![The Race Is On To Save A Valuable Resource Of Video Game History 1](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.timeextension.com/9274e1075a6d1/the-race-is-on-to-save-a-valuable-resource-of-video-game-history-1.900x.jpg)
One of the History of Games 2024 conference talks, by Jaroslav Švelch, was on British game developer and journalist Mel Croucher. As Švelch describes it, he has become Croucher's biographer, interviewing him in his home and having access to his large archive of materials.
Croucher is perhaps best known for the games Pimania (1982), Groucho (1983), and Deus Ex Machina (1984) - the last one included an audio tape to be played alongside the game. In later years, Croucher moved into journalism and activism, writing for Crash magazine. Švelch's talk included archive photography, gameplay video, and detailed how Croucher was opposed to censorship but advocated self-regulation, was for nuclear disarmament, and, in many ways, was an outlier in the British games industry and press.
The 20-minute talk was riveting and a great example of investigative research by academics. But that's not the point of this satellite article. Švelch approached me at the conference, asking for my help, believing I would have the answer. Did I know where to find archives of Computer Trade Weekly?
The first assumption is naturally, the Internet Archive? SegaRetro? At the very least the National Archives should have one copy of every printed publication.
"I've checked again," explained Švelch, "And the British Library only has CTW starting from 1994. The National Archive doesn't seem to have anything. I'll send some existing info on the CTW and some clippings that I have. Apparently, it was published from 1984. It would be great if you could pass on the message that this is an essential resource that hasn't been digitised."
![The Race Is On To Save A Valuable Resource Of Video Game History 5](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.timeextension.com/01b9038e8bc21/the-race-is-on-to-save-a-valuable-resource-of-video-game-history-5.900x.jpg)
This is a horrifying revelation, and very surprising. Gaming Alexandria has bought and scanned countless Japanese magazines. SegaRetro has 532 issues of Japanese arcade trade paper Game Machine, from 1974 to 1996. Rare Japanese publications preserved by English speakers. Surely a British trade paper would have been preserved too? Seemingly not! SegaRetro's first issue is 180 with hundreds of issues missing from the 880 issue run. Besides this there are a few clippings online, and people like Stuart Campbell who put their own work up. There is no comprehensive archive of scans for every issue.
Take a look at the earliest issue on SegaRetro. Industry quotes. Old adverts. Data on pricing and sales charts. Insider news stories. Rare photographs. A contextual snapshot of the zeitgeist of April 1988. The historical value is priceless. Why have these not all been preserved yet?
Given that it was an industry trade paper, the recipients would have been industry people. Who would have stored all of them for 40 years? Jeff Minter maybe? He's a veteran British developer and lives rurally, so might have the space for it. Even Croucher only has clippings related to his own work.
Dr Charlotte Stevens, Lecturer in Media and Communication at Birmingham City University, told me that should a full archive be found, there are apparatus in place to house them. We need to find and digitise them while the paper is still legible.
This article is a call for help. A vital resource of information risks being lost. It may already have been lost. If you have old copies, or know someone who does, please reach out.
Throughout the conference there was a lot of discussion on the gulf between academics, the specialist press, registered preservation groups, and hobbyists or fans. It was stressed that academics rely on and utilise the efforts of amateurs - there is value in the work they do. Something like scanning and archiving magazines, or dumping and preserving game data, has typically fallen to the fan community, working in a grey area around copyright.
![The Race Is On To Save A Valuable Resource Of Video Game History 2](https://cdn.statically.io/img/images.timeextension.com/d570b9622d175/the-race-is-on-to-save-a-valuable-resource-of-video-game-history-2.900x.jpg)
Dr Poppy Wilde shared her thoughts: "We have to remember that each level of users and groups are serving equally as important and as valid, but differing commentaries. So academics are obviously very privileged with the time that we have to explore things from a deep theoretical academic research perspective. As you say, we've got fans and historians who are looking at that from another perspective."
This overlap of disciplines, four distinct pillars looking at games history, is fascinating, especially given that they seldom seem to interact directly. I ask if academia would want the fan community to adopt a more scientific method in their work.
