Video Game magazine history
An abridged history of video game magazines: 1981-1996.
The history of video game magazines is also the history of the late 20th century and the global convergence of media and technology.
The magazines that we read as kids provided us with front row seats to the homogenisation of pop culture that began to emerge in the 80s and early 90s. And if you’re willing to dig deep enough there’s probably a decent PHD to be written about the impact of video game magazines on our soft and mushy adolescent brains.
I definitely don’t have the time for that sort of action. I’m old. I’m tired. I have responsibilities and bills. But I have always been fascinated with video game magazines. Almost as much as the games they cover.
So here, instead, is an abridged guide to the history of video game magazines. With only a few, brief, dovetails into anthropological speculation.
The future of the future
It’s 2025. Which, if you grew up on 20th century pop-culture references means we’re now living in the future. Not the future we were promised. And not a particularly good one. But a version of it.
How did we get here? Our abridged story begins in 1981, when two magazines from different sides of the Atlantic launched to document the emerging gaming industry within months of each other.
The first issue of Electronic Games magazine appeared on US newsstands in October 1981. A month later Computer and Video Games (CVG) was launched in the UK.
If you want to annoy people you can argue that Compute! magazine from the US beat them both the punch, with its debut issue premiering in 1977. But that publication was more about the nerdy, technical application of computers, rather than software, so we’re going to ignore it here. Also, you can read more about Compute! here.
All you really need to know is that 1981 is year zero for computer and video game magazines as we understand them. These early issues of Electronic Games and CVG set the template for the news, previews, reviews and guides format that would sustain the industry for the next few decades.
Just one thing - they covered completely different gaming platforms.
Electronic Games early issues focused on the American home consoles of the era, which meant the Atari 2600 and Intellivision. CVG was all about the Spectrum ZX, BBC Micro, and other long forgotten British home micros. That’s not a coincidence.
Spectrum vs Commodore
For UK readers, CVG is where it all begins, but you’d be hard pressed to recognise the systems covered in those early issues. It’s a real grab bag of obscure and failed computers. It wasn’t until the Spectrum ZX and Commodore 64 arrived on the scene that the industry found it footing, and a number of supporting publications were launched.
Commodore User arrived in 1983 and did exactly what it said on the label. The magazine would run under various guises until 1998, which… is a very long time..
Newsfield Publications launched Crash to cover the Spectrum market in 1984. Your Sinclair appeared a few months later. Both titles leaned into the system’s younger audience, offering the sort of irreverent tone that would come to define UK gaming throughout the 80s and beyond.
These days Crash tends to get all the attention, mostly because of the iconic cover illustrations by Oliver Frey. Also, they got local school kids to write the game reviews. Which I guess was a thing. Anyway, let’s keep this moving along…
1985 saw Newsfield replicate their winning formula with ZZap!64. Produced by the same people as Crash, it’s where a young Julian ‘Jaz’ Rignall got his start. You can read our interview with him here. Also, a bunch of magazines suddenly appeared for the recently launched Amstrad. Which turned the UK 8bit market into a three way battle between the C64, Spectrum and Amstrad.
It was all very cheap, cheerful and irreverent… And world’s away from what was happening in the US and Japan.
Atari and Electronic Games
CVG and Electronic Games may have launched within a month of each other, but the platforms they covered were worlds apart. That’s because the early US gaming market had taken a very different evolutionary path.
Sure, home computers like the Apple 2 had their fans, but the US gaming market was dominated by arcades and home consoles. So that’s what Electronic Games magazine covered. Its early issues were filled with ads for Atari 2600 and Intellivision titles - later joined by the Colecovision.
Electronic Games may have been first to market, but it was soon jostling for position in a very crowded market. 1982 saw the releases of several new magazines dedicated to the booming home console market. Atari Age, Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, Videogaming Illustrated, Video Games magazine and Video Games player all made their debut within months of each other.
And here’s the kicker, by 1984 all those magazines were out of business.
Because, unlike the UK home computer market, which was going from strength-to-strength, the US video game industry crashed in 1983/84. And it took pretty much everyone involved down with it.
