Long before Nintendo Power and Sega Visions, there was another software maker who had the bright idea to publish their own video game magazine. Their name was Imagic and they were an early 1980s developer who made a name for themselves by releasing simple action games for the Intellivision and Atari 2600. They also published Numb Thumb News, one of the shortest-lived magazines of all time. This is the story of a failed publication that was plagued by lawsuits, a bad business decision and one very big game crash. Today we're going to flip through the pages and explore the history of Numb Thumb News.

Part 1: Introducing Imagic - Before we can talk about Numb Thumb News, we first need to go back to 1981, the year Imagic was founded. Frustrated by the terrible treatment they were receiving at Atari, Bill Grubb, Rob Fulop and a number of other employees left that company and formed Imagic, one of only a handful of third-party developers making games for the Atari 2600 at the time. This led to a string of early 8-bit titles, including Atlantis, Dragonfire and Cosmic Ark. This success also earned the company a meeting with Atari's lawyers, who eventually sued Imagic over the similarities between Demon Attack and the 1980 arcade game Phoenix. The two companies eventually settled out of court and Demon Attack quickly became Imagic's best-selling game.


Not one to sit on their success, the company behind Star Voyager and Microsurgeon created a fan club that could keep the fans in the loop like never before. It was called the Imagic Numb Thumb Club, and it came with a number of exciting perks. Club members would receive a poster of their favorite Imagic game, a personal wallet-sized club card and, most importantly, a one-year subscription to Numb Thumb News, a short-lived magazine filled with tips, tricks, announcements and even interviews. It was basically Nintendo Power six years before Nintendo came up with the idea.

Part 2: It's Not Nintendo Power - Look, I should probably stop comparing Numb Thumb News to Nintendo Power, because that's setting up an unrealistic expectation. Aside from the fact that the two logos are surprisingly similar and both companies created magazines to advertise their games, these two have very little in common. Where Nintendo Power would print lavish maps and reveal all kinds of secrets, Numb Thumb chose to interview the developers and get useful tips like this: "To play an effective game of Star Voyager, it's very important you understand how to steer your spacecraft." Wait ... so you're telling me that knowing how to play the game is the key to doing well? Great strategy, dude.

Where Nintendo Power wanted to be a companion to your gaming experience, Numb Thumb News wanted to sell you on Imagic's latest games. Make no mistake about it, this is an advertisement. The issue will start with a page devoted to previewing games like Demon Attack and Atlantis. This is followed a few pages later with a mail-order section where you can buy games like Demon Attack and Atlantis. And if you $31.95 to throw around, the back of the magazine is devoted to an Imagic contest where you can win some of their hottest games, including, you guessed it, Demon Attack and Atlantis.

Arguably, the most compelling page in Numb Thumb News is this profile on the dean of demon's himself, Rob Fulop. It's here where we learn about the 25-year-old programmer's grueling "four or five hour" work day, where he visualizes the game in his head and makes it a reality. Probably the most surprising thing we learn from this interview is that Rob doesn't play video games. He complains that his reflexes are too slow, and, after being surrounded by 20 monitors all day at work, the last thing he wants to do when he goes home is sit in front of the television. He would rather make games for the hardcore gamers: "That kid is always on my mind when I design a game, daring me to create a game he can't crack. It's a real challenge to try to challenge him." Which brings us to ...

Part 3: Who Was This For? If you read all 26 pages spread across the two issues, you'll start to get a sense of the type of gamer Imagic wanted to attract. This was a company that repeatedly bragged that their games are challenging and only for the roughest and toughest players. All those other games coming from Atari and Activision were for casuals and newbies, while Imagic made real games for the real hardcore market. Each page was practically daring you to be strong enough to play their line-up of titles.

This is understandable, given when the magazine was published. What a lot of Intellivision and Atari 2600 games lacked in depth, they more than made up with challenge. The thinking at the time was that the harder games were the best value, since you would theoretically spend more time mastering them and earning those high scores.

Perhaps that's why the magazine's most visually interesting section was the Numb Thumb Hall of Fame, where players could compare their high scores against the people who actually worked on the games. This is easily the best part of the first issue, as it gives us a look at the style and attitude of those early developers. Sadly, this colorful spread was turned into yet another boring article when issue 2 rolled around. It was nice that readers like Basil Bonner and Troy Whelan got their names published in the Hall of Fame, but I miss seeing the programmers hip '80s fashion. I guess we'll have to settle on these, um, "models" showing off the Imagic merch. Yeah, that's the stuff.

Part 4: What Went Wrong? There are a lot of reasons why Numb Thumbs News didn't stand a chance, starting with the fact that it was only distributed through a fan club, completely bypassing the newsstand. We could also point to that name, Numb Thumbs News, which certainly didn't do it any favors. And then there's the year-long gap between issues and the lack of compelling articles. There's also this guy, Armand Hans III, who looked more like a Bond villain than an editor for a video games magazine. I mean, at one point he explains, with a straight face, that Imagic has "been around for over 1 full year," as if that's a real point of pride.

But while none of those problems necessarily helped, there was something bigger on the horizon that would prove to be the final nail in the coffin. That was, of course, the Great Games Crash, which happened just after Numb Thumbs News published their second (and final) issue. Imagic was not ready to weather the storm that was about to hit, neither as a game maker or a magazine publisher. With the bubble bursting around them and fewer people to sell games to, there was no point in making issue three. And then, only a couple years later, Imagic officially closed their doors for good. Many of the company's biggest games were eventually bought by Activision and the developers moved on to other companies. Rob Fulop, for example, was later hired by Nolan Bushnell to work on Night Trap, followed by him co-founding the company PF Magic, who is probably best known for making the 3D fighting game Ballz.

As for the magazine, Numb Thumb News is little more than a footnote in history these days. It lasted only two issues and barely had anything to offer outside of advertisements for Imagic games. There weren't any good articles, the tips were a joke and the interview actually made the people who worked on the games look worse. It's a great concept that simply came out too early and was gobbled up by the tidal wave that was the Great Games Crash. Numb Thumb News wasn't the first magazine to suffer this fate and, as you'll see in this series, it won't be the last.