The American edition of PC Gamer launched in 1994. In 1999, Future publishing, then known as Imagine media, purchased rival magazine PC Games and merged its staff into the magazine. According to a 2005 study, subscribers to the magazine are overwhelmingly male (97%), and make up over two thirds of the magazine's readership.

Demo disk

Similarly to the British edition, the magazine ships with a demo disk, though diskless versions are available. The CDs are replaced by DVDs in the American edition on a month-to-month basis.

When PC games with full motion video (FMV) sequences were popular in the mid-to-late 1990s, PC Gamer's CD-ROM included elaborate FMV sequences featuring one of their editors. To access the features of the CD, including the demos, patches and reviews, the user had to navigate a 'basement', which played very much like classic PC games such as Myst. It was in this game sequence that the magazine's mascot, Coconut Monkey, was introduced just as the editor was leaving the magazine, marking the transition from the FMV demo CDs to the more contemporary menu driven demo CDs that they use today.

Coconut Monkey

Coconut Monkey is the mascot for the US edition. He was created by founding editor Matt Firme, and modeled after a Bermudan tourist trinket. Coconut Monkey appears in the pages of the magazine, and has occasionally provided commentary on demo discs included with the magazine. The Coconut Monkey appears in a number of game mods.

The Coconut Monkey is often used to parody vaporware by advertising the unreleased game Gravy Trader, which has been given a 101% score on some of the review disks. The character would often cite that he would do "something" (dependent on the train of thought), but use the excuse "but I have no hands" as a reason for not doing it.

Podcast

The PC Gamer US podcast started in August 2005, and is hosted variously by attendance, and produced by Andy Bauman. Regular contributors include Logan Decker, Dan Stapleton, and Evan Lahti. Former contributors include Dan Morris, Jeremy Williams, Greg Vederman, Chuck Osborn, Kristen Salvatore, Gary Whitta, and Norman Chan. It is generally released weekly on Thursdays, but is subject to change when the group is too busy or forgets. The podcast celebrated its 100th episode on 20 September 2007, and was hosted by Dan Morris, who had not appeared since he left the position of EIC of PC Gamer in 2006 to become the magazine's publisher. For its 200th episode released on Nov 12, 2009, the podcast featured two former editors in chief: Gary Whitta and Kristen Salvatore.

A video podcast is also produced and features game developers discussing their newly or soon to be released games, as well as other notable figures in the gaming world. It is produced on a semi-regular basis.

Several notable guests that have appeared on the podcasts include Richard Garriot, Sid Meier, Chris Taylor, the Frag Dolls, Jens Pulver, Chris Sigaty, and Jonathan "Fatal1ty" Wendel.

To date, three episodes have included a gaming-themed quiz show. Introduced in episode 81 by Logan Decker, the segment is named Catfantastic after the book series of the same name. Logan, however, announced on Catfantastic II that the quiz show would be discontinued because "after two good things, it gets boring." However, Logan hinted in later episodes that Catfantasic could return some day. It did in episode 133, and again in episode 200.

As of episode 119, Andy Bauman has taken over as producer from Jeremy Williams, who accepted a job at Future US in South San Francisco. (While Jeremy will be working in the same office with the PC Gamer crew, his new responsibilities left him no time to continue on as podcast producer. He has hinted he may return as a contributor.) Andy lives in Salt Lake City, Utah.