In September 1985, a new computer magazine appeared on British newsstands with a name that could easily have been mistaken for an official publication. Amstrad Action was anything but official. Across its early covers it made the distinction clear, telling readers that it was “NOT an official Amstrad publication,” a declaration that would become part of the magazine’s identity.
The first issue carried an October 1985 cover date, cost £1, and ran to 100 pages. Inside were reviews of games such as Way of the Exploding Fist and Boulder Dash, but the magazine was never intended to be only a games publication. Readers also found coverage of word processors, light pens, adventure games, hardware, programming, and other uses for the growing Amstrad CPC family. From its beginning, Amstrad Action treated the CPC as a complete computer rather than simply another games machine.
That first issue also represented something larger than a new magazine entering an increasingly crowded British computer press. It was the first publication from a new company called Future Publishing. Four decades later Future would describe its own history as beginning in 1985 with one magazine, Amstrad Action. The modest CPC publication produced from Somerset became the foundation of a publishing company that would later be associated with titles such as PC Gamer, Edge, Amiga Format, and many others.
Chris Anderson and the Beginning of Future Publishing
The story of Amstrad Action begins with Chris Anderson, who had already spent time in the emerging British computer magazine business. Anderson had edited Personal Computer Games and had been involved in the creation of Zzap!64, but his relationship with that publishing operation ended only months after the new Commodore magazine appeared.
Anderson later recalled that plans to move the operation to Ludlow led to a disagreement that ended with his dismissal. Rather than leaving computer publishing, he decided to build something of his own. The Amstrad CPC offered an opportunity. Amstrad’s computer had arrived in Britain in 1984 and was establishing a growing user base, but Anderson believed those owners still lacked the kind of magazine that could combine enthusiasm, useful information, personality, and serious criticism.
Bob Wade, who had also worked on Personal Computer Games and Zzap!64, joined him. Art editor Trevor Gilham became another important member of the small team, while Peter Connor served as the launch editor. The new company worked from Somerton in Somerset, initially operating on a scale that bore little resemblance to the publishing organization Future would eventually become. Anderson remembered an office behind a petrol station and a company whose finances left very little room for failure.
Even the magazine’s name caused trouble. According to Anderson’s later recollection, Amstrad initially objected to the proposed title because the company did not want readers assuming that the publication was officially connected with Amstrad itself. The dispute was resolved by allowing Future to use Amstrad Action as long as the magazine prominently stated that it was not an official Amstrad publication. The disclaimer became a familiar sight on its covers and, unintentionally, reinforced one of the magazine’s defining qualities. It was independent and was willing to behave like it.
Anderson’s financial position made the launch a considerable gamble. He later remembered having enough money to finance only the earliest issues. If sales failed badly enough, there would be little opportunity to continue. The first copies were assembled through production methods that now seem almost as historically significant as the computers they covered. Text was prepared electronically, but page production still involved typesetting, physical paste-up, photographic processes, and considerable manual work.
Building a Magazine for the Whole CPC
The first Amstrad Action immediately demonstrated that Future wanted more than another collection of game reviews. Issue one contained a feature on word processors and coverage of light pens alongside its games pages. Later early issues continued with bookkeeping programs, word-processing comparisons, programming material, and hardware.
Games nevertheless remained central to the magazine’s personality. Way of the Exploding Fist became the first recipient of Amstrad Action’s Mastergame distinction, an award used for titles the magazine considered especially impressive. Reviews, tips, maps, cheats, and increasingly recognizable departments helped turn the publication into something that could be read for entertainment even after the reader had finished deciding which software to purchase.
Adventure games received particularly sustained attention. Steve Cooke’s Pilgrim column appeared from the first issue and continued for years. It was later followed by Stuart Whyte’s Balrog material and Debby Howard’s Examiner column. The longevity of these sections demonstrated how Amstrad Action could maintain space for individual communities within the broader CPC audience even as fashions in commercial gaming changed.
