A Mecca for Games Magazines

Welcome to our dedicated section for videogame and computer books and magazines. Magazines in particularlar have become some of the rarest gaming items. Just try not to think of all the thousands of issues of Zzap! and Crash which got put in the bin after they were read. Unlike the over excitable tabloid games mags of today, these older magazines are well written and packed full of honest reviews and features on games and people you’d all but forgotten.

British Reading Matters

You may not realise it, but the UK leads the world in one facet of videogaming. We make the most games magazines, and have done for over twenty years. Our Japanese and American friends can only look enviably towards the vast array of titles on offer in our newsagents. The US still lags behind, with only four major PS2 magazines compared to 13 in the UK. Back in the late nineties, we had 11 different Sega Saturn magazine titles compared to just one dedicated magazine in the US. Japan’s magazine repetoir, while varied, is splintered with the weekly multi-format magazine Famitsu taking the lions share of all sales. Multi-Format magazines haven’t faired so well in the UK in recent years, with C&VG and Gamesmaster scaping by on low sales figures, and while Edge still only sells around 35,000 issues a month, it can charge a high price for its content. Are the golden days of UK games magazines over? Hopefully not. While titles are far more short lived today, and the market is dominated by two or three publishers, the saturation of interest in computers and games in the UK should always provide a varied assortment on the stands.

The greatest Magazine of all time?

Everybody has their favourites. For me the sadly missed Newsfield provided two stalwarts, Crash and Zzap, but also the brilliant Games Machine which would have been giving Edge a run for its money today. C&VG’s history means it will always have a warm place in my heart. And what about Big K!