In 1985, 2,977 games were launched for the ZX Spectrum. The Way Of The Exploding Fist won the third Golden Joystick Award. A little-known gaming company called Bethesda was founded. Zzap! 64 magazine from Newsfield was launched. I was 12 years old. And, of course, the fortnightly publication known as Micro Computer Mart first appeared on a cold October morning.

Micro Mart is just over 31 years old, which is a pretty amazing achievement for a magazine in this day and age. My personal fondest memories of the magazine are picking it up for 50p and sitting in my bedroom with pen and paper, listing down the components from the advertisers within to build my dream PC.

This was a time when the Internet was unheard of, when the PC was actually beginning to become affordable and such amazing things like 1 x CD-ROM drives were the future. Micro Mart, however, predated all that. My memories can only stretch back as far as the early 90s, and even then recalling a particular issue is near impossible.

I do seem to remember, though, picking up an issue when I'd finally managed to save up enough money to buy an Atari ST. My Spectrum was starting to shuffle off this mortal coil, so it must have been somewhere around 1988, as I was still in school. I vaguely recall buying Micro Mart in my lunchbreak and going through it with a fine-toothed comb with a couple of mates, as we circled the best ST deals as advertised in its pages.

Many years after, Micro Mart served me well again as I started to buy a PC. Then onward when I landed my first IT job and I was tasked with buying some new PCs for the company. The relevant news, reviews and features kept me entertained during the couple of years I changed career and ended up on a boat in the middle of the North Sea for a couple of weeks every month or so.

Finally, in 2010 I actually managed to end up writing for it. It was a huge thing for me, after all, I had grown up with a copy of Micro Mart never too far from me. To me, Micro Mart wasn't just another computer magazine on the shelf or just another job I had; it shared a portion of my life with me as it undoubtedly did with many others.

In 1985, Micro Mart was just a classifieds magazine, printed in black and white and published by MicroMart (UK) Limited. The then-owners, Stewart Somerville and Roy Perrin, ran the magazine from Solihull, so legend has it, together with numerous other staffers who organised the advertising placements, publication and distribution.

A few years later, in 1991 I believe, Trinity Publications bought MicroMart Limited, along with several other 'Mart' titles. Here the magazine flourished, moving to a weekly format and eventually being printed in colour.

In 2005, Simon Brew became the editor and soon after the magazine was sold to Dennis Publishing, along with several of the Trinity Publications' 'Mart' titles to other publishers. Here Micro Mart stayed until a few years ago when the entire production of the magazine went freelance - i.e. not actually within the Dennis Publishing building, instead under Simon Brew Ltd.

A quirky, fun, informative, low cost and excellent magazine.

Not being able to keep up with the Internet and the news that its doors are finally closing.

Thanks everyone who ever worked on Micro Mart and who read it.

1. My first ever paid writing work was with Micro Mart and was about Puppy Arcade Linux.
2. I have issue 180, from 1992.
3. MM forumite Ritasueandbobtoo has a scanned image of issue 29! Look at goo.gl/wmNOsW
4. Back when MM was starting, a 286 10MHz PC with 1MB of RAM cost £2,095!

David Hayward