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Zzap Competitions

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 3:23 pm
by monkey010101
Did anyone ever religiously enter the Zzap competitions? I made an effort to do them all each issue and I always remember having great fun doing it. They were much more involved than competitions today. I remember many of them needing you to create characters or games or something similar.
I have vague memories of winning a runner game once but never had any more luck. It may have been Strike Force Cobra, I'm not sure.

I shall have to check the comp winners pages.

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:08 pm
by relentless
I may have entered a couple of comps, IIRC, although I have to say every single competition had a fantastic prize to be won. They sure made me want to enter all the competitions even though I never did.

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:36 pm
by monkey010101
Looked up the Strike Force Cobra one and realised that it was my friend who won a runner up prize! Its brought back loads of grumpy memories cos my entry was much better than his. He knocked it up in a few minutes whereas I lavished hours of attention on it. Also it means I actually bought my copy of Strike Force Cobra! Shocking!
I'm still convinced I won at least one prize though.

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:40 pm
by Professor Brian Strain
Think I only sent a couple of entries off. I liked the "joystick code" competitions.

Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:37 pm
by Fiery Phoenix
Can anyone remember that mega cool Renegade in a breifcase competition?

Looked so cool that - soooo wanted to win that one!

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 9:41 am
by Professor Brian Strain
Fiery Phoenix wrote:Can anyone remember that mega cool Renegade in a breifcase competition?

Looked so cool that - soooo wanted to win that one!
Did ZZAP! have one, I remember seeing it in Commodore User?

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 10:09 am
by monkey010101
That does ring a bell. Was that a renegade arcade machine squeezed into a briefcase or something?

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 10:38 am
by relentless

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 2:57 pm
by monkey010101
I remember it now. How cool is that? I wonder if it was heavy?

Posted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 5:20 pm
by Fiery Phoenix
Thats the one

Just looks the dogs bollox!

Would be good to hear from the people who won the big competitions, wonder what they did with their prizes? Still have them? Sell them?

Did they give away a Gauntlet machine in a compeition? Or am I thinking of those phone line ads that always used to run with prizes like that?

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 9:47 am
by monkey010101
I vaguely remember a Gauntley machine as well. I think I may have entered that one and not told my mum. Its not like we actually had space for it anywhere in our house.

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 1:25 pm
by Mayhem
The Gauntlet machine was just into 1987, post Xmas. A giant wordsearch iirc.

Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2009 7:07 pm
by Fiery Phoenix
Good memory!

Damn, remember that macjine being HUGE!

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:05 pm
by jmp909
Hi,

I won the Renegade case in 1987.

Anna Black recently contacted me on facebook about this in their Quest to find the box... (http://www.annablack.com/target-renegad ... ner-zzap64) .. luckily my name isn't hard to track down ;)

I've quoted my response comment below. but actually coming to think about it, I believe I sold it in Loot, so it might still be around somewhere.

(monkey010101: It wasn't actually particularly heavy: it was basically a PCB, a power supply, a few wires, and some game controls all neatly packaged in a standard metal camera case)

regards,
J.

I've not seen this case since about the mid-90's. I can't even remember what happened to it, but the short version is: after electrocuting myself trying to fix a wonky button on it, I think it ended up either donated or scrap.

I guess it wasn’t really built for longevity.

For anyone that doesn’t know, this was an arcade machine board re-housed in a metal camera case by Ocean Software during development of their version of the game Renegade. I believe they used these units for playtesting the games before and during development of the home computer versions.

I think I hammered the game so much I broke it

I never beat it either.

Anyway thanks for looking me up, and maybe it’ll turn up yet!

Posted: Wed Aug 11, 2010 12:55 pm
by Professor Brian Strain
Oh, a shame to hear it stopped working but great to hear about it! Commodore User had one to give away as well, wonder what happened to that one?