The Video Game History Foundation Has Acquired Historic Game Magazine Computer Entertainer, Makes It Free For Everyone To Use

This makes Computer Entertainer the latest magazine to be added to VGHF’s massive library of old games media that is readable online for the public to use for research purposes freely. Computer Entertainer ran from 1982-1990 and was the only console-focused magazine to survive the infamous 1983 games industry crash, making it an incredibly valuable resource for understanding an era of great turmoil for video games. Now, the entire run of this resource has been digitized and can be searched, read, and downloaded for anyone interested at VGHF’s Digital Archive. 

As the press release explains, because Computer Entertainer was the only magazine to make it through that time, it’s also the first game magazine to cover the Nintendo Entertainment System, as well as the first to cover games like Final Fantasy, Super Mario Bros., Metroid, and The Legend of Zelda upon their initial release. In fact, in Super Mario Bros.’s case, VGHF claims it may be the only English-speaking outlet to have covered the game at all when it first launched. It was also the first women-owned and operated game magazine, which would make it an outlier even by today’s gaming media standards, as it was owned by sisters Marylou Badeaux and Celeste Dolan.

VGHF Founder and Executive Director Frank Cifaldi contextualizes the importance of this acquisition in the press release, saying “I often call the period between 1985 and 1988 the ‘dark ages’ of the home console game industry in the U.S.” He goes on to state that “Games and even entire systems were still technically being released, but without an enthusiast press to cover them, we don’t have a lot of insight into what people thought. Computer Entertainer gives us an incredibly rare glimpse into the rebirth that would define the industry as we know it today, and we are incredibly proud to offer the magazine in its entirety to everyone as a public utility.” 

If you haven’t already left to go pore over this free resource yourself, you can learn more about the magazine on the latest episode of the Video Game History Foundation’s podcast, The Video Game History Hour, where Cifaldi sat down with Marylou Badeaux to discuss Computer Entertainer’s importance, as well as the challenges of running a mail-order video game business in the 1980s.