Dr Wilde disagrees: "My perspective would be to say, no. Because actually, then, what we would be studying would be an imposition of a cultural archival practice. And fans themselves are doing really interesting work through their curation practices, rather than it being a right or a wrong way."
So if you're reading this, and you toil away scanning or dumping or preserving. Know that your efforts are invaluable. The window to document and preserve the start of the video game industry moves further away with each year.
To give an example of how this has helped academics, Richard Sherriff used a different newspaper, Popular Computing Weekly, along with fan scans of Crash magazine, to correlate sales charts with Crash Smash awards. What he found is that cumulatively, on average, the number of Crash Smash awards each month did not change - however, the presence of these games in the charts did decline markedly.
The research is a work in progress, with various theories on why. First, it's important to know who collated the charts: for the first six months, the Spectrum charts for PCW were by a small retailer, Buffer Computer Shop. Then it swapped over to WH Smiths, who, to a degree, were able to manipulate the market. Then it was Boots. Then, in September 1985, it was Gallup, which Sherriff suggests was the most reliable in terms of accuracy.
Apart from the reliability of the charts, it's possible that there was buyer fatigue after a time, with so many Crash Smash awards, or possibly the declining prominence of the ZX Spectrum and Crash magazine in the overall market. At the very least, it suggests the enthusiast press had a declining influence on consumer purchasing as the decade went on. Further research is needed.
But as you can see, academics such as Švelch and Sherriff are relying on materials which, for the most part, have been preserved by the fans. Sherriff states in his talk we are lucky they've done this.
Please help address this glaring void in British computing history. Do you know where to find the missing issues of Computer Trade Weekly?
Comments 17
There is a magazine wiki with snippets of issues 1, 115 , 116 ,117, 118, 119 and 120.
https://magazinesfromthepast.fandom.com/wiki/CTW
A Single 1996 promo issue on ebay
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/325780000498?itmmeta=01HZ7MFK2D84RHF9SN28GPP7AN&hash=item4bda004ef2:g:7Q8AAOSwWOFk3~lq&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAAwF5vaqM2AVTjawbBp5Bx4aXns%2B2V5SQLWy0ZtW6XiehpTAhxODUnm7TUN2fbNGCTHNcZCmd4WAIBdOervfD8kYlYrkWuAjQ3pL6XJ0xqH%2BOuUwLtcq0ns1JdsQ%2BQp1eXD7aSVuxi%2BMQHP9B06fbLZCcOgDfLw35gBbgJX9XpYcijo6waBcrSLZYsPSBONHKElZc%2BewLEkc9gDou%2FdLdC7RajZZcnejVxKFIOaJF11baHD%2Brsa1QuU0%2BD3CusEuzPPA%3D%3D%7Ctkp%3ABk9SR6axvvT5Yw
Nothing on archive.org.
I remember getting some issues of this for a while. Don't have anything now though.
Shocking, but not really surprising - trying to track down more fringe publications from the early to mid 90's is a tricky proposition, with magazines changing publisher and those at the end of their commercial lives just vanishing from the newsstand, with speculation over the final issue numbers of various magazines.
I made it one of my collecting missions to track down every issue of Popular Computing Weekly, from issue one in 1982 through to issue 429 in 1990. It took me years to do it, and I got lucky with a couple of eBay sellers who helped me fill a lot of the gaps with bulk deals. Those last issues from 1990 were a nightmare to track down, and even confirm what the last issue was (I worked it out by cross referencing a story in rival New Computer Express!)
I can well imagine that finding many issues of CTW will be very difficult. Chances are a couple of large collections are sitting in lofts around the country and risk being disposed of, by family members at the passing of an elderly relative, or 'house clearance' who have no idea the importance of them. Let's hope someone somewhere can help out.
@KitsuneNight Oddly that single 1996 issue is all the way over in the US!
