The sad quiet death of computer and console magazines

Have you been to your local newsagent to buy a magazine recently? No?

You would be quite surprised if you went to one ten years ago, and then went to a newsagent these days (assuming it is still open for business). So many have closed in recent years.

This is the "Computer magazine section" in a local newsagent here in Australia in September 2025.

Most Newsagents I have seen in Australia now sell loads of stationery, occasion cards, act as agents for selling Lotto tickets, and do work under contract as agents for delivery/shipping companies (eg. Australia Post, DHL, UPS and others).

The newsagent shops in Australia are often full of undelivered packages, cluttering up the remaining tiny magazine display space which is always empty of people. Birthday/occasion cards dominate the previously full magazine display stands. 

The lines of people in the newsagent you see sometimes are for the post office delivery collection and for buying Lotto tickets...

The reality is that in 2025 very few people are still buying magazines from newsagents. In Adelaide's Central Business District (CBD), all but one newsagent in Rundle Mall have already shut down. 

I visited that newsagent in the city last weekend. They have a slightly larger selection of magazines than my local, but still very small indeed, with many copies of the same magazine across multiple locations to fill it out, as below:

So where has the magazine audience gone?

These days, on the internet you can see everything you ever wanted to know about pretty much any topic. 

Any new or old computer or console, any new or old game, application, tool or device. Read or view in real time - from the comfort of your smartphone or tablet.

Just search for and watch a short video on YouTube (as below), or watch development of new games live on Twitch, or read detailed posts about newly released devices on a blog. 

Such content is created within a few hours of a product release anywhere in the world. 

We get notified on our smartphones and tablets that something has happened and we can check it out, or use an AI tool to summarise it if we are too lazy or time poor to watch 5-10 minutes of content.

I can also watch short review or full long play videos online of any game ever made that I want to play. For any platform, current or old.

If that is not enough, I can watch popular streamers live playing these games and talk directly with developers who are often present on popular streams to gauge real time feedback and suggestions. I can save the videos to my smartphone or tablet device to watch later on a plane or train trip.

Take, for example, the latest release Hollow Knight: Silksong game on console (Switch 1/2) and Steam (PC/Mac/Linux) this past week. 

This game is made by talented local Adelaide developers Team Cherry over the past 7 years. 

First, let's check out YouTube and Twitch - Hollow Knight Silksong full and quick reviews, play throughs and live streams - huge quantities of instant content for you to consume...5.6 million people watched the release trailer alone!

You can see exactly what the game looks like and plays like - you don't need to rely on the reviewer - you can see it, and hear for yourself without buying it. 

I can do a quick search on Facebook, which has plenty of videos showing the game, and feedback to read.

Using Twitch (shown below), YouTube live or Kick, you can watch many people playing the game all around the world in real time and in your local language. 

You can ask questions in chat in real time too, to make the decision to buy it or not even easier - over 8,000 people are watching just one Twitch streamer in real time playing Hollow Knight Silksong during my lunch time Adelaide time (in the screenshot below):

In addition, you can debate Hollow Knight Silksong news items, product reviews or stories in real time with your similarly minded colleagues on Discord, Facebook, WhatsApp, BlueSky, X, Telegram, Tik Tok, YouTube, Line, Web forums or other social media platforms. 

Great game by the way, and I bought it on Steam. Sadly no physical box release yet.

I am so glad to see local game dev alive and well in Adelaide in 2025.

Continuing this example, you can get feedback from developers who worked on it directly or other knowledgable game players via the official Hollow Knight Discord channel. 

Discord channels have different sections for different topics, sort of like a web forum website but much more interactive between the users and in real time. Voice channels are also setup and available for active discussion about the game in real time.

As I screenshotted the discord channel below, note at the top of the right pane that there are over 55,000 people online at lunch time on a Tuesday in the official Hollow Knight Discord channel - just for this one game! 

*This* is where all the magazine audience has gone.

Would you write an email for a future Magazine letters page asking for help to get an answer in a few months. Why bother, when you can get an instant answer in Discord, watch a long play in YouTube or watch full review and play through in realtime with all tips and tricks shown!

So why would anyone buy a magazine released at least 1-2 months afterwards with delayed and limited coverage of what they are interested in? 

They don't. And they aren't.

So the magazine companies are selling up, amalgamating multiple titles into one as readership and revenue from ad companies plummets, and then closing them down and disappearing. 

Quietly up until ten years ago, but much more rapidly in recent years. It is a generational shift.

This situation in 2025 is VERY different to what used to happen with magazines covering obsolete computer and console platforms. 