Programming also remained part of the magazine’s identity. Type-in programs began appearing during the magazine’s first months and continued through much of its life. These could range from utilities to games and small demonstrations, encouraging readers to use their CPC as something they could manipulate and program rather than merely consume software on.
That balance became important to the magazine’s later survival. A publication interested only in new commercial games would eventually have faced a serious problem when companies stopped producing large numbers of new CPC releases. A magazine that also covered programming, public-domain software, hardware, utilities, reader projects, and the CPC community had more room to adapt.
The Christmas Tape That Helped Save the Magazine
For all the enthusiasm surrounding the launch, the earliest sales were not strong enough to guarantee Amstrad Action’s future. The crucial moment arrived with the Christmas 1985 edition, issue four.
The magazine attached a cassette to its cover containing two previously unreleased Ocean Software games, Kung Fu and Number 1. The issue itself expanded to 116 pages and cost more than the regular edition, but the promise of software physically attached to the magazine gave readers something unusually tangible for their money.
Anderson later remembered the promotion as the moment that rescued both the magazine and his young company. According to his account, sales roughly doubled. The significance was larger than a single successful Christmas edition. Software covermounts had existed in various forms before Amstrad Action, but Future demonstrated how powerfully complete games and usable software could be incorporated into the value of a computer magazine. Cover tapes would eventually become one of the defining characteristics of the British home-computer press.
At first Amstrad Action did not include a tape every month. They were reserved for special occasions, particularly Christmas and anniversary editions. The idea, however, never disappeared. Years later, when the CPC software market began to weaken, the cassette would become one of the magazine’s most important tools for keeping readers interested.
From One Magazine to a Growing Publisher
As Amstrad Action established itself, Future Publishing began to grow around it.
Matt Nicholson became editor during 1986, and his later recollections describe Future during the Somerton period as a rapidly developing company still close enough to its origins that individual staff members could see the organization changing around them. Nicholson’s first issues coincided with the period when Future began moving beyond its original magazine.
By late 1986, Future had expanded its Amstrad publishing interests. Amstrad Action concentrated increasingly on the CPC while 8000 Plus served the PCW market and PC Plus addressed the growing PC sector. The company was learning an approach it would repeat many times in later years: build magazines around particular groups of enthusiasts and give those publications distinct editorial identities.
The growth can be followed directly through Amstrad Action itself. An advertisement in issue 25 promoted Future’s new multi-format ACE, or Advanced Computer Entertainment. By the end of 1988, Future order forms appearing in the magazine listed several publications alongside the title that had started the company. The small operation that had once depended on the survival of a single CPC magazine was becoming a serious specialist publisher.
The transformation gives Amstrad Action an unusual place in video game history. It was not simply one of Future’s magazines. For a time, it was Future Publishing.
Editors, Writers, and a Magazine with Personality
Amstrad Action changed editors repeatedly during its decade in print, but those changes did not erase its identity.
Peter Connor led the launch period, followed by editors including Matt Nicholson, Bob Wade, Steve Carey, Rod Lawton, Linda Barker, Tim Norris, Dave Golder, and Karen Levell. Other staff and contributors included Richard Monteiro, Pat McDonald, Trenton Webb, Adam Waring, Frank O’Connor, Adam Peters, Simon Forrester, and many more.
Rod Lawton became particularly important because he remained editor for more than three years, covering much of the period from the end of the 1980s into the early 1990s. Looking back, Lawton remembered a working environment filled with late nights but also considerable freedom. Magazine staffs could develop their own personalities without every decision being processed through layers of corporate testing.
That freedom mattered. British computer magazines of the period frequently depended on the reader feeling that the people producing them were recognizable individuals rather than anonymous reviewers. Nicknames, jokes, editorial arguments, letters, strong opinions, and running references helped create a sense that readers belonged to the magazine rather than merely purchased it.
Amstrad Action could be technically useful while still sounding playful. Its review sections might sit beside eccentric captions, reader arguments, cheats, adventure personalities, and staff humor. The magazine was not always polished in the modern corporate sense, but that informality became one of its strengths.
