I’ve read my fair share of computer magazines main between the early 1980s and mid 1990s, I mostly bought those magazine that focused on computer games. I did pick up a few of the enthusiast magazines that tried to cater for owners of computers who wanted to do more than just kill people and take over the world, but really only bought those to learn about the subject (IBM PC Compatibles) or because they had a great cover disk or cover disc.
The 8bit era was dominated in the UK by 2 computers and 2 magazines, Crash and ZZAP64!. Ironically I didn't really read either of these as most of the games I got for both machines were pirated so reading the reviews was redundant as I could play most of the games myself and decide on my own score. With the advent of the 16bit era there was a huge explosion in software development and so buying these magazines became essential to navigate your way through the mess of software.
So for that reason I'd like to present, The Five Best Computer Magazines of All Time.
Before I begin, I would I would like to point out firstly how incestuous the industry is in that there are many writers that appear in several of these magazines, and secondly that whilst this is a Top Five and not in any concrete order, I have upset this list by bolting on three additional honorable mentions at the end, so lets start off.
Zero was a British dual-format computer games magazine that covered the Commodore Amiga A500 and Atari ST family of 16 bit computers in the early 1990s. It was never a huge selling magazine and the only people I knew who had heard of it only bought it to get the now infamous cover disk which was given away with Issue 1. Zero Issue 1 was notable for having a dual format coverdisk (a very novel idea as both Amiga and Atari had different operating and disk storage systems) which had a different game for the Amiga and Atari. The Amiga had a memorable clone of the legendary Spectrum game Splat! called Merv the Merciless which was very well done and the various and pointless upgrades were funny to boot. I dont recall what the Atari owners got, but I dont think it was as good as Merv.
Ultimately the success of any magazine is firstly dependent on its sales figures, then the quality of its reviews and reviewers. I felt Zero handled all of its reviews very authoritatively, but their comedic style wasn't for everyone. I think their attitude offended people who wanted a games magazine to base their purchases on, and this magazine delivered it but under the guise of humour.
Its lack of commercial success is a crying shame as the reviewers had a style that was consistently funny and made a genuine change from the sterile and dry hyperbole reviewsthat often plagued other contemporary computer magazines. At times it was like reading a less offensive and swear-filled version of Viz magazine that also just happened to review computer games as well. This humour also extended to a highly entertaining letters page and numerous features.
Like its sister publication CRASH!, this was a magazine which catered for the Commodore 64 home computer and all of its culture. It covered games, arcades, music, movies, books and comics and had a fairly lively letters page. It catered for pretty much everything teenage boys were interested in at the time. It had in depth reviews written by people who had a passion for games and who could write informatively about that passion as well. Most of the reviews had additional input and opinion from the three main reviewers, especially if the game wasn't mainstream or didn't appeal to every gamer. It treated games properly and covered full price and budget titles including re-releases. It didn't shy away from controversy and internal disagreement about games. One such notable example came with issue one in which Bob Wade gave Elite the highest possible rating, whereas the other two reviewers (Steve Jarret and Julian Rignall) gave it lukewarm reviews, and often bemoaned the rating years later. Even in its infancy, the magazine began its life with controversy.
The magazine also was the first to spawn the argument as to whether they should give large amounts of space to reviewing budget games titles (both original and re-releases) when none of these companies, e.g. Codemasters, would ever advertise in the magazine. But it became clear that the £1.99 price point for a Codemasters or Mastertronic game was a marketing decision rather than the game being cheap. Brilliant games such as Thrust were as good as any full priced software, but they intend to make their profit on volumes of sales rather than margins. They could have sold the game for more, but then have sold less units. Most of the main software houses at the time had their own budget line or would sell off their old back catalogue to dedicated companies for compilation and budget re-releases.