In those eras in the 1980's and 1990's, when the platforms life came to an end, the specialist magazine closed as people moved on to newer platforms, with new magazines to cover them. For example: OS/2, Amstrad, C64, Atari ST and Amiga users moved on to Windows, Mac and Linux magazines.

Web forums were in their infancy in the mid-late 1990's - mostly places like usenet - and there was no YouTube, no Facebook, no Twitch, no Steam, no Discord, no WhatsApp. No DLC, no "fremium" games, no micro-transactions in games to progress, no games dependent on online internet servers to run. Operating system patches and games were actually finished and tested fully internally before they were released to the public, back when Kickstarters, Early access, DevOps and Agile development processes didn't exist. 

Yikes, I feel much older after typing all that.

Magazines were how we found out about what was happening in the world of tech, and we trusted their reviewers to give us the scoop on whether a piece of hardware, system, game or application was worth getting or not.

Now in 2025, this is not happening with current computer and console platforms. The platforms are not obsolete yet, but the magazines are still gone - even the magazines that are available in Digital form on tablets and smartphones for many years!

Where is "Official Nintendo magazine", "Official Xbox magazine", "Official Playstation magazine", "PC Format", "Official Windows magazine", or MacWorld to cover current developments for current platforms in 2025? 

They don't exist. They are all gone. Years ago. Did you notice? Possibly not.

Young gamers were the first to move away from magazines and now almost everyone has, for the reasons I showed with Hollow knight Silksong example earlier.

Specialist platform magazines are also quietly disappearing. 

I saw Computer Music magazine, Linux Format, 3D World, Australian MacWorld and MacUser have also now closed.

Multi-format magazines are also mostly gone in the last ten years - C&VG, Electronics Gaming Monthly, Game Informer, Megazone, Games(tm), Games Master and many others. 

Specialist magazines also got the axe. None of the magazines below is still around as a physical printed magazine today (except PC Pro).

Commodore magazines are mostly long gone, but already I covered in a previous blog post about Amiga magazines from 1985 to 2022, and their amazing continued run despite the decimation of computer magazines elsewhere around the world. Please read that article for more detail on Amiga magazines!

Here are some of the older Amiga and Commodore magazines (definitely not all of them - see my blog post for more details) 

So what is left?

"Edge" magazine is one of the few multi-format magazines to still survive in 2025 - but seriously, take a look at the tiny thin size and page count of it. Other US and UK specialist magazines such as "PC Pro" and "Admin Network & Security" magazine are also still around in 2025. There are probably others that I can't get here in Australia, and I am only looking at English language magazines.

I bought Retro Gamer and PC Pro latest issues from the newsagent here in September 2025 (note we get magazines one or two months later than they are released in the UK/US. 

Ironically PC Pro magazine this month is running a feature about 30th anniversary of Windows 95 in 2025! :-)

Some Retro related magazines like Retro Gamer, recent new specialist Retro computer/console related magazines like Amiga Addict, re-started Zzap 64/Amiga, Boing, Amiga Future, Freeze64, K&A Plus, and similar have also survived. 

Amongst the negativity, it's good to see there are several Amiga and C64 magazines are still available in 2025!

This I believe is because there is still some new software and hardware released for the C64 and Amiga, and an entire generation keen to learn more about their childhood computing/console history from Retro Gamer. 

There are also other old magazines like Compute's Gazette, Crash and Sega Force that have been resurrected under new owners in 2025 with new issues being released for the Retro computing/gaming community.

Luckily there are plenty of remaining developers and company executives still around to tell those stories as exclusives to those magazines, and AmigaOS continues to be developed in 2025 with new games also! 

I am glad this type of magazine is still around as I enjoy these too, but it is generational. Buy them while you can!

The next generation sadly couldn't care less about magazines or physical box classic game content. They seem totally engrossed with digital game licensed (with DLC upsell) gaming consoles, smartphones and tablets. This is when they are not live streaming or sharing snapchat, telegram, instagram, YouTube, Kick and Twitch content to their online friends and discussing in real time via Discord, etc. 

This is not limited to the home either. IRL (In Real Life) live streaming, emojis and chat are replacing magazines, real conversations and text for a new generation. 

Next generation adults are now watching YouTube shorts and Tik Tok videos - they last 1 minute or less. Their attention span has narrowed for whatever reason, and the need for companies to adapt ads to get eyeballs onto sponsored content to make money still rolls on without magazines. 

