Typewriters, stinky carpets and crazy press trips: what it was like working on video game mags in the 1980s

Powered chiefly by enthusiasm and primitive publishing tech, these publications shaped the future of video games media

In the summer of 1985, I made the long pilgrimage from my home in Cheadle Hulme to London’s glamorous Hammersmith Novotel for the Commodore computer show. As a 14-year-old gamer, this was a chance to play the latest titles and see some cool new joysticks, but I was also desperate to visit one particular exhibitor: the publisher Newsfield, home of the wildly popular games mags Crash and Zzap!64. By the time I arrived there was already a long queue of kids at the small stand and most of them were waiting to have their show programmes signed by reigning arcade game champion and Zzap reviewer, Julian Rignall. As an ardent subscriber, I can still remember the thrill of standing in that line, the latest copy of the mag clutched in my sweaty hands. I wouldn’t feel this starstruck again until I met Sigourney Weaver a quarter of a century later.

It turns out I’m not the only one who remembers that day. In his wonderful new book, The Games of a Lifetime, Rignall himself recalls the shock of being swamped by fans. “We just didn’t expect anything like that,” he writes. “I had no idea readers would be so interested in us. But I loved it.”