Before CRASH became one of the defining British video game magazines of the 1980s, it was a mail-order business operating from Ludlow, Shropshire. The publication that would eventually reach more than 100,000 readers each month began with a considerably simpler idea: selling ZX Spectrum games through the post while giving customers enough information to decide which games were actually worth buying.
Roger Kean, Oliver Frey, and Oliver’s brother Franco Frey were already working together when the rapidly expanding home computer market created an opportunity. Franco had acquired a Sinclair Spectrum, and the group soon recognized that finding good software was not always easy. Games were appearing quickly, retail distribution was inconsistent, and magazine coverage often treated gaming as only one part of a much larger world of home computing.
The three men responded with Crash Micro Games Action. During the spring of 1983 they began advertising Spectrum software through mail order, supported by illustrated catalogues that were far more ambitious than ordinary lists of products. Roger Kean wrote reviews of the games while Oliver Frey supplied artwork that transformed blocks of text and crude screenshots into something with the energy of a comic or entertainment magazine.
Surviving copies of the first CRASH catalogues reveal how much of the later magazine already existed in miniature. Games were not simply listed with prices. They were discussed, judged, and presented visually. Customers were being given an editorial product at the same time they were being sold software. Later issues of the catalogue refined that approach, and by late 1983 the final catalogue was already advertising the forthcoming first issue of CRASH as a monthly magazine.
Turning a Catalogue Into a Magazine
The surviving planning papers of Oliver Frey provide an unusually direct look at how CRASH moved from idea to publication. His sketchbook contains early versions of the CRASH logo, calculations comparing possible cover prices, proposed contents, salary estimates, and ideas for the language that might distinguish the magazine from its competitors.
Those notes matter because they show that CRASH was not simply a successful catalogue that accidentally became a magazine. Kean and the Freys were thinking deliberately about what kind of publication could speak to people who primarily used their computers to play games. Even phrases associated with gaming culture, including the terminology used to describe different kinds of action games, appeared in the planning process.
The opportunity became more realistic when magazine distributor Wells, Gardner & Darton expressed interest. Roger Kean later recalled that a copy of the catalogue had reached the buyer for WH Smith and that the response was essentially that, if the same idea were developed into a proper monthly magazine, there was a market for it.
Newsfield Limited was formally established on October 5, 1983, with Roger Kean, Oliver Frey, and Franco Frey holding equal shares. The company initially hoped to have CRASH on sale before Christmas, but negotiations with the news trade pushed the launch into the new year.
The original concept had also been cheaper and rougher than the publication readers eventually received. Kean remembered considering a low-priced magazine printed largely on newsprint. WH Smith wanted a higher cover price and a product that visually justified it, encouraging more color and more expensive production. The result was a magazine priced at 75 pence that looked far more substantial than the inexpensive publication originally imagined.
Friday the 13th, January 1984
CRASH issue 1 carried a February 1984 cover date but reached the shops on January 13, 1984. Appropriately for a magazine that would spend much of its life playing with conventions, its first day on sale was Friday the 13th.
The cover immediately announced that this was not another restrained computer publication. Oliver Frey painted a monstrous, metallic face staring directly at the reader, with a Space Invaders-style game reflected in its eyes. The image drew inspiration from the biomechanical horror associated with the film Alien, but the purpose was broader. Newsfield wanted the magazine to look aggressive, imaginative, and unmistakably connected to the excitement of games rather than the machinery of computing.
Inside, the first issue contained roughly sixty game reviews along with software features, news, competitions, joystick coverage, comparisons, and the beginning of regular features that would help establish CRASH as a community rather than merely a buying guide.
The launch appears to have exceeded Newsfield’s expectations. A contemporary advertisement placed in Popular Computing Weekly in February apologized because issue 1 had rapidly sold out in many areas despite an initial print run of more than 60,000 copies. It was a remarkable beginning for a magazine produced by a small company outside the traditional London publishing world.
