I think you had to be there. For me Amtix! was THE Amstrad magazine despite its relatively short life. I had lots of CWTA and AA but for me Amtix had both of them trumped in terms of style, design and readability. Their glorious huge screenshots for games like Elite and Lords of Midnight still look incredible but need to be seen in original printed form to really be appreciated. I have a full set of 18 originals, including the issues I bought new in 85, and they are amongst my most prized possessions. I also then bought CWTA on the strength of their use of the Amtix logo, so there you go :)
Loved Amtix it appealed to my sense of humour. What we all want to know though is did Saffron Trevaskis actually exist? I'm suspecting some shenanigans there.
I must have been reading ACU at this point, as I think we joined the User Club. When going to the newsagents, I only bought Look In and the PacMan scratch off cards...no memory of either Amtix or CWTA at the time.
It's interesting to me that from a UK perspective the CPC is seen as a more serious micro, while the C64 and the ZX are considered merely gaming machines. Here in Italy it was quite the opposite. Most Commodore magazines were the of the serious/hobbyist type, and there were many of them. In facts a lot of people here owned Commodore disk drives, printers, dedicated monitors and so on. Most educational books referenced to Commodore Basic and so on (often alongside whatever was going on CP/M and DOS machines). The ZX had a small but dedicated userbase of tinkerers as well. The CPC on the other hand was quite obscure and you'd only find mention of its games, ironically, in Zzap! (the Italian one and also the only 8 bit gaming magazine ever published here). I guess that Amstrad saw little point in pushing its machines in a country where Commodore and Olivetti (the household CP/M and DOS brand here for a long while) had virtually covered all segments of the market.
Same in the US re C=. It feels like a switch was flipped in the UK around 1986. That’s when CU largely threw in the towel and went much heavier on games, probably because Zzap! was eating its lunch. Plus hardly anyone had a disk drive, which limited everything from Geos to Mouse and Cheese.
My favourite magazine was Computing With The Amstrad. I preferred it over Amstrad Action because it had better articles and reviews. Not that AA was bad, it wasn't. It was a great read. I always enjoyed typing in the programs, Amtix didn't have those. By the time I was reading them they were out of print, I picked up old copies of CWTA from the local car boot sale. I would go each week and get one with my pocket money, I ended up buying most of them over time. I wish I still had them.
Would you say that incorporating Amtix made Computing With the Amstrad a more balanced magazine in terms of content i.e. serious vs leisure? I was a C64 owner and while we all worshipped Zzap! 64, I do think that Commodore User was the better magazine in terms of overall content (at least until 1989-ish when the Amiga began to dominate). I agree that your average CPC household probably did more with their machine than games than most breadbin and Speccy households.
CWTA was a bit of a mixed bag. Buying the Amtix brand improved the games coverage but it pretty much carried on as before. The games reviewers they used also weren't great. How can you review Driller without one mention of the groundbreaking way it worked? Also CWTA split out its business coverage to a separate magazine at the same time Amtix joined. I wonder if they thought buying Amtix would compensate for the advertising and circulation drop associated with that? It clearly didn't. CWTA soldered on, had a 4 issue rebrand then merged with Amstrad Computer User.
I think you had to be there. For me Amtix! was THE Amstrad magazine despite its relatively short life. I had lots of CWTA and AA but for me Amtix had both of them trumped in terms of style, design and readability. Their glorious huge screenshots for games like Elite and Lords of Midnight still look incredible but need to be seen in original printed form to really be appreciated. I have a full set of 18 originals, including the issues I bought new in 85, and they are amongst my most prized possessions. I also then bought CWTA on the strength of their use of the Amtix logo, so there you go :)
Amtix lives on, comes out monthly by patreon. Had never heard of it back in the day.
I loved Amtix and even got a couple of letters (including a letter of the month) published on Saffron Trevaskis's page.
Loved Amtix it appealed to my sense of humour. What we all want to know though is did Saffron Trevaskis actually exist? I'm suspecting some shenanigans there.
I must have been reading ACU at this point, as I think we joined the User Club. When going to the newsagents, I only bought Look In and the PacMan scratch off cards...no memory of either Amtix or CWTA at the time.
It's interesting to me that from a UK perspective the CPC is seen as a more serious micro, while the C64 and the ZX are considered merely gaming machines. Here in Italy it was quite the opposite. Most Commodore magazines were the of the serious/hobbyist type, and there were many of them. In facts a lot of people here owned Commodore disk drives, printers, dedicated monitors and so on. Most educational books referenced to Commodore Basic and so on (often alongside whatever was going on CP/M and DOS machines). The ZX had a small but dedicated userbase of tinkerers as well. The CPC on the other hand was quite obscure and you'd only find mention of its games, ironically, in Zzap! (the Italian one and also the only 8 bit gaming magazine ever published here). I guess that Amstrad saw little point in pushing its machines in a country where Commodore and Olivetti (the household CP/M and DOS brand here for a long while) had virtually covered all segments of the market.
Same in the US re C=. It feels like a switch was flipped in the UK around 1986. That’s when CU largely threw in the towel and went much heavier on games, probably because Zzap! was eating its lunch. Plus hardly anyone had a disk drive, which limited everything from Geos to Mouse and Cheese.
Rimrunner ad...... it never made it to CPC 😥
Impressively casual start there
The Macs screen recorder decided to delay by about 5 seconds. But hey that's CV2 for you!
My favourite magazine was Computing With The Amstrad. I preferred it over Amstrad Action because it had better articles and reviews. Not that AA was bad, it wasn't. It was a great read. I always enjoyed typing in the programs, Amtix didn't have those. By the time I was reading them they were out of print, I picked up old copies of CWTA from the local car boot sale. I would go each week and get one with my pocket money, I ended up buying most of them over time. I wish I still had them.
The antics of amtix.
Would you say that incorporating Amtix made Computing With the Amstrad a more balanced magazine in terms of content i.e. serious vs leisure? I was a C64 owner and while we all worshipped Zzap! 64, I do think that Commodore User was the better magazine in terms of overall content (at least until 1989-ish when the Amiga began to dominate). I agree that your average CPC household probably did more with their machine than games than most breadbin and Speccy households.
CWTA was a bit of a mixed bag. Buying the Amtix brand improved the games coverage but it pretty much carried on as before. The games reviewers they used also weren't great. How can you review Driller without one mention of the groundbreaking way it worked? Also CWTA split out its business coverage to a separate magazine at the same time Amtix joined. I wonder if they thought buying Amtix would compensate for the advertising and circulation drop associated with that? It clearly didn't. CWTA soldered on, had a 4 issue rebrand then merged with Amstrad Computer User.