Retro (Original) Magazines

hamster

Well, I am flabbergasted - truly am. I still in the process of shifting stuff to an external 500Gb (still only halfway there).

Today I shifted my emulation stuff onto it - part of this operation were the magazine scans from the c64 (Zzap), Spectrum (Crash, YourSpectrum) and so on....

I noted that each page is 1 .jpg and a normal mag would have maybe 100 pages on average. Imagine my surprise when I totted up 71,000 pages of reading materials - I am only talking about magazines and mainly only 8-bit specific (C64,Spectrum) and general - these would cover a range like the Oric, BBC-Micro and so on.


This is truly staggering - I have read a lot of this and still do - since it's an amazing time in history - so many different micros coming out at the same time on top of each other and not making to the next xmas.

I was mainly a Zzap reader then moving onto Amiga Format (this is slowly taking shape online at the HOL). I wished I had read more broadly earlier - I do vaguely remember those listing magazines from around 1981-82 (CVG in its early days for example).

What mags have you collected? Here are the main ones I have.
Zzap64 - 107 issues - fond memories of this one. 1987-1988 was the best.
ComputingToday - 2 issues
Crash - 99 issues - Absolutely massive read - great reviews here
CVG - 126 issues - Makes Crash looks small - nov 1981 - may 1992. Huge!
MicroAdventurer - 17 issues - great for interactive fiction
MicroComputerPrintout - 2 issues - all rounder
PersonalComputerGames - 87 issues - another good all rounder
popularComputerWeekly - 10 issues - school rag format
Sinclair Programs - 28 issues - the mother of all type-in programs mag
Sinclair User - 134 issues - the serious side that "Crash" did not do. Massive!
Apr 1982- Apr 1993 (that pretty much covers the speccie!)
TheGamesMachine - 34 issues - covered 8-bit then 16-bit games/consoles
Which Micro - Nice fresh investigative look at the early 8 bit machines
Your Spectrum - 10 issues - Sinclair User eclipsed this one
YourComputer - 10 issues - lovely fresh look at anything 8-bit in 1981 that the reviewers could get a hold of! What a different time it was!

Maybe someday Compute! will fully digitalized!

Love to hear about anyone else's collection or what mags here you got going back.

CiDeRmAn

How can I get a hold of your Crash scans? I was a massive fan of that, good old Ollie Frey and his sweet covers! I'd love to peruse the pages once again!

hamster

You can either go to ftp.worldofspectrum.org and check under magazines - but you can't get the lot in a day or they will kick you off, ie read the conditions. Or you could order the lot from http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzuperstore.html

When did you start collecting Crash back then? Issue one was in 1983. I was a Zzap man from issue 26 in 1986 - and yup Ollie Frey's covers were amazing - PCF's in comparison were a joke.

Retr0gamer

I still have quite a few Commodore Formats, Sega Power and Sega Zone.

Was up in the attic recently and had a flick through some of my older magazines and I was really impressed with the writing in the magazines. It wasn't just nostalgia that made me think the old magazines are better than what we had. There was just a sense of fun in the writing that is missing today. The guys seem to actually enjoy gaming. There is also some great interation between the reviewers and also with the readers especially in the letters section (love the weirdo of the month sections). Some of the screenshot captions and jokes actually made me laugh out loud.

Todays publications are either sterile affairs like Games TM and Edge with writers that take themselves too seriously looking for a step up the journalistic ladder or else aimed too much at the kiddie and casual market like CV and G and Gamesmaster (which used to be a fantastic magazine, I have a few copies at home) and devote a silly amount of space to film licenses and wrestling games. There used to be a huge rivalry between magazines and they were never afraid of slagging each other off.

I think the last great magazine we had was Arcade which died a premature death unfortunately. I have a rule that if the writers don't dress up in ridiculous costumes at least once every issue then it's crap

Also I just have to comment on the genius of Stuart Campbell who despite getting the worse games to review always wrote entertaining reviews and EGM's Seanbaby who has a peculiar love of terrible videogames.

hamster

Retr0gamer wrote:

....and I was really impressed with the writing in the magazines. It wasn't just nostalgia that made me think the old magazines are better than what we had. There was just a sense of fun in the writing that is missing today. The guys seem to actually enjoy gaming. There is also some great interation between the reviewers and also with the readers especially in the letters section

That's so true - and that thought is repeated by so many people who look back at the older mags. Take Zzap, the guys there were paid a pittance and worked long hours. But loved to get a review right and played the game to get the right feedback. We know that from their recollections at the Def Guide to Zzap forums. The reviews are funny to read - they cared how good a game was or if they got bored of it. They actually would complain about what annoyed them about a game or whether the music was crap - or if the game took an age to load. They even doodled at the margins putting in comments and thingie/rockford cartoons! Ok, so they went over the top after '89 but that's another story.