Success did not immediately mean financial security. Newsfield’s later liquidator report recorded that Wells, Gardner & Darton went into receivership shortly after the launch, with money from the first two issues failing to reach Newsfield as expected. Comag subsequently took over distribution and helped build the magazine’s circulation. The young publisher had discovered almost immediately that selling tens of thousands of magazines and receiving the money for them were two different problems.
Reviews Written by the People Playing the Games
CRASH made its most important contribution to games journalism through the way it approached reviews.
Roger Kean did not want the magazine to depend entirely on conventional professional journalists. Local young people had already been visiting the mail-order operation in Ludlow to buy games, and some became reviewers. Matthew Uffindell was only seventeen when he became involved with the company, while other contributors were recruited from the surrounding community and local schools.
This was not simply a way of finding inexpensive writers. Kean believed that young game players were the audience software companies were trying to reach, so their judgments had value precisely because they were not professional critics with industry relationships to protect.
The first CRASH editorial explained the philosophy openly. Major reviews were supposed to involve at least three reviewers, allowing different reactions to be combined rather than presenting one person’s opinion as definitive. The reviewers were described first and foremost as game players.
That distinction became part of CRASH’s identity. Software publishers could advertise in the magazine, but the editorial side was not supposed to alter a verdict simply because a company disliked it. Kean later remembered software executives becoming increasingly nervous about mediocre or poor CRASH reviews as the magazine’s influence grew.
The system also gave reviews personality. A reader could see several reactions to the same game, followed by practical information and numerical ratings. Instead of pretending that criticism was objective, CRASH acknowledged disagreement and tried to manage it by putting several players into the process.
Putting Numbers on Playability
CRASH also developed an unusually detailed numerical rating system. By issue 3, the magazine had explained its categories to readers and clarified what each percentage was supposed to represent.
Games could be judged on use of the computer, graphics, playability, getting started, addictive qualities, value for money, and an overall score. The magazine was careful to distinguish immediate playability from long-term addictiveness, recognizing that a game might be enjoyable during the first few minutes without having enough depth to keep someone returning.
That language helped formalize concepts players already understood intuitively. A technically impressive program was not automatically a good game. Controls mattered. Instructions mattered. Value mattered. Most importantly, the desire to continue playing mattered.
Issue 1 already demonstrated how enthusiastic CRASH could be when a game succeeded. Micromega’s 3-D Deathchase received an overall score of 92 percent, with reviewers praising the speed and convincing sensation of racing between trees. Quicksilva’s Bugaboo also received 92 percent.
The recognizable CRASH Smash award soon gave exceptional games another badge of approval. From that point onward, a high CRASH score or Smash could become part of the way a game was marketed, placing the magazine in the increasingly important space between developers, distributors, retailers, and consumers.
Oliver Frey and the Art of CRASH
The reviews gave CRASH authority, but Oliver Frey’s artwork made it instantly recognizable.
At a time when many computing publications relied heavily on photographs of hardware, screenshots, and relatively restrained graphic design, CRASH regularly placed painted fantasy, horror, and science-fiction scenes on the newsstand. Frey approached the covers as pieces of entertainment artwork in their own right.
Faces stared directly from the magazine rack. Monsters lunged toward the reader. Warriors, aliens, machines, and fantasy figures often seemed larger and more dramatic than anything the Spectrum itself could display.
The contrast was deliberate. CRASH was selling the imaginative experience of playing games rather than pretending that the limited graphics of an 8-bit computer represented the full world players imagined while looking at the screen.
Sometimes that philosophy brought trouble. Certain Frey covers generated complaints because of violent or suggestive imagery. Roger Kean later remembered particular controversy surrounding the artwork associated with Dun Darach and Barbarian, with WH Smith warning Newsfield after complaints about the latter.
