One of the first ever American videogame magazines is now available online for free

A snippet from Computer Entertainer showing a 1980s PC with a CRT monitor.

(Image credit: Video Game History Foundation)

We got the rights to one of the first game magazines. - YouTube

One of the first American videogame magazines is now available for anyone to read, enjoy, and remix thanks to the Video Game History Foundation. Computer Entertainer, which ran from 1982 to 1990, surviving even the dark age of the videogame industry collapse, is now completely digitized and available to the public under a Creative Commons 4.0 attribution license.

"Most console game magazines in the US went out of business during the 1983–84 industry crash… except this one," notes the VGHF. "As a result, Computer Entertainer is one of the only sources for American reviews of classic games like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Super Mario Bros."

Computer Entertainer was technically a newsletter run by and for Video Take-Out, a mail-order retailer of video games based in Los Angeles. "Because it was run by a game retailer," notes the VGHF, "this magazine is one of the only reliable sources of American game release dates during this period."

The magazine was co-edited by sisters Marylou Badeaux and Celeste Dolan, from whom the VGHF acquired not only bound print copies of the magazine but also the intellectual property to Computer Entertainer outright, which enabled them to release it under a Creative Commons license.

It's a really cool insight into the industry as it existed in one of its hardest economic times. Very specifically, you can see how much of the black and white newsletter's space turns to coverage of computer, rather than console games, as the 1980s game crash takes hold.

For more, you can check out the VGHF's video on the whole thing, embedded above and on YouTube. You can read the entirety of Computer Entertainer on gamehistory.org/computerentertainer.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

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