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COMPUTE!’s Gazette — Volume 2, Issue 5 (May 2026)

“They Predicted This…” — Four Decades of Forecasts, Graded.

Forty years ago, the writers and editors of COMPUTE! and COMPUTE!’s Gazette looked into their crystal balls and described the computing future. Some of those predictions landed beautifully. Some missed by thirty years and a smartphone. And one — the death of BASIC — was magnificently, gloriously wrong. This month’s cover story takes a hard look at six big predictions from the original magazines and grades them against the world of 2026. A perfect companion piece to April’s “BASIC Is Not Dead.”

Inside this 92-page issue:

• They Predicted This… — Our cover story scores four decades of COMPUTE! and Gazette forecasts on the home computer, the paperless office, voice control, classroom computing, electronic mail, and yes — the supposed demise of BASIC.
• Before the Mansion: The Forgotten Lucasfilm Game — Jerry Bonner on Labyrinth, the 1986 LucasArts adventure that came before Maniac Mansion and is still figuring itself out, in the best possible way.
• In Memoriam: Hedley Davis (1958–2026) — A tribute to the quiet engineer behind the Amiga 3000, the Hedley Monitor, Ramsey, Akiko, and one of the most famous mounted artifacts in Commodore history.
• Games Coverage — Andrew Fisher reviews Hazard Let Us Out for the Commander X16, David Murray’s new falling-block puzzler Quarx (VIC-20, C64, PET), Tower and Dragon for the CBM PET, and a new edition of Lost & Found.
• Insight: ATARI — John Zielke and Jerry White on a Street Fighter II port that shouldn’t exist, a homebrew roundup, and what’s shipping for the 8-bit faithful.
• Commodore Corner — Peri Fractic on bringing the original C64C molds home — and losing the slimline race to the community by two weeks.
• Dialed Back — On AMIS, FoReM, Carina, and the BBS software that proved Atari BASIC could run real infrastructure. Many of those boards are still answering today.
• Podcast Corner — Brian P. Cox on Everything Amiga and the Amigos Retro Gaming Network.
• Back to BASIC — The programming tutorial series continues.
• Micro Missions — Two completed reader solutions, with more invited.
• Letters to the Editor, the Gazette Wire, VCF Events Calendar, type-in program listings (pages 83–88), and more.

Plus the regular Editor’s Notes, news, and reader correspondence that make the Gazette what it is.

Retro computing for Commodore, Atari, Amiga, Commander X16, MEGA65, and beyond.