CiDeRmAn

No, I was never a long term collector, certainly I was a avid reader from 85 onwards, til at least 89 as far as I remember, but they have all since been lost, or cleared away, not sure which.
I have a serious stack of Edge mags that my wife is intent on burning one day, and the one magazine I really want is the couple of Maximum issues that came out back in 95, A great mag.

Riesen_Meal

Radion Automatic ftw!!!

Tom Dunne

I used to hoard computer magazines. I remember having a massive collection of PCW, Byte and Page6/Atari User magazine, among others.

I still have the two copies of Page6/Atari user magazine upstairs that my programs were published in, two of my most prized possessions.

hamster

tom dunne wrote:

I used to hoard computer magazines. I remember having a massive collection of PCW, Byte and Page6/Atari User magazine, among others.

I still have the two copies of Page6/Atari user magazine upstairs that my programs were published in, two of my most prized possessions.

I have always heard a lot of Byte and wiki has a pile of info on it. What got you into Byte or what was it about it you liked the best back then? I missed it simply because probably because my newsagent never stocked that many computer mags until the very late eighties.

Tom Dunne

hamster wrote:

I have always heard a lot of Byte and wiki has a pile of info on it. What got you into Byte or what was it about it you liked the best back then?

Byte had articles that were more than just news - I found their articles very informative and well-written. They tended to give at least 2-3 pages to case-study, or research based articles. They were a tad high-brow, some might say niche, and perhaps that's why the magazine didn't survive.

I remember when I cancelled my subscription to the magazine, I got a phonecall from a market research company, on behalf of Byte, asking why I had stopped subscribing.

trout

I had a subscription to Byte as well. I started reading it in Eason's one day, as I noticed Jerry Pournelle (Science Fiction author) was a contributor, and his columns were very entertaining indeed. I think it was called Chaos Manor.

Byte was a very good mag in it's day, varied and in-depth reviews of all streams of computing, with a bias towards PC's... in fairness, there wasn't much competiton. Very little coverage of video games though. This was a "serious" mag.

As time went on, and more trade mags began to compete, Byte went downhill and became very ad-heavy, with fewer reviews and a lot of "me too" reporting.

I'm still bitter about this magazine, as I renewed my subscription for a year, two months before they went bust :mad: I think this was 1996 or 1997.

The publishers were supposed to honour subscriptions with a choice of other industry mags ... I'm still waiting

Some years later, while working in the US, I bought a book called "The Best of Byte" ... which is basically reprints of many of the most popular articles, reviews and columns. This is a cracking read, and cheap too.

I don't think it's in print any more ...
# Paperback: 641 pages
# Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies (November 1993)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0070513449
# ISBN-13: 978-0070513440
# Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8 x 1.5 inches

The shade of Byte is still online ... www.byte.com ... I never registered (still bitter) so I don't know if it's any good.

Tom Dunne

trout wrote:

I had a subscription to Byte as well. I started reading it in Eason's one day, as I noticed Jerry Pournelle (Science Fiction author) was a contributor, and his columns were very entertaining indeed. I think it was called Chaos Manor.

That's Right! I remember those articles now. Excellent reading.

trout wrote:

(still bitter)

Note to self: Don't get on the wrong side of Trout.

Duggy747

Fieldog wrote:

Radion Automatic ftw!!!

And don't forget Jazza too!! Man, what a messed up hairstyle Rad had back in the day!

Aw man, I used to love reading Mean Machines & Nintendo Magazine System magazines, they used to be absolutly hilarious. (Remember Yob! and the odd cartoons that would be drawn in the Letter's section?) I always loved the captions they'd slap on a pic in a review, I can still remember some of them. And like it was said a few posts up, the magazines thrived on pulling the piss out of each other. My brother used to buy them religiously and I always loved reading 'em. My mother, however, was always nagging about getting rid of them cuz of the "mess they made and we'd never read them again" in our room. Twas a bitch to keep them away from her (we know how mothers love to dump things!) until eventually she got her wish when I went to college leaving our room open for attack. The damn woman cleaned out our room and dumped every........single..........issue my brother had built up during the 8 bit /16 bit era :mad: Now there's one lone copy of Mean Machines that survived from July 92', a stark reminder of the treasure we lost!

I'm sick of reading the same said Mean Machines copy over & over again when I need a boost of nostalgia!

monkeyfudge

I should still have all my old magazines knocking about in the attic.

I'd have collected C&VG (Should have issue 2 knocking about actually), Zzap64, Commodore User, Amiga Format and Amiga Power... and there was also a pretty cool weekly magazine that ran for a while... I think it was just called Gamer or some such.

MontgomeryClift

monkeyfudge wrote:

and there was also a pretty cool weekly magazine that ran for a while... I think it was just called Gamer or some such.

GamesX?

monkeyfudge

MontgomeryClift wrote:

GamesX?

That's the one!