Europress was a British company and publisher of magazine and software titles. Their magazine publishing business was previously known as Database Publications. Image File history File links Broom_icon. ...

Europress was formed by Derek Meakin in 1965. It began by publishing magazines and newspapers, then during the 1980s as an expansion of their magazine publishing business, they became involved in the rapidly-growing software industry.

Europress purchased Mandarin Software during the late 1980s, and the company was later renamed Europress Software. Their output included a high proportion of educational material, such as the Fun School series.

The publishing business was purchased by IDG, and became IDG Media towards the end of 1994. A reorganisation of the titles promptly followed, with the Atari, Amiga and Acorn divisions each losing one or more titles along the way.

Their software publishing business was purchased by Hasbro Interactive in 1999. [1]. At first, the studio prospered and expanded. It was able to produce titles using some of the brands owned by Hasbro, even producing two for Hasbro Germany. A little over a year later, Hasbro Interactive was losing money and was sold to Infogrames for a small amount; Infogrames gained ownership of all the Hasbro brands. However, Infogrames were not interested in the educational multimedia, which was Europress's focus, and ignored the company for several months. Ownership was then returned to the Meakin family. They ran the company for little over a year before it went into liquidation. A major factor in this was Granada TV's ignorance of their rights over Countdown. They had encouraged Europress to produce a Countdown CD Rom, but only weeks before the launch, with large pre-orders, they discovered that they did not have the interactive rights. Hasbro Interactive was a video game production and publishing subsidiary of Hasbro, the game and toy giant. ... 1999 (MCMXCIX) was a common year starting on Friday, and was designated the International Year of Older Persons by the United Nations. ... Infogrames Entertainment SA (IESA) is an international holding company headquartered in Lyon, France. ...

Derek Meakin sold the rights to the Europress brand name to Atari, who then sold them to Koch Media in 2002. Meakin then cofounded Meakin Enterprises with Chris Phillips.

Past magazines that have since ceased publication include: Amiga Computing, Atari User, Atari ST User and Zzap!64. Amiga Computing was a monthly computer magazine published by Europress and IDG in both the UK and USA, it published a total of 117 issues and was of a serious nature. ... Atari User was a British magazine aimed at users of Atari computers, and published by Database Publications (later known as Europress) between 1985 and 1988. ... Zzap!64 was a computer games magazine covering games on the Commodore International series of computers, especially the Commodore 64. ...

External links

• [2] Koch Media History
• [3]Meakin Enterprises
• [4]MobyGames info for EuroPress Software
• [5]MobyGames info for Mandarin Software