Measuring the Magazine at Its Peak
The surviving issues allow the size of Amstrad Action’s audience to be measured unusually well because the magazine printed audited circulation figures.
In 1989, an issue carried an Audit Bureau of Circulations figure of 38,457 for the second half of 1988. That number provides a much firmer picture of the magazine’s reach than later estimates based only on recollection. The figure demonstrates that Amstrad Action was serving tens of thousands of paying readers at the height of Britain’s home-computer magazine market.
Its circulation did not simply collapse when newer 16-bit systems became fashionable. For January through June 1991, the magazine reported circulation of 35,159, followed by 37,120 for the second half of the year. The rebound is especially interesting because by then the Amiga, Atari ST, and increasingly sophisticated consoles were fighting aggressively for the attention of British players. Amstrad Action still had a large and active readership.
The figures also reveal why the magazine could continue long after conventional wisdom suggested the CPC should have disappeared. Tens of thousands of existing owners did not automatically abandon their machines because newer hardware existed. They still wanted software, advice, entertainment, technical help, and a publication that treated their computer as something worth using.
The CPC Plus and GX4000 Years
In 1990, Amstrad attempted to reinvigorate its 8-bit line through the CPC Plus computers and the GX4000 console. For Amstrad Action, the launch represented both a new story and the possibility of renewed commercial activity.
The magazine covered the machines directly and interviewed figures involved in their development and promotion. Rod Lawton interviewed Amstrad software manager Peter Roback and press consultant Nick Hewer about the new hardware and its software strategy, while another issue carried discussion with Gremlin technical chief James North-Hearn. These contemporary interviews made Amstrad Action more than a spectator recording finished products. It provided a window into the decisions software companies and hardware manufacturers were making while the CPC market was still active.
The GX4000 would not reverse the wider transition away from 8-bit computing, but the magazine’s coverage preserves the optimism, uncertainty, and commercial calculations surrounding Amstrad’s attempt to extend the life of its platform.
For historians, those pages are particularly useful because later knowledge can make failed hardware look doomed from the beginning. Contemporary journalism shows that people at the time did not yet know exactly how the market would develop.
The Permanent Action Pack
By 1991 the cover tape that had once been a Christmas novelty became a permanent part of Amstrad Action.
Issue 67, dated April 1991, introduced the regular Action Pack cassette. It included complete versions of Dizzy and Hydrofool, a playable demonstration of Ocean’s Total Recall, and the AA Toolbox collection of utilities. The Centre for Computing History still catalogs examples of these tapes, preserving the software as physical artifacts of magazine publishing as well as CPC history.
The strategy was remarkably well suited to an aging computer format. As fewer completely new commercial games appeared, older titles still had enormous value to readers who had never owned them. Demonstrations could promote the software that remained, while utilities and reader-oriented programs strengthened the magazine’s usefulness.
The cover tape increasingly became part of the product rather than simply a gift stuck to its front. Readers could buy the magazine and immediately have something new to load into their computers. At the same time, the arrangement created another source of value for software whose normal retail life might already have ended.
There were complications. Readers debated the additional cost and, by 1994, Amstrad Action itself was openly asking whether the cover tape should disappear. The fact that such a debate occurred illustrates the problem facing late 8-bit magazines. The tape helped make the magazine worth buying, but producing that extra value also cost money at a time when the commercial market supporting the publication was shrinking.
Issue 100 and a Magazine Looking Back
Reaching 100 issues in January 1994 was an achievement few computer magazines tied to a single 8-bit platform could match.
The centenary edition deliberately looked backward. Amstrad Action considered the greatest CPC products, remembered former staff, and celebrated the history of the machine it had followed since 1985. Even its cover tape reflected that sense of heritage by offering Elite, one of the defining games of the British home-computer era.
By then nostalgia was beginning to become part of the magazine’s purpose, but Amstrad Action had not yet transformed entirely into a retrospective publication. Programming, technical support, public-domain software, games, hardware, and reader activity remained part of its coverage.