Just a small point: Japanese trade magazine Game Machine was digitised by Onion Software (related to Onion Games/LOVEdeLIC) on behalf of Amusement Press.
https://onitama.tv/gamemachine/archive.html
I know because I'm the one that disseminated them onto internet archive. I did so in two batches (in 2019 I uploaded issues 1977—1990, and in 2023 I uploaded the remaining issues 1991–2002) as they were digitising them at steady pace over multiple years.
Whoever has duplicated only up to 1996 must have grabbed them part way through.
@gingerbeardman Thank you kind sir, for diligent service to the cause! I had been wondering who had been involved!
I've looked on those scans so often.
My point still kinda stands though. One of the people involved in helping preseve / disseminate this Japanese mag was an Englishman. Someone whose native language is different, and yet you still took an interest.
I hope we find CTW. Trade papers are fascinating. The tone is less about how cool stuff is, and usually more: this will make you money.
The tonal difference is useful.
Thank you Matt.
@cawley1
Evilbay works in mysterious ways.
Got to be honest though, unless people who have stacks of the magazine start coming forward or listing them on Ebay, collecting let alone completing, CTW is going to be a near impossible proposition.
It also doesn't help that there is almost no information about CTW out there.
Here is hoping that won't be the case.
But this could take years if not decades.
@KitsuneNight I'm secretly hoping there's a veteran developer out there, like Jeff Minter for example, who happened to just put one after the other in a shed or the loft, and kinda forgot about them, but didn't need to move house, so they're just sitting there.
And then someone will tell someone, and they'll tell this person, and they'll be like: so someone wants all these old things? Sure! Come round and collect all 800 of them.
That's the fantasy at least.
Positive thoughts.
@Sketcz
It could happen.
All you need to be under way is if somebody has and offers a chunk of CTW for sale in a joblot.
I tried to reach out to Stuart Campbell to ask him with that very same idea.
Unfortunately he seems to have scrubbed himself from the internet.
His contact page and forum page both return 404 errors.
And he hasn't been active on his twitter in 4 years.
@KitsuneNight Retro Revival is next week. I've asked Paul Drury, who is giving a talk, to ask around. Lots of old devs will be there. Fingers crossed!
@Sketcz
Could be good.
Even if they don't have any copies, they may know people who do.
And that might be all that it takes.
Here is hoping.
Go and ask Stuart Dinsey. It was the start of the working week reading CTW and later MCV for a long time. Very distribution retailer focused though. A brilliant indie like The Yak - who had to fight to get his work out there in the micro era - would be very surprised if he had read CTW.
Still love to look through my old computer and videogame magazines, from the 80:s.
I stopped buying magazines, around 1994.
I though the magazines dropped in quality in the 90:s, and the 32 bit era just wasn't as exciting to read about. And around 1996, I got all the news from Internet anyways.
But I will keep those 80:s mags forever.
Really it needs to be someone like Geoff Brown of US Gold, Gary Bracey of Ocean (given David Ward has passed), surely these big publishers would have had multiple issues of the publication, probably even had them in their lobby - but I can imagine they were binned once the next issue arrived. Think that people didn't even think to back up or archive their work in the majority of cases back then, not sure a trade newspaper really stood a chance! The other issue is I would imagine many of these went to commercial properties, and not to home addresses, where it would be more likely that they may have made their way to a loft or shed.
The North West Computer Museum had a large collection of trade papers- may have been Personal Computer Weekly though? Could be worth asking them?
"The 20-minute talk was riveting and a great example of investigative research by academics. But that's not the point of this satellite article"
(question: "satellite article")
@Mario500 My initial pitch was the main feature linked at the start of this piece, describing the three day conference and listing a few interesting talks which didn't warrant a standalone article. (The Little Wars book talk for example; great to learn about as the precursor to D&D and RPGs in general, but difficult to then write about.)
After this initial piece I envisioned several "satellite" articles based on specific talks (or groups of talks) which warranted a deeper look. As in: this mini piece now orbits the main starter feature like a satellite.
Really I just wanted to draw attention to what Jaro had made me aware of regarding CTW.
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