History Magazine / AmigaPower

An overarching part of ''Amiga Power'''s philosophy was brutal honesty - holding ''nothing'' back, regardless of the target, and refusing to sugarcoat anything. If a game wasn't good, they would say exactly what was wrong with it, and rate it accordingly - using the entire range of the percentage scale. (Their lowest ever score for a legitimate game was 2%, for ''International Rugby Challenge'').

Although this may may seem like exactly what a videogaming magazine should be doing anyway, at the time this was a surprisingly bold and dangerous choice. The web wasn't around yet, so printed magazines were the only way to obtain information about new game releases - which meant that ''Amiga Power'''s opinions had a significant influence on game sales. Any negative review would certainly upset a game's publishers, which increased the risk of the publishers retaliating in some manner - withholding future games, pulling advertising, threatening legal action, etc. (''Amiga Power'' were, indeed, threatened with all of these things over the course of their run).

The core of ''Amiga Power'''s outlook, however, was an absolute passion for video games, which is why they believed such honesty was so important - if you allow publishers to get away with producing rubbish, then rubbish is all you'll have to play. Often, huge features would be dedicated to this ideal - the most well known being their yearly APATTOH (''Amiga Power'' All-Time Top One Hundred games), which featured not the most recent or the most popular releases, but simply the one hundred games that they, personally, loved to play. Quite often, public domain and freeware games would make the list quite highly, beating out even commercial releases.

Other memorable aspects of the magazine included their occasionally bizarre experiments in journalism, usually taking the form of the 'concept review' - for example, Stuart Campbell once protested against censorship by reviewing the mildly violent helicopter game ''Apocalypse'' and censoring half the review with absurd replacement words; Cam Winstanley turned a review of ''Turrican 3'' into an equivalent of Paint-by-Numbers, and Jonathan Davies reviewed ''Woody's World'' as if the game were being interviewed on a British chat show.

** In later issues, this became even more explicit: ''AP'' began to publish a table in each issue called The Disseminator, which simply listed the scores awarded to games by rival magazines, compared to AP's scores. This showed clearly just how overinflated review scores were in magazines (''Amiga Action'' gave ''[[RiseOfTheRobots]]'' 92%, for example, compared to ''Amiga Power'''s ''five'' percent score). It also occasionally pointed out games which hadn't yet been released (implying that the magazines were reviewing unfinished games in order to claim the exclusive, which is technically deception).

** Tim Norris' death is uncertain, but it's suggested that he was silently garotted by a [[EverythingsBetterWithNinjas]] stealth time-travelling assassin.

* CausticCritic: Stuart Campbell. He ''does not'' pull punches or soften blows, which has put him on the receiving end of a lot of hatred and personal attacks over the years. He is, however, scrupulously fair and pragmatic - all he wants is for everything to achieve its full potential, which in the case of the Amiga, meant ''not releasing bad games''.[[http://amr.abime.net/review_1774 Even in the face of a kangaroo court and firing squad.]]

* Satire: The magazine had a wicked satirical streak, and would occasionally devote features to pointing out the wrongs of gaming culture and industry. One of their more sardonic ones was 'Lest We Forget' - a feature which 'celebrated' the phenomenon of games breaking immersion by showing massive pictures of floppy disks whenever they were loading. You can read this [http://amr.abime.net/issue_49_pages here] (click on pages 36 and 37).

** Stuart Campbell took the gloves off in the final issue, and let loose an ''astounding'' evisceration of the sorry state that the Amiga had got itself into. You can read it [http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/world/ap/ko96.htm here].

* CausticCritic: Stuart Campbell would not, could not shut up about any flaws, and was admired and hated in equal measure for his insistence on BrutalHonesty. [[http://amr.abime.net/review_1774 Even in the face of a kangaroo court and firing squad.]]

* TakeThat: There was nobody safe from the mag's criticism: game publishers, the magazine's own ex-staff, and the readers especially. But most of ''Amiga Power''[='s=] criticism was directed at other game magazines, and game publishers, who were clearly benefiting from a symbiotic relationship, to the detriment of the Amiga games industry.
** In later issues, ''AP'' became fed up with other magazines giving clearly awful games 95%, or reviewing games that hadn't been released, or in one case reviewing a game's PC version and pretending it was the Amiga version. Because of this, they made The Disseminator, a table of review scores from other magazines with annotations to show how bad their reviewing was.

* TheGlovesComeOff:

* KillEmAll: The final issue was mostly composed of concept reviews and articles, killing off practically all of the staff.

* SlippySlideyIceWorld: A term for a level in a PlatformGame where most of the [[FakeDifficulty difficulty]] comes from reduced friction on the platforms, thus forcing the player to wrestle with the controls instead of providing a proper challenge. They hated it.