Content quality and quantity has consequently reduced in favour of shoddy clickbait, constant pestering for subscriptions and likes, and deliberate drawing out videos to meet minimum eyeball viewing time statistics for payments from platforms like YouTube. 

You probably know the sort of thing. 

Terrible "YouTube watch party live streams", YouTube videos reviewing of other people's popular videos, Unboxing videos, AI generated artwork, AI voice overs and AI generated videos are being released for a generation too lazy or not willing to spend the time to create their own content, all to make a quick buck. 

How many AI generated videos do you watch and learn something useful from?

Detailed quality reviews (blog or video) are rapidly becoming a thing of the past - except on my Epsilon's World blog of course :-) 

All of my content is written 100% by me and all photos and screenshots taken by me - no AI generation tools, or image perfecting processing used. I bought everything myself with my own money from working full time - no patreon money, kickstarters or shady pre-order schemes. And I make no money from it - I do this because I love it. I must be crazy.

Is this change a bad thing? I think you can be the judge of that. 

Given the situation, I decided to get a selection of these closed down computer/console magazines that people are chucking out while there are some still to be had. You have already seen some of them earlier in this post.

For me, particularly sad is the death of nearly all local Australian magazine content. No one talks much about Australian magazines, so I will!

Australia used to have so many different computer/console related magazines on the shelves. Above and below is a sample - a number of US/UK "official" computer and console magazines also had dedicated Australian versions with their own local content mixed in:

Atomic PC was a great Australian PC gaming hardware and software magazine that sadly closed in 2012 - the photo of Atomic magazine with the :-( at the top of this blog post was their last issue.

Australian PC User magazine was around for years (since 1990) before being rebranded in 2012 into Tech Life magazine, which was itself finally discontinued in 2022.

Hyper magazine was a popular local multi-format gaming magazine that lasted from 1993 until it stopped 26 years later in 2019.

Official Nintendo Magazine, Official Windows magazine, Official Playstation magazine (later rebranded to Play), Game Informer, Australian Game Pro, and MacWorld Australia (1985-2018) were local licensed versions of the US/UK original magazines with local Australian content added. All are now discontinued.

 

We also had older Australian magazine titles like Your Computer (1981-1997), Megazone (1988-1995), OZ Amiga (1991-1992), Australian Commodore & Amiga Review (1996), and Professional Amiga User (1990-1992)

With a few exceptions like PC PowerPlay and Australian Personal Computer (APC), there are basically no other locally produced Australian computer magazines left in 2025. 

Note: Silicon Chip is an electronics magazine, before someone local points it out - I know. Also, JB Hifi's Stacked "magazine" is not a magazine - just a long form advertisement for all their products dressed up as a "magazine".

If I missed any other local Australian computer/console magazines still sold as physical magazines in 2025, please let me know! 

I bought both those Australian produced magazines below in September 2025 - APC has been released every month since 1980 - it's now 45 years old! PC Powerplay magazine has been released since 1996, so next year will be 30 years!

I paint a bleak picture about magazines future in 2025 because it is bleak. Very.

I am glad to see that Australian government is working to preserve copies of Australian produced computer magazines so they will not be lost forever as the world moves on.

I openly wonder how will content created on Discord and other walled garden social media applications be preserved in the future after they are inevitably discontinued and their supporting servers turned off?

For now sadly, the magazine as you and I know it, is dying. Forever. I believe it will not return once it is gone.

In ten years, I predict no one will be able to buy a magazine in a newsagent - they simply won't exist. 

Your children's kids/grand kids will grow up not even knowing what a magazine is, the same way as your kids don't know what a floppy disk, DAT tape, Minidisc, cassette or Iomega zip disk is today.

Technology moves on. People move on. Not all progress is good progress, but it is what it is. 

While we older people may wipe away a tear, I assure you the next generation is losing no sleep over the quiet death of magazines in 2025.

So here on my blog I wanted to show and preserve a small piece of what are wonderful memories for me - the humble and long lasting computer and console magazine. 

You can also read more detailed videogame magazine history on the very excellent Forgotten Worlds website. Many scanned collections of these old magazines are available on archive.org and elsewhere on the internet if you want to read them without further filling your house or apartment with old magazines!

I have a special thanks to everyone who has ever worked on, or written an article for, any computer or console magazine in any era. 

Especially I want to acknowledge those still creating magazines and content in 2025 for the tiny remaining audience. I do my best within my financial means to support those who continue to produce magazine content in a format that is now considered "old fashioned and obsolete".  

Like most others, in 2025 I have embraced the new tech as well, but I love magazines still - the fact I kept so many old magazines to remind me of that era, and still buy 2025 new release magazines from overseas and occasional issues of local magazines should hopefully prove that!

