THE LIVE PUBLISHING ERA

2004-2005

One issue, four at the most. That was the plan when Live Publishing launched Retro

Gamer in early 2004. It was felt that a retro title might work, but there was no guarantee because there was no precedent. Highburyparagon’s games™ featured a regular retro section (which actually helped float the RG idea in the first place), but that was a multiformat mag focussing on new releases. Was there a market for a dedicated retro-gaming mag?

The idea was to find out by producing a single issue. Distributors didn’t particularly like the idea of one-offs, so four quarterly issues were promised. Yet during that first year we put out 11 issues and a ‘best of’ anthology. RG was more successful than anyone expected.

These circumstances hopefully atone for the quality of that first issue. As it was approached as a potential one-off, it was tricky to work out what the hell to include. Plus, in standard Live fashion, there was no time to do it and the budget was very nearly several pounds. But we got something out and it sold surprisingly well and the second issue followed six weeks later. Now I had a bit of a budget so I could pay for freelance contributions. One of these was from Shaun Bebbington, who would join as staff writer on issue four, by which point the mag was locked into a four-weekly schedule.

In summer 2004 we ran a stand at the first Classic Gaming Expo UK in London, which was about 50 times better than E3, and I got to meet loads of readers (plus some guy called Matthew Smith). There was a definite buzz around the mag and this was reflected in the rapidly growing subscriber numbers. I feel the magazine found its feet towards the end of that first year, with the quality and balance of content improving with each issue. The second year brought new challenges however. Subscriber numbers were steady but newsstand sales tailed off, regardless of what incentives we tried. And then Live started to run into financial trouble and bankruptcy loomed.

The end was messy, but in total Live published 18 issues of Retro Gamer, which was a damn sight better than the single issue that might have been. And of course, those issues did enough to secure the mag a home at Imagine Publishing, where it would soon continue under a new team.

» Launch editor and now long-time contributor Martyn Carroll.

This early cover mock-up was designed by one of Live’s old hands before Mat Mabe got his mitts on it. RG 9 came with a free 32-page tribute to Your Sinclair magazine. A smiling Matthew Smith, visiting the RG stand at the Classic Gaming Expo UK event in July 2004. The cover design was based on the Atari 2600 Space Invaders box art, with a ‘distressed’ effect. Shaun using his Commodore 128 to extract data from The Mega-tree development disks that we won on ebay.