If, like me, you were a ZX Spectrum fan growing up in the 80s, one of its trio of passionately assembled and dedicated magazines was an indispensable read. Like the famous platform rivalry of the time, each magazine had its fervent fans: Sinclair User was the longest serving, and had a drier tone; Your Sinclair (formerly Your Spectrum) gleefully brandished its off-the-wall humour in each issue, and is especially revered today. But for me, and many others, our magazine of choice was the appropriately-titled Crash, published by Ludlow-based Newsfield.
Most fans of Crash consider it ceasing with issue number 98 from April 1992 – just shy of 25 years ago. Published by Impact, a company created when Newsfield had been sold to Europress a year earlier, the magazine continued briefly, albeit as just a logo on the cover of one of its great rivals, Sinclair User.
“Whatever happened after issue 98 wasn’t Crash, and we even put a poster in the final issue with a date range on it, like an obituary,” recalls Nick Roberts, deputy editor of the final issue. “The Sinclair User ‘incorporating Crash’ thing, it was just the money men trying to claw back a couple of quid. Never sully the memory.”
While there was a little more to it than Roberts reveals, it remains a sad end to an iconic publication of the 8-bit era. “Europress Group wanted an Atari ST magazine that was published by EMAP,” says Newsfield co-founder, and Crash’s first editor, Roger Kean. “And they came to an agreement simply to swap it for Crash. It was kept secret from us in Ludlow, so a big shock when the board announced it.” For EMAP, it was the final revenge for a spiteful enmity that had spilled into the law courts. That’s how it ended, though. Let’s start with how it began.
In 1982, Roger Kean and his artist partner Oliver Frey were working at magazine and newspaper publisher Alan Purnell, gaining invaluable experience in the whole process of publishing, from journalism to CRTronic typesetting and rotary drum laser scanning. Oliver Frey’s brother, Franco, working for an electronics development company, approached the pair with an idea for a new venture. “He had a German business contact who’d asked him to source computer games,” explains Kean. “At the time, the high street was ignorant of computer games – if it wasn’t Atari, it didn’t hit the shelves.” Franco Frey had discovered that dealing directly with the swiftly-growing number of software houses was the only consistent way of getting new games. The three men began sourcing titles and selling them via a posted magazine, complete with the unwieldy moniker of Crash Micro Games Action; then, a few weeks later, the home computer scene exploded. Newsfield, and Crash, were in the right place, at the right time.