Way back in February 1984 a magazine appeared on the scene like no other for the Spectrum. CRASH by Newsfield Publications Ltd concentrated on Spectrum gaming much more than any magazine at the time, and also featured fantastic cover artwork by the now legendary Oliver Frey.

In October 1987 there was a first for CRASH magazine in the form of a free tape given away with the magazine. This tape featured 7 playable demos of brand new Spectrum games! The game demos featured were Meanstreak, Driller, Basil the Great Mouse Detective, Trantor The Last Stormtrooper, Athena, Ikari Warriors and Slaine. For me this was fantastic value for money at £1.50 for the magazine and games, and literally I was playing this demo tape for years to come - in fact the demo of Ikari Warriors made me buy the full price game!

In July 1988 a second covertape appeared featuring playable demos of Last Ninja 2 by System 3 and Dark Side by Incentive. In November of the same year another tape had a playable level of Ocean's Robocop and Incentive's Total Eclipse. And the following month the cover-tape featured playable demos of Thunderblade by US Gold and LED Storm by GO, the only slight downside being the price rise this month to a whopping £1.95.

In late 1991 CRASH and Newsfield was in financial trouble but was luckily snapped up by Europress and their first issue, number 94 was released in December of that year. There were a couple of differences - less pages and less reviews but it just wasn't the same magazine of the glory years of 1987 and 88 - but not that it mattered as I had actually stopped buying the magazine in December of 1990. The last issue of Crash was number 98 in April of 1992, but the name of CRASH would live on, and indeed it would still appear in shops (at least in name only) on the front of Sinclair User which had decided to merge with CRASH after EMAP purchased the rights to the magazine.