Nintendo Game and Watch Super Mario Bros 2020 for Xmas!

For Xmas this year my wife was kind enough to buy me a Nintendo Game & Watch specially released in 2020 by Nintendo to celebrate the 35th Anniversary of Mario!

Back in the 1980's, like many other kids of that era, I had a couple of Nintendo Game & Watch games, specifically Oil Panic and Octopus.

Later on I picked up Mario Bros and Donkey Kong Game & Watch games.

I gave them all away when I got my first Nintendo Gameboy in 1992 and kind of forgot about Game & Watch until the Nintendo DS era, when Nintendo released two Game & Watch DS games for it, under the now closed Japanese and Australian Club Nintendo. You had to buy a lot of DS games to accumulate enough points in Club Nintendo to redeem for these special items.

Being able to play some favourite Game & Watch games again on the Nintendo DS like Octopus, Donkey Kong and Oil Panic was fantastic.

Club Nintendo Australia allowed you to redeem points for some special extras and titles not released outside Club Nintendo. I got these DS storage containers from Club Nintendo Australia before it shut down.

The cream of the crop of these redeemable items though was only available from Club Nintendo in Japan - a 2010 remake of the very first Game & Watch game, called Ball, originally released in 1980. 

Luckily for me, my wife and I had bought a number of DS games in Japan during my many years working there on various IT projects, and this allowed me to get this very special Game & Watch:

Here is the special edition Game & Watch game called Ball.

The unit itself was quite small compared to the later Game & Watch games like Octopus and the even larger dual screen games.

Here is Ball up and running on this special Game & Watch!

I still have this Game & Watch!

In recent times I was interested in getting Donkey Kong, Octopus and Oil Panic Game & Watch games back again, but the prices on Ebay have just got stupid in 2020. Maybe one day.

Nintendo seriously got my attention in 2020 with the announcement of the new limited release Super Mario Bros Game & Watch. Predictably the pre-orders for Australia sold out within hours and sadly I missed out.

I was very disappointed, but my wife tracked down a Japanese version of the Game & Watch Super Marios Bros released in Japan in 2020 and got it shipped to Australia in time for Xmas!

I was really happy to get this!

This Game & Watch is a little bit special. It has a full colour screen, and runs the NES versions of Super Mario Bros and Super Mario Bros 2. Like all Game & Watch games, it also has a Clock time functionality. It also has a special Mario themed version of the original Game & Watch game Ball (the original shown in the 2010 remake above)

Here is the case:

It has a clear cover with various Mario themed images, which can be removed from the gold coloured cardboard case:

When opening, it was a nice touch to see the "Special thanks to you" on the flap:

Here is the Game & Watch Super Mario Bros:

It is a beautiful system, and looks very similar to the original Game & Watch games of the Octopus era. It is a little bit wider on the right hand side to accommodate the A and B buttons to be located side by side rather than on top of each other as they were on most Game & Watches. This has been done presumably so it matches up to the NES controller button locations. Kinda makes sense since it is the NES version of Super Mario Bros.

Here is the rear of the system - disappointedly there is no built in stand so that the Game & Watch can sit up by itself when in Time mode (a common feature of the original single screen Game & Watches) - I will need something else to allow me to do that:

There is a power button and USB-C port on the side of the unit for power on/off and for USB-C charging. No pencil battery and battery cover to lose. Glad about that!

On first power on you get a nice Mario image - amazing to see a colour Game & Watch screen:

The Game & Watch switches to Time display mode, which has a great Game & Watch second tick sound, and nice Mario another enemies move around the screen and adjust the time as it changes. The screen backdrop changes from night to day depending on the time, which is another nice touch.

When you select Game option, you can choose Super Mario Bros, Super Mario Bros 2, and the Mario themed Ball to play.

I couldn't wait to play Super Mario Bros, and jumped right in. It plays identically to the NES version, but it does remember where you are in the game if you decide to power off or switch to time mode later on. This is great!

My wife reckons the screen is a bit small, but Game & Watch screens were always small!

I recorded a quick video showing the Game & Watch Super Mario Bros in action:

You can access the video directly on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/FM9MBg-oYXo

If you get the chance to get one of these Game & Watches while they are still available, and especially if you love Game & Watch games, I highly recommend grabbing one.

Adelaide Retro Computer Group Meeting December 2016

On December 9th we held the last Adelaide Retro Computing Group meeting for 2016, with a BBQ and a free for all retro theme! We got to see some great systems and a very interesting presentation by  Alexis on his home built Retro computer!