Yet the willingness to take those risks became part of CRASH’s identity. The covers did more than announce that a new issue existed. They created a visual mythology around Spectrum gaming and helped elevate game packaging, magazine illustration, and computer entertainment into the same imaginative space occupied by fantasy novels, comics, and film posters.
CRASH Towers and the Ludlow Experiment
As circulation grew, the operation expanded into offices on King Street in Ludlow. Readers came to know the premises through the semi-mythical name “CRASH Towers,” reinforced by photographs, staff columns, jokes, and the magazine’s deliberately informal presentation of its own workplace.
The location was significant. Much of British publishing was centered in London, yet one of the country’s most influential games magazines was being produced in a Shropshire market town by a company whose staff included teenagers and young enthusiasts.
The production process was physical in a way that can be difficult to imagine in an age of digital publishing. Kean recalled early issues being typed on a Smith Corona electric typewriter and sent away for typesetting. Finished text was physically cut and positioned on layout sheets. Screenshots had to be photographed from monitors, processed, converted for print, and pasted into position.
Newsfield adopted computers for production relatively quickly, but even then magazine-making remained a mixture of electronics, photography, manual layout, printing, and frantic deadline work.
The unusual staff culture became as important to CRASH as the technology. Writers appeared as personalities. Running jokes moved from issue to issue. The mysterious Lloyd Mangram became a recurring name despite not being a conventional member of staff at all, with the character serving as part of the magazine’s playful internal world.
Readers were not simply being handed reviews. They were being invited into a club.
The “Unclear User” Controversy
CRASH’s irreverence reached its most consequential point in 1985.
The magazine had developed a habit of teasing competitors, but issue 19 went much further with a four-page parody of rival magazine Sinclair User. The spoof called the publication “Unclear User” and imitated its appearance while attacking aspects of its editorial style.
Sinclair User publisher EMAP did not treat the joke as harmless competition.
Two days before issue 19 was officially due to go on sale, EMAP obtained an injunction preventing continued distribution. Newsfield was forced to recall unsold copies and remove pages 123 through 126 before sending the magazine back into shops. Issue 20 subsequently carried a publisher’s statement explaining the disruption and apologizing to readers who had been unable to find the previous issue.
The dispute was eventually settled outside court. Roger Kean later put Newsfield’s cost at around £60,000, a major sum for a relatively young independent publisher.
Financially, it could have been devastating. Culturally, the controversy strengthened the magazine’s reputation as the rebellious outsider of British computer publishing. CRASH’s own later account remembered circulation accelerating after the dispute, from roughly 50,000 copies per month toward the 100,000 mark.
It would be risky to credit one legal fight for the magazine’s entire growth, but the broader rise is supported by harder evidence. By 1986, CRASH had reached an audited circulation exceeding 100,000 copies per month.
More Than 100,000 Copies a Month
By the autumn of 1986, CRASH was no longer merely a successful specialist publication. Newsfield reported figures from the Audit Bureau of Circulations showing sales of more than 100,000 copies a month, making it the biggest-selling computer title in Britain at that point.
For the people who had started with a mail-order catalogue only three years earlier, the transformation was extraordinary.
CRASH’s success also demonstrated how large the British home computer audience had become. The ZX Spectrum had placed games in bedrooms and living rooms across the country, and the young people playing them wanted publications that treated gaming as something important enough to deserve detailed criticism, strategy, maps, news, humor, artwork, and debate.
Newsfield used the momentum to expand. ZZAP!64 launched in 1985 for Commodore 64 owners and became another major success. AMTIX followed for the Amstrad market. The company established Thalamus to publish software and attempted to move into other forms of entertainment publishing.
For a time, the small Ludlow operation had become a substantial media company. The liquidator’s later history of Newsfield records ZZAP!64 reaching an audited circulation above 68,000 within eighteen months of launch, while CRASH remained the title that had made the expansion possible in the first place.
A Magazine Has to Change With Its Machine
The problem for every single-format computer magazine is that the machine underneath it eventually ages.
