[citation needed] The publication, often abbreviated to AA by staff and readers, had the longest lifetime of any Amstrad magazine, running for 117 issues from October 1985 until June 1995 - long after the CPC had ceased production and games were no longer available.

[citation needed] Published by Future plc, a company set up by Chris Anderson (ex-Personal Computer Games and Zzap!64 editor).

Bob, another ex-PCG/Zzap!64 staff member,[2] was given the title ‘Software Editor’ and would review the vast majority of the games featured, with Peter given a second opinion.

The readers letters were answered in the Reaction section, where numerous arguments and, usually good natured, humour was found.

The core of this split the readership over whether the programs should be put on the covertape instead - over a six-month period this is what happened, until this practice (and ultimately the Type-Ins section) was abandoned due to space restrictions.

Initially called Rear View, the back page was where all the loose ends were closed off, like competition winner results and last minute happenings.

Chris Anderson using his previous success of covermounted cassette tapes with Personal Computer Games included one with the Christmas special issue of 1985.

The covermount cassette tape was only an occurrence on the Christmas and AA birthday issues, not becoming a regular feature until AA67 in 1991, mainly due to requests from many readers.

Due to the low quality of the cassettes used many Amstrad owners found them to be unreliable, something which was commonly reflected in the letters pages.

A playable demo of Ocean Software's Total Recall and complete games Hydrofool and Codemasters' Dizzy were included on the tape.

December 1993 AA99's Serious Action cover tape included the complete Stormlord game, albeit a censored version.

Laser Squad, by Blade Software, which was mentioned many times as being an AA staff favourite, was awarded the Mastergame accolade, in AA49, with a 91% rating.

June 1990 was the first issue to award the Mastergame accolade to more than one game; E-Motion by US Gold and Turrican by Rainbow Arts received ratings of 92% and 90% respectively.

Memorable staff included Publisher Chris Anderson, Bob Wade, Richard Monteiro, Steve Carey, Rod "The Beard" Lawton, Trenton Webb, James Leach, Frank O'Connor and Adam Waring.

Simon had written various programs himself for the platform and was known to jump down the throats of people who didn't agree with his fondness for the video game Chuckie Egg.

Bob left after issue 34 to Edit sister publication Advanced Computer Entertainment and later Amiga Format.

After Binary Asylum failed to establish itself into the PC market[7] Bob moved over to the internet product monitoring service; Game Campaign.

Later went on to become a Publisher overseeing such titles as MEGA, Amiga Power, PC Gamer, .net and the games industries well respected EDGE, among others.

[citation needed] Previous experience of working on New Computer Express and ACE, Rod arrived at AA51 and holds the record for longest serving editor, spanning 39 issues and over three years.

[14] Also runs a Digital Imaging web site where photographers at all levels of expertise can find out more about the terms, concepts and techniques behind photography.

In 1995 he helped launch the new Future Publishing Sci-Fi mag SFX, taking over the editor position in 1996 and remained there until 2005.

In 1990 Richard formed the company Words Works Limited, in Trowbridge with his own editorial team and produced RAZE under subcontract from Newsfield Publications.

After Binary Asylum closed, he went to work for Internet and Intranet website design firm Zehuti as Project Manager.

After leaving Future Publishing, in the mid-1990s, James went on to work for software company Bullfrog, contributing to many games including Syndicate Wars,[19] Dungeon Keeper and Theme Hospital.

[20] In 2006 James left Lionhead to go freelance where he now describes his skill and experience as "Writer of game plots, dialogue, websites, ads (ATL and BTL), children's books, sitcoms and more.

[24] Joint second longest serving editorial staff, along with Bob Wade, Adam was the Technical Editor for 34 issues.

Adam had written several games himself, including Lost Caves and Ninja Massacre, and if one came up for review upon re-release, he would gracefully be allowed to write a second opinion.

They included Steve "The Pilgrim" Cooke; Stuart "The Balrog" Whyte; PD columnists Jerry Glenwright, Caroline Lamb (a.k.a.

Steve Williams), Tim Blackbond and Keith Wood; fanzine columnist David Crookes; and reviewers Richard Wildey and Angela Cook.

He ran a public domain library called Robot PD and was also an accomplished computer programmer, producing the fully-fledged utilities PowerPage and RoutePlanner for the CPC as well as contributing to various demos.