaz who couldn't even guide a bouncy cartoon egg around a screen.

Ah, memories.

[Famous Mortimer]

Oh crap, that photo could have been in Your Sinclair.

Does anyone remember which of the computer mags (almost certainly pre-1991) did comedy stuff, so I can narrow my search down even a little?

[Beagle 2]

I loved this magazine, a weekly (and I think fairly short-lived) one called "Games-X". I've found a bunch of scans of it, I love how on scan 35 the "agony uncle" Dr X is basically a copy of Vic's Lloyd Grossman (was it before or after though?) and they've decided to include a poster of the blokes who work for DMA design!

http://amr.abime.net/issue_876_pages

[Jemble Fred]

Fuck, that's an amazing snapshot of a lost era – less than 50 pages of editorial, and a team of twelve. They must have all been paid in game disks or something.

[Small Man Big Horse]

It was a weekly magazine though, which explains to a certain extent why it wasn't that big. I've vague memories of it being alright too, though obviously it's been years / decades since I've read it.

[rudi]

Fuck, that's an amazing snapshot of a lost era – less than 50 pages of editorial, and a team of twelve. They must have all been paid in game disks or something.

Fewer. I HATE you.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

The Sinclair Spectrum mags were:

Your Sinclair - funniest - edited by a woman! In the 80s!
Crash! - fairly serious
Sinclair User - somewhere in between the above, but not as good as either.

[pigamus]

The Sinclair Spectrum mags were:

Your Sinclair - funniest - edited by a woman! In the 80s!

Nineties.

And when Linda Barker was all over the telly with those house makeover shows, did anyone else wonder whether she was the woman from Your Sinclair? No? Just me then.

[Uncle TechTip]

And when Linda Barker was all over the telly with those house makeover shows, did anyone else wonder whether she was the woman from Your Sinclair? No? Just me then.

Not just you. I remember digging a copy out and trying to gauge if the Joystick Jugglers sketch bore any resemblance to her.

I think T'zer did edit YS in the arse end of the 80s though.

Sinclair User - a classic example of 'follow the fashion' - in fact many of EMAP's mags seemed to be like this. I was a C+VG reader under Tim Metcalfe, and I liked its staid design for some reason - the in-depth articles about Japanese coin-ops or Magnetic Scrolls adventures were prominent too. Then Rignall became editor and within one month the design had changed completely into the horrible sub-Smash Hits/street art style with all the detailed articles gone. So I switched to Sinclair User, another soberly-designed mag which did exactly the same thing about a year later (I'd put up with the awful Kamikaze Bear but couldn't stand Wayne Smedley).

Then a few years later I picked up a load of YS back issues and the Smash Hits influence was clear, except somehow they got the tone of the mag right and they were enjoyable reads. But I always preferred the straight-faced approach of old SU and Crash.

I do find the cover-tapes wars to be a key moment in the magazine industry, maybe even beyond computing. Were there any parallels in other genres of mag? I mean the point where the tape became more desirable than the mag itself - I believe SU saw their circulation rocket when it was introduced, and their rivals had no choice but to join in, destroying the editorial in the process. From what I gather, the games companies were furious over the mags devaluing games by giving them away, so much that they were threatening to withdraw advertising and so on. Does anyone on the inside - ie Jem - know the truth behind this? You can see the legacy today in such places like the Beano - they are now stuck in a cycle of free gift every week. Were the Spectrum mags the first to indulge in this?

[Marty McFly]

I did my work experience at N64 Magazine. Sat opposite Wil Overton, I did.

[Operty1]

This is a nice site for some of the older mags, nice to see Raze and SUPER PLAY in there!!!

http://www.outofprintarchive.com/magazine_catalogue_UK.html

[MojoJojo]

Nineties.

And when Linda Barker was all over the telly with those house makeover shows, did anyone else wonder whether she was the woman from Your Sinclair? No? Just me then.

No. She went on to be Editor at Amiga Power, but only did a few issues before having a "massive brain haemorrhage" [nb]according to the pages of AP2 - at the time I think she was just described as ill[/nb], and spending a long time in hospital. I don't know what she did after that - although she wrote a little poem for her page on AP2, so she must have recovered somewhat. The poem is pretty awful though...

[Jemble Fred]

From what I gather, the games companies were furious over the mags devaluing games by giving them away, so much that they were threatening to withdraw advertising and so on. Does anyone on the inside - ie Jem - know the truth behind this? You can see the legacy today in such places like the Beano - they are now stuck in a cycle of free gift every week. Were the Spectrum mags the first to indulge in this?

Well I was just a kid at the time, but it's the first I've heard of any games companies being at all bothered by free tapes – I mean, Codemasters and The Oliver Twins actually made a Dizzy game especially for Crash, and they weren't the only ones. I honestly don't think there was any problem with them. Also, obviously comics had been taping free gifts to the front of issues for decades and decades before computer games existed. And free flexidiscs predated cassettes.

I do know for sure that having free tapes never in any notable way compromised the editorial of a magazine. Free gifts didn't begin to overpower content until the turn of the millennium, when they stopped being taped to a front cover, and mags began to be uniformly sold in sealed bags full of shit, so nobody could actually check out the content in the shop. By 2000 what was in the mag and on the cover had become less important than the bag and the freebies. You still had to deliver with content obviously, because otherwise nobody would buy the mag again. But yes, it has always been a bit sad that nobody can judge a mag on the shelf any more. Most successful editors have had to become salesmen first and writers second.

[MojoJojo]

I do find the cover-tapes wars to be a key moment in the magazine industry, maybe even beyond computing. Were there any parallels in other genres of mag? I mean the point where the tape became more desirable than the mag itself - I believe SU saw their circulation rocket when it was introduced, and their rivals had no choice but to join in, destroying the editorial in the process. From what I gather, the games companies were furious over the mags devaluing games by giving them away, so much that they were threatening to withdraw advertising and so on. Does anyone on the inside - ie Jem - know the truth behind this? You can see the legacy today in such places like the Beano - they are now stuck in a cycle of free gift every week. Were the Spectrum mags the first to indulge in this?

Hah, my random stumbling around AP2 had just led me to this page: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/info/games.html
But basically, yes.