As previously reported, Computer Gaming World, the oldest and longest running magazine on personal computer gaming since 1981, was officially retired and most of the editorial and writing staff have moved on to Games For Windows. However, as a final parting gift, the first decade of CGW has been scanned, OCR'd, and put online for free download.

There is an incredible amount of history in these issues, from articles by Chris Crawford on the growth of the industry in the early years, to strategy articles for games written by the designers themselves, to good old rose-colored nostalgia. Highly recommended.

Indeed. I just finished downloading the whole lot (almost 3 GB, phew) and browsed through many of the issues. The ads are great, there is a whole lot of great info about obscure games (especially in the early issues), a lot about the early companies, etc..

Never having read an early American magazine before, what I found very interesting was how fragmented the market was back then. It seems that European games hardly ever made an appearance in the US, at least until the late 80s. And even then the European giants, like Ocean Software, licensed only selected games to US publishers. In the later issues, there is an "Over There" column, reporting on the latest Euro releases, many of which probably never saw official release in the US.

BTW, the CGW Museum, which scanned all the issues and made this possible, has released a fully searchable index of the issues at their site.

The great part about this too is its another resource for people who want to contribute things from these old magazines like mobyranks and promotional art and such...

There was a discussion about MobyRank on the approver boards, and I think for the most part CGW doesn't have a review system that can be added.

However CGW is a wealth of other kinds of information and games you may have forgotten about (hint: It may be of help jogging the memory those game descriptions!). I was just going through an issue to verify how they did reviews and I noticed information on Epyx's bankruptcy... complete with a specific day/month/year date of the filing. Obviously that submission is in the queue now :).

CGW didn't have "starred" reviews until 1994. They dropped them again recently. I think we may have drop the mobyrank issue, and just enjoy the old issues for their own sake. :)