This was one of the first magazines released for the Nintendo’s SNES console. Although it wasn't the “official” SNES magazine, I felt it was the most respected magazine published for the console and perhaps any computer magazine. What made Super Play special was that it was an intelligent magazine that helped its readers to not only discover what games were the best to buy, but also educated the reader on the Japanese culture that spawned a majority of these games, to better help them understand why the Japanese made games a certain way. The Megadrive was very Americanised, with popular games mostly coming from the Arcades or American producers, the SNES was more grounded in the Japanese culture. It is still very easy to identify whether a game is American, European or Japanese in origin purely by its look and gameplay.
Super Play employed correspondents based in Japan who helped the reader understand the emergence of the hugely popular Japanese Role-Playing Game. The front cover each month would be drawn by Wil Overton (a British artist who drew manga). It would have articles on the culture of the country (from manga and anime to food, music and clothes), insight and interviews with important members of the Japanese gaming community that was glossed over or ignored by other magazines. The magazine lasted as long as the SNES console did, and the magazine closed its doors just at the right time. Rightly deserves it reputation at the top, as instead of content filled with exciting news that was targeted at the teens, the magazine aimed its audience perfectly at the 18-28 year olds who were interested in console gaming as a passionate hobby.
The dearth of American TV and movie tie-ins meant the SNES eventually earned a shovelware reputation that I’m certain ruined Nintendo’s reputation for quality and the failure of the cartridge format was what turned most developers away from the Nintendo 64 and caused Nintendo to vet potential developers as well. Super Play would call out these games, and carried on its mission of ensuring you only bought worthwhile games. The magazine was a sane voice in world of crazy teenage youths. It was also the only console magazine I regularly bought.
There is little more that can be said about one of the most popular and significant Amiga magazines ever published, other than its consistency and importance to the British computer games industry. Like ZZAP64 before it, it would call out bad gameplay, poor technical decisions and other gaming problems that reviewers often overlooked, it would often have Editor interjections, and use the full range of scores out of 100. It wasn't uncommon for a reviewer to decide to review a game using a certain style of reviewing or theme (e.g. hardboiled detective/film noir style). It took elements that worked in ZZAP64 and expanded them and gave you an insight into games in production. It had a planned closure, unlike some other magazines which suddenly stopped publication when the publisher pulled the plug.
When this magazine was first announced many people were confused about what this new computer magazine was going to be about. The name “Edge” had no meaning in the computer industry other than it being associated with the EDGE connector, a device that connected jamma arcade boards to a PCB board to enable people to play arcade games on a TV at home. Was Edge a magazine for gamers who wanted to play arcade games?
Launched in 1993 it pitched itself directly at discerning, educated and mature games players. In flew in the face of the current vogue of magazines for consoles which was to treat the reader as if they were a ravenous teenager and get them excited about the latest games each month. At the time of its release all consoles used cartridges, meaning it was impossible to have a cover mounted cartridge which was the norm in the 16 bit computer magazine market. Other magazines would compensate by including loads of other freebies, like posters, stickers, calendars etc. Edge did away with this, and in the early days used to come sealed in a plastic bag meaning the only way you knew what was inside was to buy it. Nowadays it comes without a bag so you can check the contents first, which I miss.
Edge is written in a more sedate, reasoned and refined style and had a unique way of writing and presentation. Its layout is minimalistic with large areas of the magazine that is simply white space, with no inside front or back cover advertising that has never been equalled. It comes across sometimes as impersonal, but always informed and highly authoritative, and would often call out games that were simply redressing of old game styles with emperor's new clothes when facing games with great graphics and sound but recycled game-play. Games such as Assassin’s Creed. It was also expensive for its time, and relied less on opinion and hyperbole and was far more measured in its enthusiasm. It would feature games years away from release in an attempt to muster interest. It focused on technical aspects of the games, would focus on developers and middleware tools and engines. It covered all gaming elements, and its front cover subtitle would change accordingly depending on the formats it followed. It used a simple score system of 1 to 10, and it used the full spectrum of ratings, i.e. they would call a game 1 out of 10 if it deserved a low mark. It wasn't afraid to mark a game down for being derivative, not expanding on gameplay elements especially with sequels to big name games. It also gave very popular and successful big name games that exploited its players ignorance of game play and give it a 5 or 6 out of 10. Even big game releases would be consigned to a single or half page review if it had no new features and would take barely a few paragraphs to comment on and an average 6 score. The writers were old enough to have been fooled once, and they weren't about to get fooled again, if they had seen it before, they would tell you. The magazine would often complain about having to give games a numerical score as well as a review. Instead they preferred the review to give the impression of a score. In fact one issue it did away with scores as a protest. The next issue the scoring system was back. Getting a perfect 10 in Edge is a genuine badge of honour, and has been reserved for a handful of games. The first game to get 10 was three years after Edge was published, Mario 64 on the Nintendo 64, and the most recent was Grand Theft Auto V, which gives you a good indication of how rare this score is given. It also has the status of being the only magazine mentioned in the top five that is still in publication. It has been known on occasion to retroactively award games a 10, such as Elite.
