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About this site

ComputerHits is a online database of every UK 8-bit software chart published from 1982 to 1993.

All Formats (ALL) charts are the most common charts and combine the sales of a title across all every format into a single chart position. The other type of chart that covers multiple formats is the Multi-Format (M/F) chart where a titles are separate by their format, so a single title could have several entries in the same chart. The data also includes machine specific charts for these machines:

◼ Acorn Electron (ELK)
◼ BBC Micro (BBC)
◼ BBC and Electron combined (B/E)
◼ Amstrad (CPC)
◼ Atari 8-BIt (A8)
◼ Dragon(DR)
◼ Commodore 16 (C16)
◼ Commodore 64 (C64)
◼ Commodore VIC 20 (VIC)
◼ Sinclair ZX Spectrum (ZX)
◼ Sinclair ZX81 (81)
◼ MSX (MSX) (nb. only a small number of MSX charts were printed in 1985 and 1986)

Exclusions and Special Cases

Only charts based on sales are included, reader voted charts are excluded. Console games are also excluded, but 16-bit titles are listed where they appear in All Format and Multi-Format charts. In addition, at one point so many Chess programs were being published that chart compilers combined all their sales together into a single 'Chess' entry; these generic entries are also excluded from the database, along with some very obscure utilities that have been impossible to correctly identify. Each of the titles in the Fun School series were released for three different age groups but this was not always specified in the chart listings so thoses releases are combined into a single entry.

Display Layout

Data is displayed in the format:
CHART POSITION - CHART DATE - SOURCE - PAGE - SOURCE PUBLICATION DATE

This example is an extract from the chart history of Paperboy:

Chart history:

2WEEK to c.87-01-10PoCW p16 87-01-29
2WEEK to c.87-01-17( PoCW p19 87-02-12 )
3WEEK to c.87-01-24PoCW p19 87-02-12
4WEEK to c.87-01-31PoCW p17 87-02-19
YComp p30 Apr 87
  • the exact dates of the charts are not known so an estimated date is used, this is indicated by the c. prefix ahead of the date in italics.
  • the issue of Popular Computing Weekly for February 5th is missing, so the chart place for that week is taken from the 'last week' position from the chart published on February 12th. Where 'last week' or 'last month' positions are listed, the source dates are displayed inside brackets.
  • the page number links to an archived copy of the source where possible.
  • the top 20 entries on the 19th February PoCW and the April issue of Your Computer are identical (disregarding some discrepancies on the 'last week' numbers) so they are listed under the same estimated date.

    The following abbreviations are used for sources:

    A&B - A&B Computing
    AcU - Acorn User
    AmCU - Amstrad Computer User
    AtU - Atari User
    BW - Bang Weekly
    BigK - Big K
    CFrc - Commodore Force
    CFmat - Commodore Format
    CU - Commodore User
    CVG - Computer & Video Games
    CGam - Computer Gamer
    CGW - Computer Gamesweek
    CSR - Computer Software Retailing
    CTW - Computer Trade Weekly
    CPC - CPC Attack
    ElU - Electron User
    GX - Games X
    HCW - Home Computing Weekly
    Mic - Microscope
    NCE - New Computer Express
    PeCG - Personal Computer Games
    PeCN - Personal Computer News
    PeCW - Personal Computer World
    PoCW - Popular Computing Weekly
    SU - Sinclair User
    YComm - Your Commodore
    YComp - Your Computer
    YS - Your Sinclair
    Zzap - Zzap!64

    A complete list of all sources can be found on this page.