CRASH had been born during the explosive expansion of the Spectrum market. By the late 1980s, however, readers had more choices. Sixteen-bit computers were becoming increasingly attractive, Sega and Nintendo were expanding the console market, and the commercial center of gaming was moving.
Magazine competition was changing too. Cover-mounted cassettes became an increasingly powerful way to attract buyers. A reader was no longer purchasing only articles and reviews. The magazine itself could come packaged with playable demonstrations, utilities, cheats, and complete games.
CRASH responded in June 1989 with its regular Mega Power Tape. Issue 65 prominently advertised the cassette and devoted space to explaining its games and features. Later Powertapes became part of the publication’s identity.
The tape helped keep the magazine valuable to Spectrum owners, but it also illustrated how difficult the market had become. Each issue now had to compete not only through writing and artwork, but through whatever software could physically be attached to the cover.
Newsfield’s Expansion Becomes a Weakness
CRASH and ZZAP!64 had given Newsfield two powerful foundations, but the company never found permanent successors capable of replacing them as their original markets aged.
The liquidator’s report describes a series of attempts to diversify. Some publications struggled to achieve the necessary circulation or advertising income. Newsfield also invested in new offices and experimented with publications aimed beyond its original computer audience.
By 1990 and 1991 the environment was becoming increasingly unforgiving. Japanese consoles were taking a growing share of the games market, some of Newsfield’s newer projects were underperforming, and the company entered a period in which cuts were no longer enough to restore profitability.
Jonathan Rignall became managing director in 1991 and worked on a plan to reduce costs further. According to the liquidator’s account, projections for the important autumn issues then came in below expectations. The auditors concluded that the balance sheet showed an insolvent position and that the company could not realistically continue.
On September 17, 1991, the decision was made to place Newsfield into voluntary liquidation and the staff were laid off.
The company that had grown from a Spectrum mail-order operation into one of Britain’s best-known computer publishers was finished.
CRASH Survives the Liquidator
The magazine itself did not disappear immediately.
Issue 93, dated October 1991, was the last regular issue of the Newsfield period. There was no November issue. Then, in December, CRASH returned with issue 94 under Europress.
The revived magazine did not hide what had happened. Its news section joked about surviving the “Liquidatorus” and discussed attempts by competing interests to acquire the title. The masthead and addresses changed, but CRASH tried to preserve the familiar tone that readers expected.
In some ways, its survival was remarkable. The Spectrum was approaching its tenth anniversary, newer machines dominated the attention of much of the games industry, and the company that had created the magazine no longer existed. Yet there remained enough of an audience to justify bringing CRASH back from the interruption.
The last five issues therefore belong to a distinct period in the magazine’s history. They carried the name, much of the humor, and familiar contributors, but they were no longer Newsfield publications.
Issue 98 and the End of CRASH
CRASH issue 98 appeared in April 1992.
There was little inside the issue to suggest that readers were holding the final standalone edition. Editor Lucy Hickman enthusiastically described the magazine’s contents and signed off by telling readers she would see them the following month. The issue included reviews of The Addams Family and other late Spectrum releases, a large tips section, SAM Coupé coverage, and another Powertape.
Behind the scenes, however, the title’s independent existence had reached its end.
Europress passed CRASH to EMAP, the publisher of Sinclair User. Beginning with Sinclair User issue 123 in May 1992, the older rival announced that it had incorporated CRASH. Two publications that had once fought bitterly enough to end up in court were now attached to the same magazine.
The irony was difficult to miss. Seven years earlier, Newsfield had recalled thousands of copies of CRASH because of its parody of Sinclair User. Now CRASH itself had been absorbed by the publication it once mocked.
The name survived on Sinclair User, but the original magazine did not. CRASH had stopped after ninety-eight standalone issues, two short of a conventional hundredth issue.