* CatchPhrase:
** "You useless, cretinous morons."
** "Natch."
** "Drop your science on those assembled."
** "[[TakeThat It's more important to me than being the editor of a computer games magazine.]]"
** ...and a hundred more.

''Amiga Power'' was a monthly British videogaming magazine which ran from 1991-1996 for 65 issues, covering games released on the Commodore UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}}, and later, the CD32.

* CloudCuckooLander: Jonathan Nash. If you ever read anything which entered into the world of the utterly bizarre, it was Jonathan Nash who wrote it. The same reviewer who, whenever a photo opportunity arose, always presented himself as a cartoon character from ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}''.

* GoodNewsBadNews: Full-length reviews summarized games' "Uppers" and "Downers" in a red box. In a review of a truly awful game, the former would be along the lines of "You must be joking."

* NoteFromEd: Constantly. ''["Constantly." That's it? You're fired - Ed.]'' Taaa-daaa!

* SelfDeprecation: Probably one of the reasons ''AP'' is remembered so fondly.
* RunningGag: Lots and lots of them. Whenever someone asked how they could "be" [[Franchise/MortalKombat Goro]], for instance.

* TakeThat: Seriously. There was nobody safe from the mag's criticism: game publishers, the magazine's own ex-staff, and the readers especially. But most of ''Amiga Power''[='s=] entries in this trope were directed at other game magazines, and game publishers. Because they ''cared''.

* VapourWare: its "design-a-game" competition never produced a real playable game. R.I.P., ''Spodland''.
----

* CausticCritic: Stuart Campbell, once lovingly nicknamed "videogaming's very own serial killer", would not, could not shut up about any flaws, and was admired and hated in equal measure for his insistence on BrutalHonesty. [[http://amr.abime.net/review_1774 Even in the face of a kangaroo court and firing squad.]]

British computer games magazine which ran from 1991-96 for 65 issues and focused, unsurprisingly, on UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}} games. Mostly.

It's mostly remembered for its totally quirky yet endlessly readable style. People didn't read it for the UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}} games; they read it for the writers, the biting yet totally honest opinions, the {{Running Gag}}s, the reviews done in the style of other things (play Review-By-Numbers! No, really; the reviewer writing it as if they were in hospital), the features that you simply wouldn't get in other magazines (for example, a two-page spread on how to play ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' '''in real life''').

The magazine ended in 1996 as the Amiga itself was dying, but people fondly remember it to this day. Former staffer [[http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/ Stuart Campbell]] maintains a [[http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/ historical fansite]] that gives a peek into the inner workings. An archive of its reviews is also available [[http://amr.abime.net/issues_5 here,]] and a full archive of issues can be found [[https://archive.org/details/amigapowermagazine here]].

British computer games magazine which ran from 1991-96 for 65 issues and focused, unsurprisingly, on {{Amiga}} games. Mostly.

It's mostly remembered for its totally quirky yet endlessly readable style. People didn't read it for the {{Amiga}} games; they read it for the writers, the biting yet totally honest opinions, the {{Running Gag}}s, the reviews done in the style of other things (play Review-By-Numbers! No, really; the reviewer writing it as if they were in hospital), the features that you simply wouldn't get in other magazines (for example, a two-page spread on how to play ''VideoGame/{{Doom}}'' '''in real life''').

The magazine ended in 1996 as the Amiga itself was dying, but people fondly remember it to this day. Former staffer [[http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/ Stuart Campbell]] maintains a [[http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/ historical fansite]] that gives a peek into the inner workings. An archive of its reviews is also available [[http://amr.abime.net/issues_5 here.]]

** And ''Amiga Power'' itself may be seen as a Spiritual Successor: several of the writers (including Golder, Nash, and Campbell) came from the classic ZXSpectrum magazine ''Your Sinclair'', which had a similarly zany style. ''Sega Power'' also took up the torch, though they tended to not so much walk the line of absolute lunacy as leap headlong over it while screaming incoherently about mackerel.

* OutOfGenreExperience: done frequently in the Concept Reviews, where you'd suddenly be reading a play, or a transcript of an episode of ''HaveIGotNewsForYou''.

* RunningGag: Lots and lots of them. Whenever someone asked how they could "be" [[MortalKombat Goro]], for instance.

** And ''Amiga Power'' itself may be seen as a Spiritual Successor: several of the writers (including Golder, Nash, and Campbell) came from the classic ZXSpectrum magazine ''YourSinclair'', which had a similarly zany style. ''Sega Power'' also took up the torch, though they tended to not so much walk the line of absolute lunacy as leap headlong over it while screaming incoherently about mackerel.

