I used to love reading Games(tm) for the same reason. It got me into collecting Spectrum, Amstrad, and Acorn games. At first I thought "what's so great about a computer with pre-Commodore 64 graphics, no floppy drive, virtually no sound/music, puny color palette a chicklet keyboard, and no standard joystick?" But after playing great games by Hewson (especially anything by Raffaele Cecco) and Ultimate PTG, it really blows away most of the C64 games I've played.
It's funny when they make grandiose statements about games like Ant Attack 3D or Chuckie Egg being among "the most influential games of all time" when most gamers worldwide have never even heard of them. One article I read went as far as to suggest that Manic Miner was a direct inspiration for Super Mario Bros! Sometimes I don't think they realize how isolated the UK gaming scene was.