Before EGM, GamePro, and a legion of other video game magazines, Computer Entertainer was one of the first publications to cover the industry in the early ’80s. Now, the Video Game History Foundation has announced that it has acquired the rights to post the entirety of Computer Entertainer’s eight-year run online as part of its free digital archive.
Computer Entertainer was owned and founded by sisters Marylou Badeaux and Celeste Dolan in 1982, and it was the only video-game-focused magazine to survive the infamous crash of 1983. As a result, Computer Entertainer was one of the few publications that had stories about the aftermath of the crash, as well as the period before and immediately after the North American launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1985.
The magazine also had some of the earliest reviews for the NES titles, including Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Super Mario Bros.
“I often call the period between 1985 and 1988 the ‘dark ages’ of the home console game industry in the US,” said VGHF founder Frank Cifaldi in a statement. “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.”
The VGHF digital archive already features over 3,000 out-of-print video game magazines, as well as hundreds of trade magazines that weren’t available to the general public. The archive also includes rare artwork, videos, and other behind-the-scenes materials from the past four decades of gaming.
More information about the Computer Entertainer archives can be found on the VGHF blog.
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