When the dust had settled the only publications left were those covering the broader US home computer market. Which brings us full circle and back to Compute! magazine.
Meanwhile, in Japan
If the early 80s were defined by fragmented gaming markets and platforms, the second half of the decade would see the first hints of a consolidation.
The Nintendo Famicom - NES to us - was released in Japan all the way back in 1983. What would become the Master System was released in Japan as the Mark III in 1985.
We don’t have the bandwidth to get into Japanese video game magazine history here. That’s a whole other article. So, for brevity's sake we’ll just mention that Beep magazine launched in 1984, and is widely regarded as the first video game specific Japanese magazine. It was soon joined by Family Computer Magazine (1985) and Famitsu (1986), which both focused on the Famicom.
These early magazines would eventually see various console specific offshoots launched. There was also a healthy magazine scene dedicated to Japan’s home computer market. We’ll get into all that in a future issue of Forgotten Worlds.
Instead, we should note that Japan’s video game consoles began their long journey to the west in the mid 80s, with Sega and Nintendo at the vanguard. When they finally washed ashore they would forever alter both the gaming industry, and the way it was covered in the associated media.
The battle for Midway
The NES launched in the US in 1986. But the gaming industry was still so traumatised by the crash from a few years back that magazine publishers (and most everyone else), gave the whole thing a wide berth.
That forced Nintendo to step in themselves and release Nintendo Power as a direct to consumer newsletter in 1988.
Sega, although infinitely less successful, followed Nintendo’s lead and produced its own newsletters to keep fans informed about upcoming Master System releases. Which, incidentally, had arrived on US shores the same year as the NES.
Sega’s answer to Nintendo Power was titled Sega Challenge: The Team Sega Newsletter. That’s a terrible name for a publication, so it would eventually become Sega Visions.
Point being, the US market was extremely wary of video game consoles after the 1983/84 meltdown, and no one was in a hurry to launch any dedicated magazines. Which is why it would take a full three years from the local launch of the NES and Master System before the broader magazine industry was prepared to try its luck again. And then two magazines came along at once.
Both EGM and GamePro made their debut in 1989. EGM launched in March. GamePro in April. They joined the recently launched Video Games and Computer Entertainment (VG&CE), which was hedging its bets with a more balanced mix of video game and computer coverage. It debuted in 1988.
Beyond the third wave
Back in the UK, a small column in the back of CVG was the first indication that something new was brewing in the gaming sector. Launched in 1987, Mean Machines was originally a two page section dedicated to the recently arrived NES and Master System.
Within a few years it would be a stand alone publication and of the most important magazines from the 16bit era. But we’re not quite there yet. Indeed, the second half of the 80s would see the UK market dominated by two 16bit home computers - the Atari ST (1985) and the Amiga 500 (1987).
With the number of systems on the market continuing to grow, new, multi-format magazines also appeared on the scene. Ace and The Games Machine both launched in 1987 as direct competition to CVG.
Problem was, some of these multi-format magazines were now juggling almost a dozen competing systems. So, if you had a brand new 16bit computer at home you might be more inclined to pick up a copy of The One (1988), Amiga Format (1989), ST Format (1989) or Amiga Action (1991).
Mean Machines
If gaming in the 80s was defined by geographic isolation and local platforms, the new decade would see things start to consolidate.
By this point Japanese home consoles had been bubbling away under the surface for several years, competing for shelf space with home computers in the UK and US. The arrival of the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo delivered a one-two combo that would turn the industry on its heads. In short order they convinced a generation of kids that the future of the industry lay in home consoles. Which opened the floodgates to a deluge of associated magazines.
Mean Machines escaped the back pages of CVG to become a standalone publication in 1990.
Within a year it would be competing with another half dozen newly launched publications focusing on home consoles. Let’s list those real quick.
Sega Pro, Sega Power and MegaTech all appeared on UK newsstands in 1991. Super Play, Sega Force, Mega Drive Advanced Gaming and Mega appeared in 1992 - the same year Mean Machines was split into two magazines; Mean Machines Sega and Nintendo Magazine System. 1993 would see Total, Mega Action and Mega Power added to the list.
