Main Menu

Zzap! 64

Started by Famous Mortimer, 04 March, 2018, 01:22:53 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Famous Mortimer

I was into both when I was younger, so I hope someone else was too :)

Now the collecting is all done for 2000AD, I fancied building up my collection of Zzap! 64 magazines. Be nice to read em again, honestly. If you have any (especially if you have the binders they came in) get in touch.

IndigoPrime

Good luck with the binders. Those things sell for a small fortune. I was a big Zzap! fan myself though – and one of the main people behind th me tribute issue from 2002 or thereabouts.

sheridan

Never heard of it before.  However, I did just find this...



Big_Dave


IndigoPrime

Quote from: sheridan on 04 March, 2018, 04:02:58 PMNever heard of it before.  However, I did just find this...
Oliver Frey of Dan Dare fame was their regular cover artist. (He produced only one piece for 2000 AD – a Rogue Trooper pin-up that I subsequently used as the basis for a 'new' piece of art for the tribute issue 107. When he became overloaded with work, the idea was for other artists to take the strain. But as far as I can tell, there were only a few issues of the magazine Frey didn't do the cover for. Three were Weston art (the depicted one, and also issues 72 and 73), and one that featured another artist familiar to 2000 AD readers.

As for Zzap!64 in general, I suspect whether or not you heard of it is down to 1) whether you're British, and 2) whether you were a fan of the C64 in the 1980s.

Steve Green

And if you weren't a fan of the C64 then there was the Spectrum equivalent, Crash.

Both published by Newsfield in Shropshire, they also had a spin-off games company called Thalamus.

SIP

Quote from: Steve Green on 04 March, 2018, 09:00:19 PM
And if you weren't a fan of the C64 then there was the Spectrum equivalent, Crash.

Both published by Newsfield in Shropshire, they also had a spin-off games company called Thalamus.

I did not know thalamus was a relayed company! I loved zzap, and thalamus made some of my favourite c64 games, Armalyte, Retrograde and Snare.

IndigoPrime

Thalamus was owned by Newsfield. Ex-Zzap! Gary Liddon was one of the founding executives. The name and logo were later used by Thalamus Publishing for a number of years. That imprint mostly worked on history books, but also issued a volume of Oliver Frey's art. I did their website, oddly enough. That was wound up, and the name now exists as 'Thalamus Digital Publishing', which is looking to remaster classic Thalamus titles like Hunter's Moon.

And Snare was a superb game (and, oddly, under-rated in Zzap!64).

Satanist

There's an Zzap 64 annual in the works which will be funded via Kickstarter around the end of March...

http://www.retro-now.com/zzap-64-annual-announced/

I'll be all over this as was my favourite gaming mag.
Hmm, just pretend I wrote something witty eh?

IndigoPrime

I grabbed the Crash one, which was nicely put together, and had some input from ex-Newsfield people. I suspect the Zzap!64 one will be in much the same vein.

matty_ae

Oli used to offer to do the 'reader's head shots' that used to feature in all their publications.
Have a look on his website and see if he still does them.

I asked him to do Dan and Zeta (who were clearly both readers)

IndigoPrime

#11

sheridan

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 06 March, 2018, 04:33:47 PM
Yeah, Oli's still doing those.

That link appears to have been truncated.  Though when I url-chopped to get to the homepage I had the zoid Red Horn staring at me, so I'm happy.  Was it Grant Morrison who did some early work telling the tales of the little silver and gold plastic figures that rode around in zoids?

IndigoPrime

Link fixed.

And, yes, some of Grant Morrison's early work was found in the Spider-Man and Zoids comic, including the set-up (but, sadly, never any resolution) for the universe being a 'game' played out by extra-dimensional beings. (The comic was set to continue as a US-format with Yeowell on art duties. Some pages exist in low-res scanned form.)

Link Prime

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 07 March, 2018, 09:59:59 AM
Link fixed.

And, yes, some of Grant Morrison's early work was found in the Spider-Man and Zoids comic, including the set-up (but, sadly, never any resolution) for the universe being a 'game' played out by extra-dimensional beings. (The comic was set to continue as a US-format with Yeowell on art duties. Some pages exist in low-res scanned form.)

So 'Silverman' turned out to be an android eh?

Read and enjoyed some of that as a kid (really cool toys too), but I've never seen the unpublished material in that link before, so cheers IP.