Does anyone know what happened to the digital archive of Computer Gaming World? You know, the one featuring 100 freely downloadable vintage CGW issues in PDF. The one, that used to be accessible simply by clicking the cgw.filefront.com link. Anyone seen it? No? Oh… Anyway. We can do without CGW I guess. There are tons of brilliant magazines of yore flying around the Web and most of them don’t care about your money. They are free, and sometimes way older than even CGW’s premier issue. So, let’s see what I found while digging through the cursed archives of Museum Monday and my dusty bookmarks, shall we? Of course we shall. Without further ado then, here’s a small retro-mag lists:
Atari Age, all 12 issues of it, is generally available here, all scanned for your Atari 2600 (or even 5200) craving eyes. First issue debuted in 1982, but even older Atari mags should be available here.
Compute!, on the other hand, was first published in 1979, featuring content mostly on the Commodore PET and the 6502 processor. The magazine archive (1979-1994), in html format, is available here. Yes, that’s 168 issues!
ZZap 64!, the everlasting pride of the Commodore 64 community, is available here. You wont get every article of every issue though, but there’s more than enough scanned and htmled (?) content to keep every retro lover off the streets.
Mean Machines along with Mean Machines Sega and bits and pieces of other classic British gaming mags has its very own archive as well. Visit it here and you’ll understand how the best console magazine ever to grace our puny planet looked like.
As for the really old-fashioned Electronic Fun with Computers & Games, well its premier issue is already waiting for you. And it’s filled with all the 8-bit graphics you could ask for.