* DoingItForTheArt

* NotScreenedForCritics: Not for these critics, anyway - games companies stopped sending them review copies because of [[SarcasmMode their unfair practice of using the whole percentage scale]], and not giving games [[EightPointEight at least 80% just for existing.]]

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: In their early days, one of the magazine's many running jokes was to threaten people with clearly over-the-top punishments... which backfired in their review of the point-and-click game ''Universe'', where Jonathan Nash suggested readers should get hold of the game's musician's address, go round to his house, and shoot his family. The musician himself read this and was quite upset by it, and in Britain that sort of thing tends to result in plain-clothes police officers with absolutely no sense of humour coming round for a chat if the target fails to see the funny side. Understandably, Nash didn't use the joke again.

* [[TheMeanBrit Mean]] [[ViolentGlaswegian Glaswegian]]: Stuart Campbell, once lovingly nicknamed "videogaming's very own serial killer", would not, could not shut up about any flaws, and was admired and hated in equal measure for his insistence on telling the truth. [[http://amr.abime.net/review_1774 Even in the face of a kangaroo court and firing squad.]]

* ClusterBleepBomb: In the article "You Can't Say That!" in ''AP'' 38, Stuart Campbell's opinion on censorship, extracted after being forced to watch TV-edited versions of ''Film/RoboCop1987'', ''Film/RepoMan'' and ''Film/{{Aliens}}'', was mostly obscured by orange bars (like many other allegedly offensive phrases in the article), aside from the occasional preposition like "up their."

* NotScreenedForCritics: Not for these critics, anyway - games companies stopped sending them review copies because of their unfair practice of using the whole percentage scale, and not giving games [[EightPointEight at least 80% just for existing.]]

* SpiritualSuccessor: Dave Golder left to start the sci-fi/fantasy magazine ''{{SFX}}'', using much the same humour in the reviews and occasionally some of the old staff as reviewers. Stuart Campbell, for instance, did ''TheXFiles''. It gradually [[SeasonalRot devolved]] into a "normal" mag, eventually even eliminating the [[CreditsGag different titles for the head editor]]. Thankfully, the honest reviews are mostly still there.

* FunnyAneurysmMoment: In their early days, one of the magazine's many running jokes was to threaten people with clearly over-the-top punishments...which backfired in their review of the point-and-click game ''Universe'', where Jonathan Nash suggested readers should get hold of the game's musician's address, go round to his house, and shoot his family. The musician himself read this and was quite upset by it, and Nash didn't use the joke again.

''AmigaPower'' was a British computer games magazine which ran from 1991 to 1996, for 65 issues, and focused, unsurprisingly, on {{Amiga}} games.

Mostly.

It's mostly remembered for its totally quirky yet endlessly readable style. People didn't read it for the {{Amiga}} games. They read it for the writers, the biting yet totally honest opinions, the {{Running Gag}}s, the reviews done in the style of other things (play Review-By-Numbers! No, really; the reviewer writing it as if they were in hospital), the features that you simply wouldn't get in other magazines (for example, a two page spread on how to play VideoGame/{{Doom}} IN REAL LIFE).

The magazine ended in 1996 as the {{Amiga}} itself was dying, but people fondly remember it to this day. Former staffer [[http://worldofstuart.excellentcontent.com/ Stuart Campbell]] maintains a [[http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/ap2/ historical fansite]] that gives a peek into the inner workings. An archive of its reviews is also available.[[http://amr.abime.net/issues_5]]

!!This magazine named the following trope:

* SlippySlideyIceWorld - a term for a level in a PlatformGame where most of the [[FakeDifficulty difficulty]] comes from reduced friction on the platforms, thus forcing the player to wrestle with the controls instead of providing a proper challenge. They hated it.

!!This magazine has examples of:

* CatchPhrase: "You useless, cretinous morons.", "Natch.", "Drop your science on those assembled.","[[TakeThat It's more important to me than being the editor of a computer games magazine.]]" and a hundred more.
* CloudCuckooLander: Jonathan Nash. If you ever read anything which entered into the world of the utterly bizarre, it was Jonathan Nash who wrote it. The same reviewer who, whenever a photo opportunity arose, always presented himself as a cartoon character. From ''WesternAnimation/{{Animaniacs}}''.

