About Zero

Zero

Zero was a British video game magazine that was published monthly by Dennis Publishing between November 1989 and October 1992. It covered the 16-bit computer games scene at the height of the Amiga and Atari ST era, and it was briefly the best-selling multi-format 16-bit computer magazine in the United Kingdom. It won the InDin Magazine of the Year award in both 1990 and 1991, an unusual double for a title that lasted only 36 issues.

Zero was based in London and carried the ISSN 0957-9303. Its circulation was recorded at 60,636 around 1991. It was known less for sober technical analysis than for off-beat adolescent humour and wordplay, a style it inherited from Your Sinclair and then passed on to later Dennis titles, most notably PC Zone. Its short life, its cover disks, its humour and a controversy over a cover-disk demo in 1992 together made it one of the most distinctive British games magazines of its period.

Launch by Dennis Publishing

Zero was published by Dennis Publishing Ltd., the London publisher founded by Felix Dennis that had become a leading British publisher of computer enthusiast magazines during the 1980s. The pre-launch editor and publisher of Zero was Teresa Maughan, who was also publisher of Your Sinclair. That connection was important, because Zero was staffed and shaped by people from the Sinclair magazine and aimed to carry its energy into the 16-bit market.

The first issue was cover-dated November 1989, although, as was usual for British magazines, it was actually published in the preceding month, October 1989. The timing placed Zero at the point when Amiga and Atari ST ownership was expanding rapidly and when 8-bit magazines were losing their central place. A new multi-format title devoted to 16-bit gaming could speak to readers who had moved on from the Spectrum and Commodore 64 without yet settling into a single 16-bit camp.

The Launch Team and Editorial Changes

The initial editor of Zero was Gareth Herincx. He left during the compilation of issue 3, at which point Tim Ponting took over, although the formal editor list showed Jackie Ryan as editor for January 1990 and Ponting as editor from February 1990 to April 1991. David Wilson then edited the magazine from May 1991 to August 1992, and Amaya Lopez edited the final issues, from September to October 1992.

Reviewers for the launch issue included Jonathan Davies, Sean Kelly, Duncan MacDonald, David McCandless, Marcus Berkmann and Matt Bielby, all of them former writers for Your Sinclair. Other journalists who worked at Zero included David Wilson, Paul Lakin, Amaya Lopez, Jackie Sutton, Rich Pelley and Jane Goldman. That concentration of Your Sinclair alumni explains both the magazine's humour and its confidence: the team had already learned how to write for young computer owners who expected jokes, personality and strong opinions alongside scores.

What Zero Covered

Zero was a multi-format 16-bit magazine, and its contents were organised around the Amiga, Atari ST and PC, with additional coverage of consoles and arcade games. Regular sections listed in its contents included OI!, which carried news and views on everything 16-bit, Previews, Letters, and Reviews, in which a game scoring 90 or above was awarded a Zero Hero accolade and was rated for graphics, sound, addictiveness and execution, with an overall rating out of 100.

Other regulars showed the breadth of a mature games monthly. Combat Zone covered strategy games, Under Wraps looked in depth at forthcoming games, Artifacts covered graphics software, Console Action covered consoles, Stuff covered films, videos and other topical material, and Arcades covered coin-operated games. Deja Vu covered new versions of existing titles on new formats, Crystal Tips carried tips, maps and pokes, The Price Is Right covered budget games, Chip Shop Boys looked at people in the industry, Adventures covered adventure games and Yikes! was the readers' page.

Humour, Wordplay and Reader Features

Zero was notable for the considerable off-beat adolescent humour and wordplay used throughout it, a continuation of the style first seen in Your Sinclair. That style was not decoration added to otherwise conventional reviews. It shaped headlines, captions, features and reader participation, and it turned the magazine into something closer to a club whose jokes regular readers were expected to recognise and join in with.

Memorable reader features included a feature in which readers sent in a picture of their joystick at a high location, such as Ben Nevis or the cockpit of a jet next to its altimeter, a feature in which readers sent in pictures of themselves with a celebrity, and a feature in which readers sent in obviously faked pictures of themselves with injuries. Such items sound incidental, but they built the community that allowed a monthly magazine to compete with faster sources of news. Readers bought Zero partly to see themselves and people like themselves in it.

