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Following up their previous Retro Gamer collection, Imagine Publishing recently put out a DVD that contains PDF files of the first 50 issues of gamesTM, their multiformat magazine in the UK. The package (which includes a bunch of bonus wallpapers, mostly retro-themed) costs £23.99 shipped to America, which I'd consider a pretty honest deal; it's less than a buck per issue. Since the mag started in late 2002, the content on this disc is mainly from the PS2/Xbox/GC era.

Launched as a rival to Edge (which was undergoing some serious editorial turmoil around that era), gamesTM's main "gimmick" is the fact that you get a 180-page issue every single month, approximately 150-160 pages of which are editorial content -- something that's sadly never going to happen again in US mag-land.

It's also arguably the first professional magazine (Retro Gamer not appearing until early 2004) to have really extensive classic gaming coverage that wasn't an afterthought compared to the rest of the mag. For these two traits alone, gamesTM has my eternal respect, although I sometimes find myself skipping past the endless pages of humdrum previews so I can get to the columns and retro section.

At one point in 2006, gamesTM's future was in jeopardy after Highbury, its original publisher, went bankrupt. It wound up being one of the 24 titles in Highbury's family that Imagine bought (the other game mags being X360, Play (no relation to Halverson's Play) and strategy magtitle PowerStation, all still in business).

I'm definitely glad it's still around -- it's good for Edge to have some kind of direct competition, and even if you don't care about the old content on this DVD, there's no better and cheaper way to sample modern UK magazine design than by browsing through these PDFs.

[Kevin Gifford breeds ferrets and runs Magweasel, a site for collectors and fans of old video-game and computer magazines. In his spare time he does writing and translation for lots and lots of publishers and game companies.]