Newsfield

Newsfield Publications Ltd (also known as Newsfield) was a British magazine publisher during the 1980s and early 1990s.

Overview

Newsfield Publications Ltd was founded by Roger Kean, Franco Frey and Oliver Frey in 1983. Based in Ludlow, Shropshire, Newsfield published a number of popular computer game magazines from the mid-1980s to early-1990s. This line-up was later supplemented by a number of less successful magazines covering role-playing games, film, horror and youth culture. Faced with financial difficulties, the company went bankrupt towards the end of 1991. This didn't spell the immediate end for some of their magazines though. Another magazine publisher, Europress, continued to publish Newsfield's flagship publications, Zzap!64 and Crash, for a further six months before the former was relaunched as Commodore Force and the latter sold to rival publisher EMAP and merged with Sinclair User.

Thalamus Ltd, Newsfield's sister company, was set up in 1985 to publish a number of computer games on various 8-bit and 16-bit platforms, with a slant towards the Commodore 64. Thalamus initially survived the demise of Newsfield before it too finally went bankrupt in 1993.