Wings Over Sealand

*27

So, yeah. It was on this day in 1991 that the first ever proper issue of Amiga Power (A Magazine With Tatty Shoes, or something) hit Britons’ newsagents’ shelves.

>>SUB: PLEASE CHECK IMAGE

And while vast numbers of old games magazines are now available to read as lovely friendly PDFs or similar that you can load up onto your computer or electro-tablet and flick through page by page in a gratifying manner, AP inexplicably isn’t.

Or is it? Or IS it? OR IS IT?

Well, no, it isn’t. Except now there is a one of it that is. Partially.

Because I got fed up of sitting around hoping for other people to do it, and gathered together and assembled the most semi-complete collection of AP ever. It comprises the 20 or so early issues that were available on archive.org, lots of individual page scans from Amiga Magazine Rack stitched together into proper issues with the help of famed troubadour/suspected Russian agent John Walker of the boring-PC-games website Rock, Paper, Shotgun and the lovely and suspiciously inconspicuously-named John Smith, and a whole bunch of issues newly scanned specially for this project by the extra-splendid Matthew Smith (who may or may not be no relation, or otherwise).

AP used to have a lot of sentences that long.

They are now rendered official Honorary Mighty Beings unto eternity, and the many others who offered assistance when the call was made in February will have their names passed in a favourable light to the Four Cyclists to consider during the Final Judgementation Of All, which omens indicate is scheduled imminently.

Almost all of the issues are CBR files because it’s by far the friendliest viewing format, but if by some careless oversight you can’t read CBRs, you can download CDisplayEx for free from here. On iPad or Android tablets, they should be automatically readable in any comic-viewing app like ComicFlow or ComicScreen.

55 of the 66 issues (specifically 0-19, 24, 25, 27-35, 39-42, 44, 45 and 48-65) are complete. The others, because of AMR’s policy of only scanning “serious” pages (so no Do The Write Thing, The Secret Garden or “funny” features which failed to accord the Amiga sufficient respect), are missing sizeable chunks. As time wears inexorably on, hopefully we’ll somehow fill the considerable gaps and ATTAIN COMPLETION.

(In total there are something like a daunting 1200+ pages still missing, although that includes adverts. Any volunteers, drop us a line.)

I also took the opportunity to clean up the odd page here and there and to correct a couple of unfortunate minor errors whose authors HAVE NOW BEEN ELIMINATED.

Anyway, having done all that months ago, in time-honoured AP style I thought I had until early May to write this page, then noticed at 9.39pm in the evening last night that in fact the anniversary of Issue 1 was today, so had to do it in a panic with no time to make it look pretty or put all the individual issue links up. Instead, if you click

HERE

you should see a directory listing of every issue. (Putting them all in a single one-touch download would weigh in over 2.5GB and cause this site’s webhost to have absolute conniptions, but if anyone wants to upload them as one big lump to somewhere that can handle files of that size – like Mega or something – or make a torrent or whatever, go for it and I’ll put a link on this page.)

You may find the experience of reading old Amiga Powers pleasant, or at least more pleasant in this modern customer-sympathetic format than having to laboriously click individual pages at a time. Alternatively you may become aware that it was a very long time ago and we were all inexperienced young gunslingers only just beginning to learn to actually write, and find yourself filled with a sense of irrational rage and betrayal.

But either way, WE ARE AMIGA POWER AND WE ARE LOFTILY INDIFFERENT TO YOUR HUMAN EMOTIONS. These files exist now, and at the end of the day those are the facts. You’ll have to deal with them as best you can.

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[EDIT 26/4/2018: Thanks to excellent reader Stuart Gipp we’ve already replaced six partial issues with complete ones. The remaining ones with pages missing are 20-26, 28, 34, 36-39, 43, 46 and 47, should any public-spirited scanner-owners be interested.)

[EDIT 4/9/2019: Thanks to new Honorary Mighty Being Paul Chapman, issues 24, 25, 28, 34 and 39 are now complete. The only issues still missing pages are 20-23, 27, 36-39, 43, 46 and 47.]

[EDIT 18/7/2020: Thanks to new Honorary Mighty Being “GamesMags1957”, issues 22, 23, 27, 36-39, 43, 46 and 47 are now complete, leaving only the missing pages of issue 20 standing in the way of a perfect archive.]