What CRASH Changed
The importance of CRASH is larger than its ninety-eight issues.
It helped establish the idea that game criticism could come from dedicated players rather than traditional technology writers. Its multi-reviewer system admitted openly that games could produce different reactions in different people. Its percentage scores turned complicated judgments about graphics, controls, accessibility, longevity, and value into a recognizable language that readers could compare across issues.
Its writers and reviewers also demonstrated that expertise did not necessarily require age or a conventional journalism career. Teenagers who knew games could contribute meaningful criticism because they understood the products and audience firsthand.
Visually, Oliver Frey showed that a computer games magazine did not have to look like a technical manual. CRASH could be grotesque, funny, dramatic, colorful, and occasionally controversial because gaming itself was being presented as imaginative entertainment.
Perhaps most importantly, CRASH helped create a relationship between magazine and reader that went beyond purchasing advice. Readers followed personalities, wrote letters, entered competitions, studied maps, compared scores, waited for the next cover, and learned the recurring jokes. The publication documented Spectrum culture while simultaneously helping create it.
The Centre for Computing History now preserves CRASH as part of the history of the ZX Spectrum and British computing, while extensive digital archives allow the original issues, catalogues, advertisements, editorials, and reviews to be read again. The title itself has also returned in modern retro publications, demonstrating that the name still carries meaning decades after Newsfield disappeared.
From Mail Order to Memory
The story of CRASH began with three people trying to sell Spectrum games by post.
What made the enterprise different was the realization that selling a game and talking seriously about whether it was any good could be connected. Reviews made the catalogue useful. Illustration made it memorable. Young players gave it a voice that larger publishers had largely overlooked.
From that foundation came a magazine launched on Friday the 13th, a first issue printed in more than 60,000 copies, a circulation that eventually passed 100,000 per month, legal battles with competitors, unforgettable painted covers, cover tapes, a publishing company built around its success, and finally a collapse that mirrored the decline of the 8-bit market that had created it.
CRASH did not invent British video game journalism, but it helped demonstrate what that journalism could become when games were placed at the center rather than treated as a diversion from more serious computing.
The ZX Spectrum eventually left the mainstream market. Newsfield disappeared. King Street stopped being CRASH Towers.
The magazine’s influence proved harder to erase.
Sources & Further Reading
Kean, Roger. “Interview with Roger Kean.” World of Spectrum, May 1998. https://worldofspectrum.net/interviews/KeanRoger.htm
Kean, Roger. “Roger Kean Interview.” Out-of-Print Archive. https://www.outofprintarchive.com/articles/interviews/out-of-print/Roger_Kean_interview.html
Frey, Oliver. “Oliver Frey.” Interview by Paul Gravett. Paul Gravett. https://paulgravett.com/articles/article/oliver_frey
CRASH Catalogue No. 1. Crash Micro Games Action, ca. May–June 1983. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/cat01/index.htm
CRASH Catalogue No. 2. Crash Micro Games Action, 1983. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/cat02/index.htm
Final CRASH Software Catalogue. Crash Micro Games Action, late 1983. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/catlast/index.htm
Frey, Oliver. “Birth of CRASH: Original Sketches, Calculations, Photographs, and Planning Material.” CRASH: The Online Edition. https://crashonline.org.uk/birth/index.htm
“Adverts for CRASH.” CRASH: The Online Edition. Contemporary advertisements, 1983–1984. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/misc/ads.htm
CRASH, no. 1. February 1984. World of Spectrum. https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/magazines/crash/1
CRASH, no. 2. March 1984. World of Spectrum. https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/magazines/crash/2/