It also looks at other avenues of gaming, such as handhelds, mobiles and indie games. It allows the interviewees to offer opinion, whereas Edge just reports it.
For me, Edge also serves as a record of the age in which it was published, in other words you can go back and re-read the magazine and it give an authoritative view of the gaming industry as at that time, along with all its predictions, analysis and notable idea that history does repeat itself, but it does come with caveats that mean it can espouse the virtues of a game or piece of hardware that falls flat. Notable occasions include Kinect, the real threat of mobile and casual gaming.
The three notable exceptions that didn't make the list are;
I wasn't interested in Spectrum magazines in the 1980s as I had access to most Spectrum software and could therefore make up my own mind if the game was any good or not. I didn't need games being reviewed. I also owned a Commodore 64, but had to rely on computer magazine reviews so bought ZZAP64 instead, as I only knew a couple of people who owned it, and because I came to the Commodore 64 scene fairly late there was quite a bit of catching up to do. While I was fully versed in the lore and legends of the Commodore 64, the mysteries of the Spectrum would remain hidden until the arrival of Wikipedia in the 21st century. I did however read a couple of issues over the years and can say it is as well written and as enjoyable as ZZAP64. It famously would produced huge spreads of original maps for games such as Lords of Midnight and Knightlore, that would be photocopied and shared around school.
If I could break my own rules and give myself free choice Retro-Gamer would be my number one gaming magazine period, but seeing as it reviews historical games in an amalgam of all of the above magazines, its kind of redundant to have this in my top five. It relies heavily on retro-gaming and nostalgia, and provides insights into gaming mysteries on the 1980s and 1990s. The results are mixed, as games I have a passion for might be games that someone else finds boring. It does it in a style thats a mix of Edge, ZZAP64 and The One. Its not a surprise then that a lot of the staff writers are ex-writers of these magazines as well. It does some really indepth analysis revealing the stories behind some fine 8 bit, 16 bit and arcade classics, and not so classics. I have found interest in the content even for machines and games I have no interest in, other than to fuel my fascination with the retro-scene. You do get some real moments when a programmer, artist or musician reveals something about a game you never knew existed.
This was one of the first of the 16 bit dedicated computer games magazines and was a solid source of information for the future of the 16 bit games. It was initially dual format, but later split into two magazines, each one dedicated to a different platform, Amiga and Atari. The early writing and reviewing was great, and it would prove to be a style template for future magazines such as Edge. It also brought over successful elements of older magazines such as ZZAP64, features such as work in progress etc. I personally felt it lost its way after the split, as producing two magazines with almost identical output but geared to a specific machine seemed a bad idea and it was. I have listed it here as it heralded the arrival of the new 16 bit computers and did it well, and it stayed the course as long as possible. It colluded, in a good way, with developers and programmers to highlight previews of games, something that was rarely done in the past. The first you would know about a game was when it was reviewed or you saw it in the shops. With its previews you were given advanced interest in forthcoming games. It would also dissect popular games in great detail e.g. New Zealand Story with detailed graphics and enemy information. On the downside was the “scattergun” layout style which meant for a confusing read as you couldn't read captions sequentially. But at least it treated the owners of the 16 bit computers with some degree of maturity and intelligence and trailed a blaze that virtually all good magazines followed or borrowed from.
