ZZAP!64 was born out of another magazine’s death. In early 1985 Personal Computer Games closed, and Newsfield, the Ludlow company whose CRASH was selling “like hot cakes” to Spectrum owners, wanted the same thing for the Commodore 64. PCG’s editor, Chris Anderson, answered Newsfield’s advertisement for an editor, and brought reviewer Bob Wade and adventure writer Steve Cooke with him. Issue 1, dated May 1985 and priced 95p, was written in “a draughty, tumble-down, upstairs hideaway in an anonymous Somerset town”: 1 Church Terrace, Yeovil. Its first letters page admitted that most of the letters came from former PCG readers.
Its two main reviewers were chosen for their playing, not their writing. Gary Penn “had played just about every game ever released on the 64” and owned several hundred; Julian Rignall was the 1983 Computer and Video Games arcade champion. Both had been finalists in PCG’s competition to find Britain’s best games player. Within a year the magazine could tell its readers that the Audit Bureau of Circulations ranked it the best-selling magazine in its field.
Fast facts
- Publisher: Newsfield, issues 1 to 78 (May 1985 to October 1991); then Europress Impact, issues 79 to 90 (December 1991 to November 1992).
- First issue: May 1985, 95p. Last issue: 90, November 1992.
- Editors: Chris Anderson (the first issues, in 1985); Roger Kean (from late 1985 to September 1986); Gary Penn (from November 1986 to mid-1987); Ciaran Brennan (autumn 1987); Julian Rignall (from December 1987 to mid-1988); Gordon Houghton (from summer 1988); Stuart Wynne (by 1990); Steve Shields (by 1992).
- Awards: the Sizzler and the Gold Medal, both from issue 1.
- Cover tape: the Megatape, from issue 42 (October 1988).
- Sales: an average of 67,728 copies a month in the ABC figures reported in May 1987, and 77,483 in those reported that October.
Three reviewers, three opinions
The first issue set out “what we believe is the best reviewing system anywhere”. Every game was played by three people, always “the SAME three reviewers”, so that games could be compared fairly. Every game was played “EXTENSIVELY”: police had called at the office “to see why the lights were on after midnight”. The three argued over the ratings, “a lot”, and the final marks were “a sort of compromise reached at the end of the argument”. Where they disagreed, the reader saw it: each reviewer’s opinion was printed in its own speech bubble, “linked to each reviewer”. “Where there’s more than one opinion on a game, you should know about it!” From issue 2 a panel introduced the reviewers by name, so a C64 owner could soon tell whose taste matched their own.
Issue 1 scored games on seven labels: Presentation, Graphics, Sound, Originality, Hookability, Lastability and Value for Money. Hookability was a word “invented by us because we couldn’t find another one”: “a cross between ‘playability’, ‘addictiveness’ and ‘game-feel’”. Lastability measured depth: “Will you still be playing it a month after buying it?” Value for Money took the price into account and was, in effect, the verdict.
The system changed quickly. From issue 4, in August 1985, Originality was gone and a new Overall rating completed each review, because Penn and Rignall “felt strongly” that Value for Money did not reflect what they thought of a game. Value for Money survived as a sub-rating, shortened to Value in late 1986, and disappeared in 1987. Hookability and Lastability stayed.
Two awards topped the scale. The Sizzler, already in use in issue 1, meant “we think it’s very hot indeed”: a game that “normally must score 80% or more” and was “a great buy, unless you really hate that particular type of game”. The Gold Medal was “our biggest rave of the month. Get it.” Issue 1’s Gold Medal went to Firebird’s Elite, rated 95% for value for money; issue 2’s to Theatre Europe, “a chilling simulation of East-West conflict”. At the other end of the scale sat the Tacky: “a lousy piece of software. Steer well clear.”
