If you love tinkering with vintage computers and miss the magazine formats of yesteryear, then you might be interested in John Kavanagh’s Kickstarter campaign. An Amstrad CPC enthusiast and computer repair shop owner, he’s wanting to raise money to fund a single issue of a professionally printed magazine for collectors and users of 8-bit computers.
Simply called Eight Bit, it will be in full colour and a minimum of 48 pages, covering games, programming and hardware projects. Kavanagh says that the aim is to “create the excitement of computer magazines of the 80s and early 90s, both gaming and otherwise”.
The campaign has already well exceeded its comparatively tiny $600 target with over a month left to go, but additional funding will allow him to increase the size of the magazine and commission supplementary articles and interviews. Personally, I would try to get Crash and Zzap!64 illustrator Oliver Frey on board to do the art! And it sounds like Kavanagh’s not finished there, stating:
We have a number of people involved in this Kickstarter project and the plan is to get more on-board for future issues. We want to create a community of eight bit enthusiasts writing for the magazine coming up with articles we haven’t even thought of yet.
Backers will receive a copy delivered free to anywhere in the world for just $6 (£4). Or for a bit of prestige, a limited number of folks can have their name and a custom message (up to 255 characters) included within the issue for an extra $4.