Given that this was the last meeting for the year, we decided to hold a BBQ to celebrate and it didn't take long for the food to be eaten up!

Theo and his son were busy with BBQ duties:

Was nice to see attendees relaxing and chatting about all things Retro:

Soon though everyone was making their way into the main hall for the event, and we certainly had some interesting systems brought in to display this month! 

To start with is this rather special PC Engine LT - a portable PC Engine with built in screen and TV tuner! This system is very rare now and very expensive to buy if you can find it - thanks to Paul from Retrospekt for bringing this in!

Definitely couldn't resist having a few games on this amazing system. I also have a PC Engine, but not a portable one like this!

Next up was a Nintendo Entertainment System - yes, an original one, not the recently released NES Mini version which has been selling out everywhere globally!

Special mention goes to this classic Tempest branded Retro console system!

Here the system is being put through it paces:

I had a go at Alien Invader - it was quite good fun!

I decided to bring along my Commodore 64 with 1541 Ultimate II, WiFi Internet expansion and three new 2016 cartridge games released for the Commodore 64 for people to play - Jam It, 2048, and Moonspire. Here the Commodore 64 is running a X-2016 demo called Nothing but Petscii!

Moonspire was particularly popular during the night:

Also I brought along my recently rebuilt Amiga 4000D, with Picasso IV graphics card, X-Surf 100 Ethernet card, USB, Big Ram 256MB Zorro expansion, Cyberstorm PPC 060/240Mhz PPC accelerator, DVD drive, two floppy drives and a 200Gb IDE Hard disk!

It is also now setup with new A-Eon Technology Prisma music card, which allows the Amiga to play MP3, M4A, FLAC and WAV files at full quality without using the CPU, leaving the Amiga able to do other things - something which is impossible without this card normally!

Here I am with my Amiga 4000D on the night. I had plenty of questions about both systems during the night and was happy to explain the latest upgrades for the Classic Amiga systems in 2016.

Paul from Retrospekt also brought along his trusty Amstrad CPC464 system which was busy with games for most of the night!

A special treat also for the December event is this rare Atari Falcon 030 system. I have never seen one of these systems before and it was great to see one working and running a number of demos, games and even linux(!) during the night!

Here is Linux build running on the Atari Falcon - who would have thought:

The raytracing real time demos shown on the Falcon were very impressive:

John Paul Parker brought in this original ZX Spectrum system:

It certainly got plenty of attention!

Next to this was a special built Raspberry Pi running emulation of Retro systems inside a Sega Master System II case, with SD Card and keyboard ESC mapping to the power button for games that needed it.

Macintosh Retro system were well represented too, with this Powerbook and PowerPC  Power Mac system on display:

This Mac Classic was also on display:

We even had a clamshell iBook G3:

Systems continued to pop up everywhere, including in the centre tables as the room quickly filled up with machines!

This MIST FPGA system was brought in, running Amiga 1200 AGA core system:

This Commodore 64 that was brought in had an interesting Commodore Sound Expander cartridge expansion module installed, and it was busy playing plenty of great music and SID tunes during the night!

Here is an Atari 1040ST with Xenon 2 Megablast being played:

Sega was not missed out, with the Sega Saturn, Megadrive and Sega Master System all up and running games to enjoy on the night:

The hall was busy with plenty of new faces and regulars too:

On the PC front, we also had this retro IBM PC 8086 system, rebuilt over the course of 2016 and ready just in time to bring to the meeting to display!

Here is the internals - the whole case has been reconditioned and looks terrific - some typically huge hard disks (size, not capacity!) and floppy drives were on display too:

Also George brought in this luggable portable(!) IBM PC:

Here is George chatting with some of the attendees on the night:

Alexis was our guest presenter for the evening, and he had us all very interested in his personally built Retro computer system, running CP/M:

He hand soldered the boards and connections himself, setup the lighting systems and switches, hard disk controller and firmware logic himself - it was a three year project:

The hard disk is broken up into 8MB partitions (maximum addressable size for the 8088 CPU and hard disk controller limitations:

Here is the rear view of the system

Here you can see the boards he put together with the interface ports for the various cards he created for the computer functions:

It was a very interesting presentation with some demonstrations of system memory monitoring, as well as games and programs shown running on the system. We were all impressed with the wealth of knowledge Alexis has and being able to finish this impressive project himself:

It was a great night and we want to thank everyone for coming to the Adelaide Retro Computing Group events throughout 2016.

We look forward to seeing you all again in January 2017!