Compute! A history.
Part 1
My mother was a librarian. She used to bring home all kinds of books and magazines back when I was a kid. We didn’t have much money in those days, and there were only 5 TV channels, so a copy of the latest import magazine or sci-fi book was an escape from the suburb tedium.
One day she arrived home from work with a copy of William Gibson’s Neuromancer. It was 1989, I was 11 years old, and the Internet as we know it was still several years away.
While Gibson was writing about Cyberspace, neon lit data banks, and consensual hallucinations, the everyday reality looked more like Compute! magazine.
Originally launched in 1979, Compute! was stubbornly clinging to past glories when I first came across it. Aimed at an older, bearded, hobbyist market, its pages were filled with printer reviews. Also - columns by men in suits, ads for IBM compatibles, and features about inventory programs.
But it also contained ads for new computer games. And so I’d ignore all the boring, technical stuff, and scour the magazine for games I could play on my Commodore 64. Not that I had any money to buy these games. But that meant I could let my imagination run wild, and play the idealised, screen-shot versions in my head.
I should take a moment at this juncture to explain that computer game ads back in the late 80s / early 90s were a strange proposition. Nowadays, the industry is almost entirely homogenised, and there’s not any real difference between playing the latest title from EA or Ubisoft on an Xbox, Playstation or PC. It’s much of a muchness.
Back in the day there was a half dozen platforms, and every machine was custom built from the ground up. Which meant there was a world of difference between playing the same game on an Amiga 500 vs a PC vs a Spectrum vs a C64. Obviously, the ads went with the most flattering screenshots.
And so I’d sit there looking at the ads for Black Tiger, Test Drive, or Crime Wave, with their amazing VGA graphics, and wonder how well they might translate to the humble Commodore 64.
I don’t remember a whole lot more about Compute! magazine. There was an article about early online flight sims you could play that, “cost anywhere from $2.00 to $12.50 per hour to play, depending on the service, the time of day, and your modem speed.” The online games people play. November 1991 issue.
There was also the aforementioned ads for IBM compatibles, and the classifieds at the back of the magazine used to advertise homebrew games and shareware. A quick online search of some late 80s issues unearths cover stories like ‘a survey of inexpensive printers’ and ‘How to choose an income tax program’. So I’m not exaggerating the whole computer nerd angle.
Perhaps most telling is a feature about Nintendo vs the Commodore 64 in the June 1989 issue. It points to the tidal wave that was slowly gathering momentum, but had yet to crash ashore.
Which is to say it captures a moment in time. That hazy late 80s period before Nintendo revived the videogame industry, and the home computer market was shifting towards a more homogenised, production line approach.
Which is why looking back at those late 80s ads from long defunct companies like Accolade, EPYX, and MicroProse reminds me of my childhood.
But Compute! magazine was already a relic by the time I first came across those issues from the local library in 1989. It just didn’t know it.
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Forgotten Worlds: A magazine about old video game magazines coming soon.
