Heinrich Lenhardt

Heinrich Lenhardt, born 1965, is probably the longest-working German gaming journalist, with a career spanning more than 30 years.

He began his career at home computing magazine Happy Computer in 1984. After writing about MSX, Apple II and IBM PC Jr. topics, he quickly established himself as the magazine's game expert and the games part of the magazine expanded under his editorial leadership over the following years. In 1987, together with fellow editors Boris Schneider, Martin Gaksch and Anatol Locker, he created Power Play magazine, first as series of special issues of Happy Computer, later replacing the Happy Computer games section. In 1990, Power Play was finally spun off into a regular magazine, and by mid-1991, had become Germany's best selling games publication. Lenhardt left the publisher in 1991, but not before co-creating Video Games, Germany's first games magazine devoted exclusively to consoles. After working for several publishers and magazines over the next year, including the first issues of German PC Review and Sega magazine Gamers, Lenhardt once again cooperated with Boris Schneider to create PC Player, which, after first being published in late 1992, became one of Germany's premier PC gaming magazines, known for its tough, but fair reviews. Lenhardt was editor-in-chief of PC Player for about 4 years (with interruptions). In late 1996 and early 1997, he was editor of short-lived PC Xtreme, but returned to PC Player soon after.

In 1998, Lenhardt moved to the United States, and became foreign correspondent, first for PC Player, later for GameStar and other magazines. He moved to Canada in 2001, and was foreign correspondent for German publisher Computec Media from 2003 to 2006, writing for the company's PC publications PC Games and PC Action as well as the console magazines N-Zone, Xbox Zone and PlayZone. In 2006, he returned to Germany to become editor-in-chief of PC Action and the online magazine buffed. He returned to Canada in 2008 and gave up his position at PC Action. In October 2009 his employment at Computec ended and he continued to work as freelance journalist and (until the end of 2010) as associate at the company playata which mainly produces databases and other software for online games. From 2012 to 2013 he was Editor-at-large (editorial conception) for the magazine Chip Power Play until it was cancelled after four issues and in 2012 he also became a regular contributor to Retro Gamer (the German adaptation of the British magazine of the same name).

Lenhardt is known for his often sarcastic humor when trashing bad games (or games that should have been better).

Together with Boris Schneider, he wrote the Starkiller comic, a parody on science fiction, games and other things. Illustrated by Rolf Boyke, the comic was published in Power Play, continued in PC Player, and is available in book form as of 2005. Lenhardt is also co-author (with his Power Play and PC Player colleagues) of three yearbooks collecting PC game reviews, published 1990-1992.

In 2009 he started a podcast together with Jörg Langer, Anatol Locker and Boris Schneider-Johne where they talk about new and old games.