A magazine with a cast
The staff listing in issue 1 set the tone. Roger Kean and Franco Frey were “Money bags”, Anderson was “Slavedriver”, Wade the “Tape collector”, Penn and Rignall the “Joystick junkies”, and Oliver Frey, who painted the covers, the “Art supremo”. By issue 2 Jeff Minter, whose column ran from the first issue, was listed as “Hairiest columnist in galaxy”.
After three issues the editorial office moved from Yeovil to Newsfield’s home in Ludlow, and Anderson and Wade stayed behind. Roger Kean took over as editor, and in May 1986 thanked Gary Penn, “on whose shoulders the main burden for getting ZZAP! together every month has fallen”, for rising from “callow Berkhampstead joystick wiggler” to assistant editor “of the biggest Commodore mag in Britain in only one year”. The letters page, ZZAP! Rrap, was signed by Lloyd Mangram, the invented staff writer who also answered CRASH’s mail.
The magazine also let programmers talk. From 1 May 1985 Andrew Braybrook kept a diary for ZZAP! while writing Paradroid. The magazine printed it in instalments from issue 3 in July, and the finished game won a Gold Medal in issue 7.
The editor’s chair
Kean stood down with the September 1986 issue, and Gary Penn was editor by November. In July 1987 Penn was still writing the editorials; by September they came from Ciaran Brennan. Julian Rignall took “the hot-seat for the first time” in December 1987, and in April 1988 an editorial joked that “ZZAP! 64 has kept the same Editor for two months running!”, a tradition it compared to handing the job to “the geezer who comes round with the sandwiches”. The August 1988 editorial announced “a change of management”: Rignall left for Computer and Video Games at EMAP, and the same issue’s masthead already named Gordon Houghton as editor.
The Amiga years
As C64 owners began to move to 16-bit machines, ZZAP! followed some of them. The December 1987 issue carried a 16-bit supplement of Amiga and Atari ST reviews, and from late 1988 Amiga reviews ran alongside C64 ones every month. It did not last. By June 1991 a reply on the letters page began “Since we’ve gone C64 only”, and the magazine was a Commodore 64 title again.
The Megatape
The cover cassette began with issue 42 in October 1988, and it began badly. That tape was to carry a playable level of Katakis, a horizontally scrolling shoot ’em up from GO! and Rainbow Arts, which U.S. Gold was publishing. Activision, which held Irem’s licence for the official R-Type conversion, thought Katakis “was so much like R-Type that they had a case for legal action”. U.S. Gold agreed to stop publishing the game and all its promotional material, and the cover cassette counted as promotional material. ZZAP! had already printed the cover and duplicated the tapes.
“This meant we were legally obliged to remove the cassette from the cover. In fact, all versions of Katakis have now been withdrawn — so you won’t see it on the shelves, either!”
U.S. Gold supplied a replacement at the last minute. The magazine was told it was a previously unreleased game; it was Time Tunnel, which ZZAP! had reviewed in issue 12 and given 49%. With the magazines already printed, there was no room to explain, and readers got a tape that did not match the cover, with no instructions. Issue 43 printed the apology, the explanation and the instructions, and announced that the tape it had promised for that month, Armalyte, had been pulled as well.
From there it settled. By October 1990 the cover was selling the tape as hard as the magazine: “Boo hoo, life is meaningless without the ZZAP! Megatape!”
After Newsfield
Issue 78 is dated October 1991 and issue 79 December 1991. There was no November issue, as a reader who had written in October noticed: “there was to be no November issue”. Newsfield had gone into liquidation, and issue 79, “a year older and Newsfield is no more”, came from Europress Impact, still in Ludlow.
ZZAP! outlasted CRASH under the new owner by seven months. Its last issue, number 90, dated November 1992, told readers that “your favourite C64 action rag has bitten the dust” and asked them to buy Commodore Force instead. The name ZZAP!, the editorial said, “belonged to times gone by”. Steve Shields edited both. Commodore Force ran from January 1993 to March 1994, and counted its issues on from ZZAP!: its first was issue 91 and its last issue 106.