Cover Disks

Issue 1 of Zero contained a cover disk containing two free games for the Amiga and Atari ST. A regular cover disk was later introduced, which included full games and playable demos. In a market where games were expensive and demos were otherwise difficult to obtain, a cover disk was a powerful reason to choose one magazine over another, and it tied the print title directly to the machines its readers owned.

The cover disk also created risks that print alone did not. A disk had to be duplicated, attached and stocked, and its contents reflected on the magazine wherever it was sold. Zero's experience in 1992 showed how quickly that strength could become a liability when a demo attracted attention from retailers. Even so, the history of the magazine cannot be separated from its disks, because they were part of the product that readers took home and loaded, not simply a promotion printed on the cover.

Awards and Commercial Peak

Zero won the InDin Magazine of the Year award in both 1990 and 1991, and it was also briefly the best-selling multi-format 16-bit computer magazine in the UK. Its recorded circulation around 1991 was 60,636. Those achievements are striking for a title launched only in November 1989. Within its first full year it had been recognised by the industry, and by its second year it had repeated the award while leading its immediate category.

That success rested on a precise match between magazine and moment. The Amiga and ST were at their most popular as games machines, the PC was becoming a serious games format, and readers still depended on monthly magazines for news, reviews and demos. Zero's later history showed how dependent that position was on the 16-bit computer market itself. When that market weakened and consoles rose, a magazine defined by 16-bit computing had less room in which to reinvent itself.

The Cover Girl Poker Controversy

Zero caused controversy when issue 31, dated May 1992, included a playable demo of Cover Girl Poker on its cover disk. As a result of that inclusion, the magazine was banned from the leading newsagents. For a consumer magazine, exclusion from major newsagent chains was a serious commercial event, because impulse purchase and visibility in those outlets were central to monthly sales, especially for younger readers.

The episode also illustrated the tension in Zero's identity. Its humour and laddish, adolescent tone were part of its appeal to its core readership, but a poker game demo on a disk that could be picked up in a general newsagent tested the limits of what retailers would accept from a magazine bought by teenagers. The controversy came late in the magazine's life, only five issues before its cancellation, and it forms part of the story of its final months rather than a separate scandal detached from them.

Redesign and Cancellation

By issue 33, Zero was redesigned without its spine and had taken on a more youth-orientated look. A redesign so close to the end suggested an attempt to reposition the magazine for a younger audience rather than a confident continuation of the existing formula. The magazine was cancelled three issues later, with issue 36, dated October 1992, as the last one.

The run therefore lasted just under three years, from November 1989 to October 1992. It ended at the same time as several other British games magazines were closing or being reorganised: ACE closed in April 1992, The One was reorganised in the same year, and publishers were shifting resources toward consoles and single-format titles. Zero's cancellation was part of that wider contraction of the 16-bit computer magazine market, even though its own awards and circulation showed that it had succeeded on its own terms while that market lasted.

Connection to PC Zone

Zero was described as the precursor to the humorous style of writing used in magazines such as PC Zone, and many of the original writers who contributed to Zero went on to submit work for PC Zone. PC Zone, launched by Dennis Publishing in April 1993, was the first magazine dedicated to games for IBM-compatible personal computers to be published in the United Kingdom, and its own history identified the award-winning multi-format Zero as its precursor.

That lineage matters because it shows Zero's influence outliving its format. The Amiga and ST readership dispersed, but the editorial approach — knowledgeable reviews written with jokes, personality and an assumption that readers were insiders — transferred to PC gaming, which became the dominant British computer games market of the mid-1990s. In that sense Zero was a bridge between the anarchic humour of the Spectrum era, represented by Your Sinclair, and the more adult, but still irreverent, PC magazines that followed.

Legacy

Zero's legacy is preserved in archived sets of its issues in the Internet Archive and in the recollections of readers who bought it for its disks, its reviews and its humour. Its sections, its Zero Hero accolade for games scoring 90 or above, and features such as Crystal Tips and Chip Shop Boys remain recognisable to anyone who read British games magazines at the turn of the 1990s.

As a closed magazine, Zero is best understood as a title of a specific technological moment. It was created for 16-bit computer owners, it won industry awards twice, it briefly led its category in sales, and it closed when that category ceased to support it. Few British magazines have fitted their era so exactly, or left so clear a stylistic inheritance to the titles that replaced them.