Every single issue of Commodore Format came complete with a cover mount: the Power Pack. This games tape was the major reason a lot of people bought the magazine, and Steve Jarratt told us in 2013 that it was “utterly crucial” to the magazine’s success.

Where other magazines had stuck with demos of upcoming titles for their covertapes, launch editor Steve Jarratt made it his mission to include true classics with every single issue of CF. Truly brilliant games like Bounder and Park Patrol were early examples. Such classics were given real Indian summers: many of CF’s readers were young and hadn’t seen the games before. And at just two quid for the magazine and cassette, it was usually the only time aside from christmas and birthdays that kids got something new to play with on their C64s.

For the first time, we’ve got the whole set of covers for you to enjoy here. Perhaps it’ll inspire you to track down the classics! By the way, issues 1 and 2 didn’t have proper covers or boxes – they were just mounted on a bit of card wrapped around the cover that could be folded into an inlay. They weren’t officially called Power Packs yet, either: they were CF Smash Hits. You can find out more about how those first tapes worked here. We’re also including our unofficial Power Packs 62, 63 and 64. CF

 

CREDIT: Scans provided by Khristian Rainford for the Commodore Format Archive. For legal reasons, we can’t host copies of the games here.