“CRASH History: Issue 1.” CRASH: The Online Edition. https://crashonline.org.uk/history/crash_history_01.htm
“1984 Lookback.” CRASH, no. 12, January 1985. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/12/lookback.htm
CRASH, no. 19. August 1985. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/19/index.htm
“Publisher’s Statement.” CRASH, no. 20, September 1985. https://www.retro8bitcomputers.co.uk/Content/downloads/magazines/crash/Crash20-Sep85.pdf
“CRASH History: Issue 19.” CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/history/crash_history_19.htm
“CRASH History: Issue 33.” CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/history/crash_history_33.htm
“Inside LM Towers.” CRASH, no. 36, January 1987. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://crashonline.org.uk/36/lm.htm
“The CRASH History.” CRASH, no. 46, November 1987. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/46/index.htm
“The CRASH History: 1986 and 1987.” CRASH, no. 48, January 1988. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/48/index.htm
CRASH, no. 65. June 1989. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://crashonline.org.uk/65/index.htm
CRASH, no. 93. October 1991. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/
CRASH, no. 94. December 1991. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://crashonline.org.uk/94/index.htm
CRASH, no. 98. April 1992. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/98/index.htm
Hickman, Lucy. “Editorial.” CRASH, no. 98, April 1992. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/98/editrl.htm
Sinclair User, no. 123. May 1992. Sinclair User Magazine Online. https://sinclairuser.com/
Sinclair User, no. 128. October 1992. Electronics and Books. https://electronicsandbooks.com/edt/manual/Magazine/S/Sinclair%20User%20UK/SinclairUser128-Oct92%20c20111226%20%5B52%5D.pdf
Newsfield Limited. “Trading History.” Extract from the 1991 liquidator’s report. CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/99/newsfield.htm
Handy, Dominic. “Dominic Handy Interview.” CRASH: The Online Edition, 2005. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/99/handy.htm
Uffindell, Matthew. “Inside Crash Towers.” Retro Gamer, no. 2. https://electronicsandbooks.com/edt/manual/Magazine/R/Retro%20Gamer%20UK/02.pdf
Uffindell, Matthew. “Inside Crash Towers.” CRASH: The Online Edition. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/99/retrogamer.htm
Retro Gamer, no. 46. “Back to the Eighties: February 1984.” https://electronicsandbooks.com/edt/manual/Magazine/R/Retro%20Gamer%20UK/46.pdf
Centre for Computing History. “CRASH Magazine: ZX Spectrum.” https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/sec/9044/CRASH-Magazine-ZX-Spectrum/
Centre for Computing History. “CRASH No. 84, January 1991.” Collection reference CH59923. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/59923/CRASH-No-84-January-1991/
World of Spectrum. “CRASH Magazine Archive.” https://worldofspectrum.org/archive/magazines/crash
CRASH: The Online Edition. Complete digital archive of the original magazine, catalogues, advertisements, interviews, and historical material. https://www.crashonline.org.uk/
Video Game History Foundation. “Crash.” Video Game History Foundation Library. https://library.gamehistory.org/repositories/2/resources/154
Mason, Graeme. “The Story of Crash Magazine.” Eurogamer, March 12, 2017. https://www.eurogamer.net/the-story-of-crash-magazine
“CRASH.” Code Like It’s 198x. https://code198x.com/vault/magazines/crash-magazine/
Bootes, Richard. Research on videogame illustration and the work of Oliver Frey. PhD diss., Newcastle University, 2016. https://theses.ncl.ac.uk/jspui/bitstream/10443/3527/1/Bootes%20R%202016.pdf
Sinclair User Magazine Online. Digital archive of Sinclair User. https://sinclairuser.com/
“From Crash, to Zzap!64, and Amiga Power: The Amazing Rollercoaster Story of the Golden Age of Video Game Magazines.” GamesRadar+. https://www.gamesradar.com/oh-my-god-what-have-i-got-myself-into-the-amazing-rollercoaster-story-of-the-golden-age-of-video-game-magazines/
“The Commodore Magazine Story: Zzap!64, 1985–1992.” Commodore Format Archive. https://commodoreformatarchive.com/the-commodore-magazine-story-zzap-64-1985-1992/