United Kingdom · 1993–2018
Launched in 1993 as the tie-in to Channel 4's GamesMaster TV show, the magazine sold more than 219,000 copies of its first issue and outlived the programme by twenty years.
Future Publishing launched GamesMaster in January 1993 to accompany the television programme of the same name, the Channel 4 games show that had begun the previous year. It was a monthly, multi-format magazine covering computer and console games, and it was edited for Future by Jim Douglas, who had been recruited from rival publisher EMAP, where he had been due to edit an official Nintendo magazine. The connection with the television show gave the magazine a large audience from the start. According to Future, the first issue sold 219,492 copies. The programme itself ended in the late 1990s, but the magazine carried on under its own momentum, covering every console generation from the Super Nintendo and Mega Drive onward. By 2012 GamesMaster was the best-selling multi-format video games magazine in the United Kingdom, outselling its sister publication Edge. It finally ceased print in November 2018, having outlasted the television show that created it by about twenty years.