controller can be seen on the cover. , a computer game magazine, started in 1982 as an extra issue of
ASCII, and later it became a periodic magazine. was a column in
Login, focused on the Famicom platform, and ran from March 1985 to December 1986 issue. It received a good reception, so the publisher decided to found the magazine specialized for it. The first issue of
Famitsu was published on June 6, 1986, as
Famicom Tsūshin. It sold less than 200,000 copies, despite 700,000 copies printed. The major competitor was
Family Computer Magazine launched in July 1985 by
Tokuma Shoten.
Famitsus editor found many readers had multiple game consoles, and they thought it would be better if the magazine covered various platforms. Increasing contents and the page count gradually, the magazine was published three times per month instead of semimonthly publication. On July 19, 1991 (issue #136) the magazine was renamed to and issues were published weekly thereafter. Alongside the weekly magazine, a monthly version called was also published.
Hirokazu Hamamura, an editor-in-chief (1992–2002), felt the beginning of a new era when he saw a private demonstration of
Final Fantasy VI in 1993. He thought the name
Famicom Tsūshin should be refurbished. At the start of 1996 (with issue #369) the magazines underwent another name change, truncating their titles to and . The name
Famitsu had already been in common use. The magazine was published by
ASCII from its founding through March 2000 when it was sold to
Enterbrain, which published it for 13 years, until their parent company
Kadokawa published it from 2013 to 2017. Since 2017, Kadokawa's subsidiary Gzbrain has been publishing the magazine, while in 2019 the company changed its name to Kadokawa Game Linkage. ==
Shūkan Famitsū and
Gekkan Famitsū==