* FourPointScale: Defied - one of Amiga Power's aims from the beginning was to use the ''entire range'' of the percent scale, so 50% means a game is actually SoOkayItsAverage
* FunnyAneurysmMoment: In their early days, one of AP's many running jokes was to threaten people with clearly over-the-top punishments... which backfired in their review of the point-and-click game ''Universe'', where Jonathan Nash suggested readers should get hold of the game's musician's address, go round to his house, and shoot his family. The musician himself read this and was quite upset by it, and J Nash didn't use the joke again.
* HappyEnding: The last ever piece of writing in the mag described a sort of Elysian Fields for the remaining reviewers, stuffed with Amiga games and all their favourite things.
* InTheStyleOf: The name of one of AP's regular sections. Beginning as a back page feature, it later moved to the news pages where it became a reader competition, with readers being asked to make pictures of Amiga games in the style of other things (normally other games). AP awarded a score out of 10, with £20 worth of Amiga games for each point, but in a RunningGag, always found trivial or unlikely reasons to halve the point score.
* [[TheMeanBrit Mean]] [[ViolentGlaswegian Glaswegian]]: Stuart Campbell, once lovingly nicknamed "videogaming's very own serial killer", would not, could not shut up about any flaws, and was admired and hated in equal measure for his insistence on telling the truth. [[http://amr.abime.net/review_1774 Even in the face of a kangaroo court and firing squad]].
* MoralGuardians: From the sublime (sued by the British Legion to block the use of a poppy on their cover) to the ridiculous (one parent wrote in to ask them to stop using 'crap' to describe games, suggesting 'dead' instead - "'This game is a load of dead.' - hmm, doesn't really work now, does it?")
* NoteFromEd: constantly. ''["Constantly." That's it? You're fired - Ed.]'' Taaa-daaa!

* OrphanedPunchline: one of the 'Who Do We Think We Are?' pages (the page in each issue which introduces the writers) involved every reviewer giving their favourite joke punchline (but not the joke itself).
* OutOfGenreExperience: done frequently in the Concept Reviews, where you'd suddenly be reading a play, or a transcript of an episode of HaveIGotNewsForYou.
* ReviewerStockPhrases: Detested by AP to the point that they wrote a feature pointing several of them out to their readers. For example, 'if you like X, then you'll like this'.
* SelfDeprecation: Probably one of the reasons AP is remembered so fondly.

* SpiritualSuccessor: Dave Golder left to start the SF/fantasy magazine ''{{SFX}}'', using much the same humour in the reviews and occasionally some of the old staff as reviewers. Stuart Campbell, for instance, did [[strike:for]] ''TheXFiles''. It gradually [[SeasonalRot devolved]] into a 'normal' mag, eventually even eliminating the [[CreditsGag different titles for the head editor]]. Thankfully, the honest reviews are mostly still there.

** And ''Amiga Power'' itself may be seen as a Spiritual Successor - several of the writers (including Golder, Nash and Campbell) came from the classic ZXSpectrum magazine ''YourSinclair'', which had a similarly zany style. ''Sega Power'' also took up the torch, though they tended to not so much walk the line of absolute lunacy as leap headlong over it while screaming incoherently about mackrel.
* TakeThat: seriously. There was nobody safe from Amiga Power's criticism: game publishers, the magazine's own ex-staff, and the readers especially. But most of Amiga Power's Take Thats were directed at other game magazines, and game publishers. Because they ''cared''.
** In later issues, AP became fed up with other magazines giving clearly awful games 95%, or reviewing games that hadn't been released, or in one case, reviewing a game's PC version and pretending it was the Amiga version. Because of this, they made The Disseminator, a table of review scores from other magazines with annotations to show how bad their reviewing was.

It's mostly remembered for its totally quirky yet endlessly readable style. People didn't read it for the {{Amiga}} games. They read it for the writers, the biting yet totally honest opinions, the {{Running Gag}}s, the reviews done in the style of other things (play Review-By-Numbers! No, really; the reviewer writing it as if they were in hospital), the features that you simply wouldn't get in other magazines (for example, a two page spread on how to play {{Doom}} IN REAL LIFE).

* FourPointScale: Defied - one of Amiga Power's aims from the beginning was to use the ''entire range'' of the percent scale, so 50% means a game is actually SoOkayItsAverage

* InTheStyleOf: The name of one of AP's regular sections. Beginning as a back page feature, it later moved to the news pages where it became a reader competition, with readers being asked to make pictures of Amiga games in the style of other things (normally other games). AP awarded a score out of 10, with £20 worth of Amiga games for each point, but in a {{running gag}}, always found trivial or unlikely reasons to halve the point score.

* CloudCuckooLander: Jonathan Nash. If you ever read anything which entered into the world of the utterly bizarre, it was Jonathan Nash who wrote it. The same reviewer who, whenever a photo opportunity arose, always presented himself as a cartoon character. From ''{{Animaniacs}}''.