Hi there. Happy New Year to you! I haven’t quite decided whether we published enough reviews this year to actually bother doing a round-up [it hasn’t stopped you in the past – FFG reader] so I’ve come up with another way to cynically reheat some content from 2017. I guess our major feature this year […]

Today I stumbled across someone tweeting an advert from some second-hand site, titled “Retro! Playstation 2”. The unhappy tweeter was declaring the PS2 is not retro, just a bit old. The question of what counts as “retro” is often debated amongst gamers. Some would keep it firmly to the 8 and 16 bit eras, and […]

It’s Part 8, and from the bright and breezy complacency of the mid-00s, we come to 2008: the era of Mock the Week and the global financial crisis. Part 8: 2008-10 – The Bitter End Just as I was getting used to the new Zone family (I blame the mildly disturbing Zone Christmas card from […]

We’re into the penultimate part of our history of PC Zone magazine. Having missed a significant chunk of it out (sorry), we rejoin Zone in the mid-late 00s. Part 7: 2006-2007 – A Bright Future Sadly, I can’t tell you much about Zone between 2003-2005. I never bought or read the magazine, and I can’t […]

We’re into part 6 of our history of PC Zone. Here are the previous instalments, if you haven’t read them already. This is the part where those looking forward to detailed coverage of the magazine during the early-mid 00s are likely to be disappointed. Part 6: 2002-2005 – The Zone-less Years I think I bought […]

As the second series has just come to an end, I thought it might be worth sharing a few brief thoughts about Dara O’Briain’s Go 8 Bit. I haven’t watched a games-based TV programme since the early 90s heyday of GamesMaster and Games World, and though there have been a few since then, they haven’t […]

2000: the year in which Silverchair said they’d make it up to us. Did they ever get around to it? I’m not sure. Whatever am I talking about? Never mind, we’re into part 5 of our history of PC Zone magazine, so let’s get on with that. Part 5: 2000-2001 – Reality Check At some […]

Part 4 of our history of PC Zone, and we’re into 1998: past the peak of the 90s, but still, to my mind, a vaguely optimistic time. Okay, so Britpop was dead and Be Here Now was rubbish, but we still lived in hope that England might win the World Cup and The Phantom Menace […]

We’re onto part 3 of our history of PC Zone (part 1, part 2) and it’s getting to the point in the 90s where one of those nostalgic TV documentaries about Cool Britannia (which I would try – but fail – to resist watching) might focus its attention: Britpop, Euro ’96, Tony Blair and the […]

Welcome to part 2 of our history of PC Zone (part 1 here, if you missed it). This time, we’re into the mid-90s, and what many consider the era of peak Zone. This is around the time that I started reading, too (my first issue was Zone 24, March 1995, with Dark Forces on the […]