The magazine was 'suspended' in 2004 following its sale alongside PC Zone to Future Publishing, while the website lived on." and so says the wikipedia entry.

Its early years saw the magazine as one of the few gaming magazines that got the balance of fun and information just right; with many of its competitors going for a very dry technical manual style or an American influenced comic book style. The latter was gradually introduced into C&VG into the mid to late eighties, when it changed its famous logo in October 1985 (heresy!) which is regarded by some to be the start of the magazines decline. Everyone's a critic, right?

It should also be said that it was around this time that the UK video game scene was shifting from its initial phases of innovative, small team, programming development to a more structured publishing model (based on the music and film industries). This can be seen by the flood of film tie-ins - which for my money is still the biggest problem afflicting the game industry today.

This is exemplified by the sad demise of Liverpool's Imagine, whose label was subsequently bought by Manchester's Ocean and used for publishing Coin-Op conversions - most of which are remembered pretty fondly. Ironically, it was then Ocean who then became synonymous with a stream of games based on well known I.P. such as Miami Vice, Roland Rat, V, Street Hawk, Frankie Goes to Hollywood (?!), etc. Although it should be said for every E.T., Total Recall and Biggles there is sometimes a Bruce Lee and a Batman (the Movie).

More interestingly (and for me importantly), C&VG documents the remarkable velocity at which video games evolved - from single pixel pong games to the first tentative steps at modelling complex lands, worlds and universes. Those halcyon days where the home computer market grew from 1k 4-bits to multi megabyte 16-bit machines capable of finally reproducing those all important 'Arcade quality' games. I'd also stick my neck right out here and state that the immense speed and momentum of video game development is entirely responsible for the power and (low) cost of PC's and consoles today.

C&VG also stands as a fantastic window into the 1980's bedroom programming scene which made millionaires out of teenagers, uneasy Gods out of people like Matthew Smith, Archer Maclean, et al and is probably responsible for the high degree of computer literacy amongst 30 something British men.

This site will try to document all the C&VG covers, index each issue with it's major milestones (e.g. The one with Manic Miner review issue, the one with the Sabre Wulf map and the one with the missing room from Jet Set Willy and various adverts from the days when games were all about playability ;0)

As you'll see this is a work in progress and there are issues missing, (and I've also had to bravely butcher many issues to do the scans so if you've got some C&VG mags, old game boxes, covers, etc lying around that you'd like to donate we'll enter your name on the page for all eternity!)

I hope you enjoy the trip down memory lane.
All the best! Dan - (almost) Sunny South Wales

This site is here for all us grumpy old gamers˜ that long for the good old days :)
I hope you enjoy the trip down memory lane.
All the best! Dan - (almost) Sunny South Wales

All images, artwork and content is copyright of their respective owners - please respect their work ;)
The C&VG name and logo is copyright © Future Publishing Limited.
This site is not connected to any of these organisations.
It's sole purpose is to document, archive and keep alive a great Britsh institution...