Issue 108 - Issue 108 is Indefinitely on Hold

Everything else about Zzap
So Long Ago
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Post by So Long Ago »

Well there's Nick Roberts not really a Zzap person but a long history with Crash/Newsfield. Plus there's Phil King. They are also in contact with some other former Newsfield people.

If you consider Gordo's reign to be within the golden era then Mark was very much a part of that. Oli for all his talent contributed the covers but
didn't really have a lot to do with the internal layout/look of the magazine. If there is an art editor I associate with Zzap then it is absolutely Mark.

All of the above people also worked at Newsfield for much longer than your Penn/Rignall/Houghton's.

As to how Roger/Oli ran the magazines - well to be honest they didn't. After a certain period of time their day to day involvement with them was minor. If I had to pick a single fault with Newsfield I would say it was poor management, they could and should have developed into Future.
CraigGrannell
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Post by CraigGrannell »

I'd say Zzap!'s golden age was probably the mid-to-late point where Kean was editing, through to Penn's go in the driving seat. After that, there was a small drop—diminishing returns—with Rignall and Gordo, and then a rather rude slap in the face when the mag went Crayola after Gordo and co. clearly had one too many fizzy pops for lunch one day.

Wynne had a good go initially at bringing the mag back to life, but once it started aping Commodore Format, it was all over and the mag never recovered.

As for an article, I did have plans years before Retro Gamer even existed to do a large feature for a now defunct website. The plan was to pick a 'key' person from every Zzap! 'era' and try and do a huge combined interview that would overlap, taking the story from start to finish. I recall getting replies from the majority of people required to do this, but only a few proved enthusiastic enough to reply with content, and so the idea was shelved, sadly.

With Zzap! being such a loved magazine, something in Retro Gamer would be a nice thing to see, but the mag doesn't seem terribly keen on mag-oriented articles, and it'd be sure to get the hackles up of anyone who wasn't a C64 fan.
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Ant
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Post by Ant »

I think, as time moves ever onward, I'm siding more with Rob and Craig. RG gives me enough retro nostalgia to fill what little spare time I have these days and I don't think I could give enough of myself to make a 108 I'd be happy with.

But every so often I do take out my printed copies of 107 and the Def Tribute and smile and dream ...
"Isn't this where ... we came in?"
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Iain
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Post by Iain »

I'm going to merge these threads in with the general Zzap section and delete the Issue 108 forum in preparation for the update to phpBB3 (at some stage!). No messages will be deleted.
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