Famitsu
Japanese video game magazine
Famitsu, formerly Famicom Tsūshin, is a line of Japanese video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa. Famitsu is published in weekly and monthly formats, and in special issues devoted to particular themes. It was first published in 1986.
Shūkan Famitsū, the original publication, is considered the most widely read and respected video game news magazine in Japan. From October 28, 2011, the company began releasing the digital version on BookWalker weekly.
The name Famitsu is a portmanteau abbreviation of Famicom Tsūshin; Famicom is itself an abbreviation of Family Computer, the dominant video game console in Japan when the magazine was first published.
History
Login, a computer game magazine, started in 1982 as an extra issue of ASCII, and later it became a periodic magazine. Famicom Tsūshin 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.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Famitsu” is japanese video game magazine. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Famitsu, Japanese and video, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “japanese video game magazine” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q591573. The first chronological checks are 1986, 2011, 1982 and 1985.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Famitsu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.