Every mag that has a spine (the printing term is "perfect-bound": the single time the adjective is used in the industry) writes the name of the mag and the number of the issue upon it, so when they're standing on a shelf you can see the copy you want simply by twisting your head unnaturally.
No mag, however, can resist adding something else. Famous examples include Empire (an obscure quote from a film), the original Game Zone (a slice of a picture) and, of course, AMIGA POWER.
If you put all the perfect-bound APs side by side, the spines spell AMIGA POWER AMIGA POWER AMIGA POWER (and so on). (Except for the tragic, unforgivable error on AP45.) You could therefore increase your enjoyment of AP by shuffling the issues Scrabble-style to spell other words, or perhaps construct a brief story.
But this did not suffice for the mighty beings. Each spine also had a circle with a right-pointing arrow in it (symbolising the path of time, or something) and a mysterious message, or Spine Line. Occasionally readers would guess at a particular spine line's meaning, but on the whole, quite sensibly, no one bothered because they'd be written at the last possible moment as the Art Ed waited fuming to send the cover, with everyone standing around saying things like "I KNOW IT'S HARD TO THINK, for the cross fireman" and "SANDWICHES - OOF!, for the unspeakable sandwich bloke's brother beating him up" and thus be impossible to work out.
So here they all are.
AP01-14 - POINTLESS DRIVEL
In the Golden Age, spine lines merely referred to something happening on the actual cover (ie AP11: cover story about some new Ocean games, cover line OCEAN'S NEW WAVE, spine line OCEAN'S NEW WAVE). A complete waste of space.
AP27 - BARBARA CARTLAND!
Lost in the mists of time, but possibly something to do with the punchline to a joke whose feedline was used on several occasions around this time without ever being completed. ("Q: What's pink, fluffy and unemployed?"*)
AP29 - LOBSTER LOBSTER LOBSTER
Madness.
AP31 - BLAH BLAH BLAH YAKETY SCHMAKETY
Obvious Taz-Mania reference (it's the catchphrase of Taz's dad, Hugh), for no particular reason other than continuation of the three-word repetition motif set up in previous months.
AP33 - RATATATATATA - CHRISTMAS - HEY!
A particularly obscure reference, actually a quote from a special recording made by New Order around 1982 for a Smash Hits telephone line, in which they made their pop hit of the time Confusion sound a bit more festive (original lyric - "Ratatatatata - tatata - hey!") as their Christmas greeting to the readers of said magazine.
AP36 - OOH! AAH!
Relates most obviously to cover game, Manchester United Premier League Champions, but was also a secret sarcastic jibe at Amiga Format and their extremely favourable review of Psygnosis' dire CD32 opus Microcosm penned by editor (now Team 17's) Marcus Dyson that month, the point lying in the desperately pitiful way they'd been dazzled by some moderately pretty graphics into entirely ignoring the contemptible lack of gameplay therein, in an attempt to convince (the world? the readers? themselves?) of the CD32's wondrousness. That in itself wasn't a particularly rare occurrence, but the game's lack of quality was actually pointed out in the review, only to be ignored on the grounds that, essentially, "we have to give it a good mark to because it is on the CD32, and the CD32 is a good thing which we wish to encourage." The useless, cretinous morons.
AP38 - 'NIGHT, 'LIZABETH
The month when the team dressed up as The Altons, to highlight the issue's focus on the issue of censorship.
AP40 - YEAR ZERO
A reference to Stuart's leaving to become Development Manager at Sensible Software and his being removed from all photographs and histories of AP by Uncle Joe Stalin, thus trivialising the deaths between Joe and Pol Pot of about 45 million people. We got bored of writing Stuart out in readers' letters and the like after three or four months, and he eventually returned to review Brutal in AP53. But it didn't bring any of those 45 million people back, DID IT?
AP42 - I WISH THE GROUND WERE SOFT AND MUSHY
What Mr Clown says after falling off the watertower in Animaniacs. Except it's actually "I wish the ground were mushy and soft" as at least ten people wrote in to tell us. We had them all killed.
AP44 - BOB IS A HAMSTER
The original appearance of Bob the Hamster, going some way to explain the issue's guest line in Points of View.
AP46 - HMMM... SMELLS LIKE A HOLLOW VICTORY
A firing on the grounds of total uselessness was overturned through our impassioned intervention. As is our wont.
AP48 - 16K IN 100 SECONDS
Jonathan Davies had brought in a huge pile of old computer mags for some reason. This was proudly quoted in an ad for the Oric-1.
AP50 - ARE YOU GATHERING? WELL, I'M JOINING
A tribute to the network structure of Marathon, the game that kept AP going when horribly on deadline while probably being responsible for AP being horribly on deadline.
AP52 - KENNY, KENNY, PICK UP THE PHONE
The triumphant return of Kenny Grant, AP's coverdisk compiler, also saw the triumphant return of Dave Green's magic chant employed to make him answer his bleeding telephone within fifty rings.
AP54 - PLEASE DON'T HURT FLEAKINS
From kooky Delicatessen follow-up The City Of Lost Children. The bit with the brainwashed fat bloke pulling out his erstwhile colleague's eye-camera cable and connecting it to his own so the victim can see himself being strangled was the most distressing film scene of the year. Bravo!
AP56 - IF YOU DON'T POINT, YOU CAN'T SMASH
Seemingly referring to cover game Super Tennis Champs, in fact recording sound badminton-playing advice. The sport enjoyed a brief vogue in AP around this time.
Sadly, the tradition of baffling spine lines seems to be dying out, with mags preferring to list their main contents, or have a split picture which turns out to be the logo like it's an Orbis Partwork or something.