The above doesn’t include all the multi-format publications that were still on the market (or had recently launched). Like Edge, which also first appeared in 1993. And, miraculously, is still going.
This is often considered the golden era of UK video game publishing. The moment ageing 8bit platforms made way for a new generation of games and magazines. And while Sega and Nintendo got the ball rolling, their success led to a flood of new gaming consoles suddenly appearing on the market. And they all needed a magazine or seven to cover their upcoming titles.
Team America
Meanwhile, in the US, the arrival of 16bit gaming saw EGM and GamePro go from strength-to-strength. Page counts blew out to 180+ per issue, circulation numbers went through the roof, and import copies of these magazines became a hot commodity in other parts of the world.
The US market may have been significantly larger than its UK counterpart, but that didn’t translate into more magazines. For various reasons the US focused on multi-platform magazines rather than console specific titles. So when new systems did appear they were just incorporated into the existing publication
The console specific magazines that did appear were usually repackaged offshoots of existing publications (with paid partnership bankrolling them). Both Mega Play (Sega) and Turbo Force (NEC/Turbo Technologies) fall into that category.
That being said, DieHard GameFan made its debut in 1992. Originally a mail order catalogue with a focus on Japanese imports, it would become a stand alone publication with eye-bleed layouts crammed with screenshots and hyperventilating copy. It’s much loved.
What else? Well, Electronic Games returned in 1992. And Video Games and Computer Entertainment (VG&CE), previously a multi-format title with one-eye on the PC gaming market, was dumbed down and rebadged as VideoGames - The Ultimate Gaming Magazine in 1993.
Around the world in a day
Since I’m from Australia it would be remiss of me not to mention MegaZone and Hyper magazine. Mega Zone was launched in 1988 as a multi format gaming publication. In 1993 it became a Sega focused magazine. 1993 is also the year Hyper magazine launched. Hyper would run until 2018 - 25 years. Which is crazy. You can read more about it elsewhere in this issue.
European countries would also see a bunch of new magazines launched in their native languages. That’s a whole thing. Brazil is another territory that has a rich history of gaming publications.
And then there’s Japan. The country has always had a healthy magazine market, so when a bunch of new systems suddenly appeared in the early 90s there was usually a dedicated magazine, no matter how niche the audience.
So yeah, lots of magazines. Far too many to cover here.
Surfing the worldwide web
Plot twist. The good times wouldn’t last.
If the early to mid 90s saw video game magazines enjoy exponential growth, the middle half of the decade was a period of messy consolidation, failure, and cutbacks.
What had begun with a handful of systems and associated magazines had dramatically ballooned. At one point CVG was covering no less than 10 platforms in its pages. And each of those platforms had their own magazines (plural).
It was unsustainable. And it was made worse by the failure of several new platforms as the industry made its awkward transition to CD technology and 3D graphics.
In 1994 a person looking to upgrade their gaming platform could choose from a Sony Playstation, Sega Saturn, Neo Geo CD, (upcoming) Nintendo 64, 3DO, Atari Jaguar and PC. Also, the NEC PC-FX if you really wanted to tempt fate.
With its platform specific magazines the UK publishing sector was particularly susceptible to this glut of system. Basically, the industry was spread too thin. And there’s only so many magazines you can sell in any given month. So by 1995 the stragglers had started to get culled.
The US magazine market was spared the worst of it, since it had always favoured multi-format publications and could simply switch out ageing systems for newer ones in its coverage. Even so, many of the smaller, auxiliary titles closed up shop.
There was also the small matter of the Internet. The very first video game websites (as we know them) had begun to appear online in the mid 90s. At the time no one paid them much attention. But what no one knew was that seeds of the industry’s destruction had already been planted.
Or as Daniel Wilks, former editor of Hyper explains elsewhere in this issue…
“When I first started in games magazines, the Internet was a kind of goofy thing and advertisers were reluctant to pump dollars into it. As soon as the Internet gained any momentum in gaming circles, you could watch circulation and advertising revenue falling in real time.”
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