DESCRIPTION

From Wikipedia:

Amstrad Action was a monthly magazine, published in the United Kingdom, which catered to owners of home computers from the Amstrad CPC range and later the GX4000 console. It was the first magazine published by Chris Anderson's Future Publishing, which with a varied line-up of computing and non-computing related titles has since become one of the foremost magazine publishers in the UK. The publication, often abbreviated to AA by staff and readers, had the longest lifetime of any Amstrad magazine, running from October 1985 until June 1995 and produced 117 issues in total. The magazine was still being published long after the CPC had ceased production and games were no longer available in the shops.

Published by Future Publishing, a company set up by Chris Anderson (ex-Personal Computer Games and Zzap!64 editor). Launch Editor, Peter Connor, also an ex-PCG staff member, shared the writing duties with the only other staff writer, Bob Wade. Bob, another ex-PCG/Zzap!64 staff member, was given the title ‘Software Editor’ and would review the vast majority of the games featured, with Peter given a second opinion. Trevor Gilham, Art Editor, would complete the four man team. Issue 1 dated October 1985 was released in September 1985 with the cover price of £1; 1 pence for every one of the 100 pages. It took the new publication a few issues to find its readers, but with the help of a bumper 116 page Christmas 1985 issue with a cover mounted tape, the circulation figures grew rapidly. In October 1986 Amstrad Action split into three separate publications. AA still catered for the CPC range, while 8000 Plus and PC Plus focused on the Amstrad PCW and PC range respectively. AA eventually gave in to reader’s pleas to have a permanent cover tape. An announcement was made, in AA66, that the following issue would not only include a cover tape, but contain more colour and be printed on different paper. Review pages were also slightly re-designed.

In April 1992 the Audit Bureau of Circulation figures showed an increase to 37,120, the highest circulation since July–December 1988’s 38,457.

AA100 looked at the top 100 products for the CPC and took a trip down memory lane, looking back at past editors and staff. As circulation figures wound down further still there was a drastic drop in page numbers from 60 to 36 in July 1994's AA106. More compact issues mean no superfluous columns or features. AA107 became the first issue with only one member of official staff. In AA111 there was no credits list, but the new editor, Karen Levell, answered the Reaction letters and confirmed her appointment. Although everything appeared as normal in June 1995's AA117, with AA118 advertised in the next month box, this was the last AA ever. The last ever headline (on issue AA117) was Publish and be Damned.