That numbering is why a one-off revival in March 2002, a 36-page special that readers were expected to print out themselves, called itself ZZAP! 107. Gordon Houghton came back to edit it, “the only ex-editor who doesn’t have a life yet”.
The Italian edition
Zzap! was published in Italy from May 1986 by Edizioni Hobby of Milan, under a licence its colophon printed as “Su licenza di Newsfield Publications”. It carried translated Newsfield material alongside the work of its own Italian staff. The title passed to Xenia Edizioni in September 1991, and from the following month the colophon no longer mentioned Newsfield. The Italian Zzap! ran until December 1993, a year after the British issue 90; its last editorial began “Questo che leggete, amici lettori, è veramente l’ultimo numero di Zzap!” (“What you are reading, dear readers, really is the last issue of Zzap!”).
Sources
- ZZAP!64 issue 1, May 1985, pp. 3, 7–8: masthead and joke job titles, the Yeovil editorial address, Newsfield as publisher, “How Zzap was born”, the reviewing system and the seven ratings; cover: “No. 1, May 1985”, 95p; news pages: Elite as “this month’s gold-medal” game.
- CRASH issue 16, May 1985: “ZZAP! 64 is monthly and costs 95p”.
- ZZAP!64 issue 2, June 1985: masthead (“Hairiest columnist in galaxy”), the award key (Gold Medal, Sizzler, Tacky), and Theatre Europe as Gold Medal.
- ZZAP!64 issue 4, August 1985: Originality dropped, Overall introduced, Value for Money made a sub-rating; editorial address in Ludlow.
- ZZAP!64 issue 3, July 1985: the first instalment of Andrew Braybrook’s Paradroid diary, starting on Wednesday 1 May. Issue 6, October 1985, and issue 7, November 1985: later instalments and the Paradroid Gold Medal.
- ZZAP!64 issues 8 and 9, December 1985 and January 1986 (Kean as Editor, Penn as Assistant Editor); issue 13, May 1986 (ABC figures for July to December 1985; Kean’s thanks to Penn); issue 16, August 1986; issue 19, November 1986 (Penn as Editor); issue 21, Christmas 1986 (Kean “stopped being the editor” with the Knight Games issue).
- ZZAP!64 issue 25, May 1987 (ABC average of 67,728); issue 27, July 1987; issues 29 and 30, September and October 1987 (Brennan’s editorials; ABC figure of 77,483); issue 32, December 1987 (Rignall’s first editorial; the 16-bit supplement); issue 36, April 1988 (“the same Editor for two months running”); issue 40, August 1988 (“A change of management”); issues 42 and 43, October and November 1988 (Houghton as Editor; the first Megatape; Katakis, Time Tunnel and Armalyte).
- ZZAP!64 issue 61, May 1990 (Stuart Wynne as Editor); issue 66, October 1990 (the Megatape cover line); issue 74, June 1991 (“Since we’ve gone C64 only”); issue 78, October 1991; issue 79, December 1991 (“Newsfield is no more”; Europress Impact); issue 80, January 1992 (letters: “there was to be no November issue”); issue 90, November 1992 (the final issue; masthead with Steve Shields as Editor; Commodore Force).
- Commodore Force issue 1, January 1993, to issue 16, March 1994.
- ZZAP!64 issue 107, March 2002: Gordon Houghton’s editorial, and a history of the magazine that is the source for the editorial team leaving Yeovil after three issues without Anderson and Wade, and for Rignall’s move to Computer and Video Games in July 1988.
- Zzap! (Italy) issue 1, May 1986 (Edizioni Hobby); issue 58, July 1991, and issue 59, September 1991 (colophons with “Su licenza di Newsfield Publications”, Edizioni Hobby then Xenia Edizioni); issue 60, October 1991 (colophon without the Newsfield line); issue 84, December 1993 (the final editorial).
- Wikipedia, “Newsfield” (web, secondary): Commodore Force ending in March 1994. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsfield