Zero (magazine)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cover of Zero from 1991

Zero was a video game magazine in the UK, published monthly by Dennis Publishing Ltd. between November 1989 and October 1992. (Actual publication dates were in the preceding month, as usual for UK magazines.) It won the InDin Magazine of the Year award in both 1990 and 1991, and was also briefly the best-selling multi-format 16-bit computer magazine in the UK.

The launch editor was Gareth Herincx, who vacated the hotseat during the construction of issue 3 at which point Tim Ponting took over. Reviewers for the launch issue were: Jonathan Davies, Sean Kelly, Duncan MacDonald, David McCandless, Marcus 'Binky' Berkmann, and Matt Bielby (all former writers for Your Sinclair). Other journalists of note who passed through Zero's hallowed chambers included David 'Whistlin' Rick' Wilson, 'Lord' Paul Lakin, Amaya Lopez and Jackie Sutton.

Like many similar magazines, it contained sections of news, game reviews, previews, tips, help guides, columnists, reader's letters, and cover-mounted disks of game demos. Some memorable features include "highest joystick" where readers would send in a picture of their gaming apparatus of choice at a high location, such as Ben Nevis or the cockpit of a jet (next to the altimeter), and a feature where readers could send in a picture of themselves with a celebrity (One such picture had a topless Richard Branson with two young brothers).

The magazine was notable for the considerable off-beat adolescent humour and wordplay used throughout the magazine -- a continuation of the style first seen in Your Sinclair. Zero is the precursor to the humourous style of writing used in magazines such as PC Zone, and in fact many of the original writers who contributed to Zero went on to submit work for PC Zone.