This placed the magazine in an unusual position. It was simultaneously reporting on a living community and documenting that community’s history.
Surviving After the Commercial Market
The decline became much harder to ignore during 1994.
Advertising connected with CPC software was disappearing, commercial releases were becoming rare, and the magazine began losing pages. Issue 106 in July 1994 fell sharply to 36 pages. By issue 110 in November, Amstrad Action had been reduced to only 24 pages.
Yet the publication did not simply become empty. Its emphasis shifted toward what remained active: readers, independent developers, public-domain software, technical material, programming, adventures, and the existing library of CPC programs.
This is one reason the final phase of Amstrad Action is historically interesting. The magazine became an example of how a computer community could continue after much of the conventional software industry had moved elsewhere.
Its circulation reflected the contraction but also the surprising persistence of that audience. Late issues printed an audited figure of 15,168. That was dramatically below the magazine’s late 1980s peak, yet more than fifteen thousand copies for a magazine devoted to an aging 8-bit platform remained a substantial readership.
The CPC was no longer a major growth market. It was becoming a community.
The Final Issue That Did Not Know It Was Final
The strangest chapter in the history of Amstrad Action came in June 1995.
Issue 117 appeared like another late-period edition. It did not contain a grand farewell to readers, a retrospective announcement that publication was ending, or a final statement from the staff explaining why the magazine had reached the end.
Instead, it continued behaving as though another issue would follow.
The contents still pointed toward future material, and the magazine printed an on-sale date for the next edition, Thursday, June 22, 1995. Issue 116 had similarly advertised issue 117 in the normal manner. Nothing in issue 117 told readers that the magazine they were holding would be the last.
Its circumstances make the final cover particularly poignant. The magazine that had spent almost a decade following the CPC ended not with a ceremonial goodbye but with ordinary editorial business. One of its principal features concerned desktop publishing on the CPC, appropriate for a publication that had always insisted the computer could still do more than play old games.
Issue 118 never appeared.
The surviving evidence does not provide a similarly dramatic contemporary explanation for the decision. Later histories can describe the obvious commercial pressures, including falling circulation, reduced advertising, shrinking page counts, and the near disappearance of commercial CPC software, but the magazine itself left its readers without a conventional final chapter.
The Magazine That Outlived Its Rivals
When Amstrad Action began, it faced direct competition from publications including Newsfield’s Amtix!. That rival lasted only eighteen numbered issues before its independent run ended in 1987. Amstrad Action continued for another eight years.
Longevity alone does not explain its importance, but it says something about the relationship between the publication and its readers. The magazine survived multiple editors, changes in Future Publishing, the arrival of the 16-bit generation, the rise of consoles, Amstrad’s unsuccessful attempt to revive the platform through the GX4000, and eventually the disappearance of most major commercial CPC software.
During that process, the publication itself changed. The early magazine could report on a growing computer market filled with new products. The final issues increasingly served people maintaining and experimenting with machines that the wider industry had already abandoned.
That transition is part of the story of home computing itself. Computers do not disappear simply because manufacturers stop promoting them. Machines survive in bedrooms, schools, cupboards, clubs, collections, and communities, sometimes for decades after their commercial peak.
Amstrad Action remained with the CPC long enough to document that transformation as it happened.
Why Amstrad Action Matters
It is tempting to view Amstrad Action primarily through nostalgia, particularly for readers who remember waiting for the next Action Pack or studying maps and cheats before returning to a difficult game. Its historical importance, however, reaches much further.
The magazine provides a continuous record of nearly ten years of British home-computer culture. Its pages preserve game reviews, advertisements, prices, hardware launches, programming techniques, reader letters, industry interviews, cover tapes, software companies, changing graphic design, and the personalities of the journalists who wrote about the CPC while it was a current machine.
It also occupies a central place in publishing history. Future Publishing still traces its beginning directly to Amstrad Action. The company that later became a major international specialist publisher started with one magazine produced for owners of an 8-bit British home computer.
