Following the success of last year’s Crash Annual publisher Fusion Retro Books have started a Kickstarter campaign for an annual celebrating the ZZap! 64 magazine. If you were a Commodore 64 owner then ZZap! 64 was the magazine to go for, not just for reviews and previews but also for the humour and the excellent cover work. Even though I’m a devout Spectrum lover the Commodore 64 was an amazing machine and ZZap! 64 was a brilliant mag but if my words aren’t enough to convince you then have a look at the Kickstarter trailer below.
Back in the 80s and early 90s Roger Kean and Oliver Frey of Newsfield Publishing were responsible for bringing gamers not only ZZap! 64 but also Crash for the ZX Spectrum and the short lived Amtix for the Amstrad CPC. These magazines, particularly ZZap! 64, became extremely popular to thousands of gamers and quite possibly because of the injection of humour by the likes of Gary Penn and Julian Rignall and the stunning covers thanks to Oliver Frey which depicted aliens, space battles and scores of scantily clad, politically incorrect ladies.
The ZZap! 64 Annual 2019 will be 112 pages long, just like the Crash annual, and will be hardback only in the style of the classic Dandy and Beano annuals which became the staple of nearly every kids Santa’s list. Content will include reviews from well recognised games in the C64 community such as Jaz Rignall, Paul Rand and Robin Hogg plus articles by industry veterans Simon Butler and the legendary Mel Croucher.
“When I was tracked down at Thalamus Publishing in 2005–6 and asked to write something for the Def Zzap Tribute issue, it took some time to drag back all those memories of nurturing and editing Zzap!64 before turning it over to the capable hands of first Gary Penn and later Julian Rignall, Gordon Houghton, among other luminaries. Imagine then how many more brain cells I’m using up to do even more in 2018. Nonetheless, it’s been fun so far, working with such a young new team (well, young in heart, none of them is a teenager any more!), and catching up after almost 30 years with Julian Rignall (great ZzapBack, Jaz)” Roger Kean, former editor of ZZap! 64 and joint owner of Newsfield.
ZZap! 64 Annual 2019 will also feature a competition giving you the opportunity to win a TheC64 mini from Retro Games Ltd along with a 2nd joystick controller.
https://youtu.be/s5rlhG_TANg
If the ZZap! 64 Annual 2019 is something you want to make a reality then visit the Kickstarter page here.
