Top Secret was the first Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 video game magazine, published from 1990 to 1996 by the Bajtek publishing house. The magazine quickly gained a cult following

Cult following

A cult following is a group of fans who are highly dedicated to a specific area of pop culture. A film, book, band, or video game, among other things, will be said to have a cult following when it has a small but very passionate fan base...

, and is still fondly remembered as one of the most memorable magazines in Poland.

Early years

The first issue appeared in late 1990, the editor-in-chief being Marcin "Martinez" Przasnyski. The magazine had been very different from e.g. American video game magazines, due to the situation in Poland at the time. Software piracy was blooming due to the bad economic situation and the lack of appropriate law regulations. Buying a computer game legally was almost impossible, so people were forced to buy them from pirates. Those games rarely contained a manual, and the knowledge of English was scarce among Polish people. Therefore, in its earliest years, Top Secret contained hardly any reviews. Instead, it published game guides, walkthroughs, manuals, maps and sometimes just general descriptions of the game. It was therefore very helpful for an aspiring gamer. Top Secret was the first magazine of its kind in Poland, and readers - unfamiliar with such publications - often apparently mistook it for a mail-order catalogue and kept sending requests for games, computers or joysticks to the magazine, despite the editing team's explanations.