The magazine’s story therefore connects several histories that are sometimes told separately. It belongs to the history of the Amstrad CPC, the history of British video games, the history of specialist computer journalism, the rise of software covermounts, and the origins of Future Publishing.
Most importantly, the entire run survives. Researchers can move from issue one in 1985 to issue 117 in 1995 and watch a technology culture grow, mature, decline, and refuse to disappear on schedule.
The first issue arrived when the CPC still represented a promising new branch of British home computing. The last appeared after most of the commercial industry had moved on. Between them, Amstrad Action recorded almost the complete public life of the machine it served.
What began as a financially precarious magazine produced by a handful of people in Somerset became one of the longest-lasting institutions in the Amstrad community. It helped save the company that published it, helped demonstrate the commercial power of software covermounts, gave generations of CPC owners a shared voice, and survived long enough to become the historical record of the world it had once merely reported on.
Sources and Further Reading
Amstrad Action. No. 1 (October 1985). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction001
Amstrad Action. No. 2 (November 1985). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction002
Amstrad Action. No. 3 (December 1985). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction003
Amstrad Action. No. 4 (Christmas 1985/January 1986). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction004
Amstrad Action. No. 5 (February 1986). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction005
Amstrad Action. No. 10 (July 1986). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction010
Amstrad Action. No. 13 (October 1986). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction013
Amstrad Action. No. 25 (October 1987). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction025
Amstrad Action. No. 38 (November 1988). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction038
Amstrad Action. No. 39 (December 1988). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction039
Amstrad Action. No. 45 (June 1989). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction045
Amstrad Action. No. 52 (January 1990). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction052
Amstrad Action. No. 62 (November 1990). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction062
Amstrad Action. No. 63 (December 1990). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction063
Amstrad Action. No. 66 (March 1991). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction066
Amstrad Action. No. 67 (April 1991). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction067
Amstrad Action. No. 68 (May 1991). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction068
Amstrad Action. No. 74 (November 1991). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction074
Amstrad Action. No. 79 (April 1992). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction079
Amstrad Action. No. 80 (May 1992). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction080
Amstrad Action. No. 100 (January 1994). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction100
Amstrad Action. No. 106 (July 1994). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction106
Amstrad Action. No. 109 (October 1994). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction109
Amstrad Action. No. 110 (November 1994). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction110
Amstrad Action. No. 113 (February 1995). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction113
Amstrad Action. No. 116 (May 1995). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction116
Amstrad Action. No. 117 (June 1995). Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/amstrad-action-magazine_202105/AmstradAction117
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Centre for Computing History. “MG44: Amstrad Action.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/35176/MG44-Amstrad-Action/
Centre for Computing History. “Amstrad Action Games and Cover Tape Archive.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/cgi/archive.pl?platform=&publisher=Amstrad+Action&type=Games
CPCWiki. “Amstrad Action.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Amstrad_Action
CPCWiki. “Amstrad Action, Issue 1, Oct 1985.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Amstrad_Action,_Issue_1,_Oct_1985
CPCWiki. “Amstrad Action Cover Gallery.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://oldwiki.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/Amstrad_Action_-_Cover_Gallery
CPCWiki. “AA Type Ins.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://cpcwiki.eu/index.php/AA_Type_Ins
Code Like It’s 198x. “Amstrad Action.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://code198x.com/vault/magazines/amstrad-action/
IFWiki. “Amstrad Action.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.ifwiki.org/Amstrad_Action
CPC-Power. “Amstrad Action.” CPCArchives. Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.cpc-power.com/cpcarchives/index.php?num=163&page=articles
Retromags. “Amstrad Action.” Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.retromags.com/magazines/uk/amstrad-action/
McManus, Sean. Retro Compendium. Accessed October 27, 2026. https://www.sean.co.uk/books/retro-compendium/download/retro-compendium.pdf
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