About Atari User

Atari User

Atari User was a British monthly computer magazine for owners of Atari home computers, published by Database Publications, the company later known as Europress, between 1985 and 1988. Its run of forty-three issues, from May 1985 to November 1988, made it the main newsstand magazine for Britain's Atari 8-bit owners during the second half of the 1980s. The magazine was produced at Europa House, 68 Chester Road, Hazel Grove, Stockport, and not in London. Its International Standard Serial Number was 0266-545X.

Atari User was a general-interest title, combining games reviews with type-in programs, tutorials and hardware projects. Compared with more games-led contemporaries such as Computer and Video Games, its appearance was conservative and its editorial style restrained and relatively formal. That plain-spoken character suited its purpose: it was a practical owner's magazine for a loyal but minority platform, in a British market dominated by other machines.

Launch by Database Publications

The first issue of Atari User appeared in May 1985. Its publisher, Database Publications of Stockport, was an established producer of computer magazines and software, and the new title applied the company's proven owner's-magazine formula to the Atari range. The September 1985 issue, volume one number five, shows the magazine already in its mature form, priced at £1, with Derek Meakin as managing editor, Cliff McKnight as features editor, Mike Cowley as news editor and Peter Brameld as editor in chief. Subscriptions were offered at £12 for twelve issues in the United Kingdom.

Andre Willey was one of the magazine's early editors, having been promoted from technical editor, and his presence underlined the magazine's priorities. Atari User was edited by people whose authority came from technical knowledge of the machines, and its pages assumed a reader who wanted to program and modify a computer, not merely to play games on it. The magazine stated plainly in its own pages that it was an independent publication, and that Atari Corp (UK) Ltd was not responsible for its articles or opinions.

The Machines It Covered

The early editions of Atari User concentrated primarily on Atari's 8-bit computers, the 400, 800, XL and XE series, and on the newly launched 16-bit Atari ST range. The first issue carried a profile of Atari's boss Jack Tramiel and a preview of the new machines, and the summer of 1985 issues analysed the 130XE and then the 520ST in depth, alongside news of other Atari products such as the relaunched 2600 and 7800 games consoles.

That dual coverage reflected a genuine uncertainty of the period. Nobody yet knew whether Atari's future, and its British user base, lay with the established 8-bit line or with the new ST. Atari User tried to serve both audiences inside one magazine, with its contents pages mixing 6502 processor material for the 8-bit machines with 68000 addressing modes and operating environment features for the ST. It was a balancing act that could not last indefinitely.

Contents and Regular Features

The magazine's regular contents give a clear picture of Atari ownership in 1985 and 1986. Recurring series included Microscope, Bit Wise, a beginners' strand, graphics and sound tutorials, and a Display List tutorial explaining one of the 8-bit Atari's most distinctive technical features. There were type-in games in quantity: the early issues offered titles including Action Squash, Frog Jump, Bomb Run, Fruiti Gambler, Maze Munch, Pontoon and Guy Fawkes, together with utilities such as a hex and ASCII memory dump, a 130XE RAM disk utility and program protection routines.

Other early contents included a twelve-page special feature on communicating with an Atari, an introduction to the 6502 microprocessor, a first look at the Logo programming language and list processing with Logo, coverage of the Touch Tablet peripheral, an assembler and disassembler, and adventure game coverage with hints and tips under the byline Brillig. Software reviews and a software chart ran throughout, and the Mailbag letters page carried readers' thoughts, suggestions and questions.

The ST Pull-Out and the Spin-Off

As the popularity of the Atari ST grew, the machine was given its own pull-out section inside Atari User, called Atari ST User. The December 1986 cover of Atari User was already advertising the ST User supplement at its top corner. The arrangement recognised that ST owners' needs, centred on a 16-bit machine with a graphical interface, were diverging from those of the 8-bit readership, while keeping both groups buying the same magazine.

From the April 1987 issue onwards, Atari ST User was spun off as a magazine in its own right. The daughter publication proved the more durable of the two, outliving its parent by a number of years and continuing until November 1994. The split was a significant moment in British Atari publishing: the ST, which had arrived as a supplement, had become the commercially stronger platform, while the 8-bit machines settled into a smaller, enthusiast market.

The 8-Bit Magazine After the Split

After the split, Atari User was oriented almost entirely towards the 8-bit computers, with only brief coverage of the 2600 console. Its late issues show a magazine serving a settled community well: news of the 8-bit world, a top twenty software chart, reviews, hints and tips, utilities such as a coloured cursor program, features on the XE Games System and on gadgets including disco lights controlled by an Atari, and the long-running USR functions series explaining a powerful BASIC command.

For much of this period Atari User held a unique position. Until late 1987, when the independent magazine Page 6 became available on newsstands, it was the only British magazine with dedicated, or even significant, support for the 8-bit Atari line to be sold in shops. For an 8-bit owner walking into a newsagent, it was effectively the Atari press, and its news, reviews and listings were the platform's main channel of printed information.

Final Issue and the Sale of the Name

Atari User published its final issue under Database Publications in November 1988, the forty-third issue. Database then sold the Atari User name, though not the separate Atari ST User title, to the publishers of Page 6, its independent rival. Page 6 was briefly renamed Page 6 Atari User before settling on the title New Atari User.

Despite the name, New Atari User was to all intents and purposes the same magazine as Page 6; it had virtually no editorial continuity with the old Atari User. The transaction is a neat illustration of how magazine publishing worked at the end of a platform's life: the value left in a closed title was its name and whatever reader recognition attached to it, which could be transferred to a surviving competitor even though the magazine itself, its staff and its Stockport offices were gone.

Place in British Atari Publishing

Atari User sat in the middle of a small family of British Atari publications. It gave birth to Atari ST User, which became one of the main ST magazines of the late 1980s and early 1990s, and its publisher Database, as Europress, went on to publish Amiga Action and other platform magazines using the same owner's-magazine approach that Atari User had applied to the 8-bit range.

Its three and a half years also spanned a pivotal transition in home computing, from the 8-bit machines of the early 1980s to the 16-bit generation. The magazine's own contents enacted that transition in public, beginning as an 8-bit title with ST coverage, carrying the ST as a supplement, and ending as an 8-bit-only magazine while its spin-off served the newer machine.

Legacy and Archives

The complete run of Atari User, issues one to forty-three from May 1985 to November 1988, has been preserved in digital form and is available through the Internet Archive, where researchers and former readers can read the magazine in full. Its back-issue advertisements are themselves a record of its contents, listing the tutorials, listings and features of the early issues month by month.

For historians of the Atari 8-bit scene in Britain, Atari User is an essential source: the only nationally distributed magazine devoted to those machines for most of its life, documenting the software, peripherals and programming culture of a platform that British publishing otherwise largely ignored. Its conservative, technical style, so different from the louder games magazines around it, was precisely what its readers needed.