The Def Guide to Zzap!64

Yep, I was there from the start. I bought the first issue and was hooked (subscribed) until about issue #39 when I stopped using my C64 (sold it eek!). Loved getting my compunet demo reviewed by Julian Rignall in June 1987 (Nemesis picture). Made a nice birthday present for me.
Money was always tight as a teenager and what with games coming in at between 1.99 for firebird titles and anything up to £20 for a game with an extra widget in the box it made the correct purchase of games vital.
A few times I went out and bought a game without the wisdom of a Zzap review and really screwed up. One £10 game was so bad I had to take it back (after recording a little blank bit on the tape) and show them it didn't load. Lucky for me they didnt have another one in stock so I got my money back. If I remeber rightly it was something to do with Santa and Christmas. The idea of the game was to help santa deliver the presents - trust me it was a bad game...
After that I vowed to always check with the Zzap review before buying. I had just about every game rated Sizzler and above. Usually played them for a while until I decided to hack out the music and create a demo for compunet.
Zzap was and always will be the best mag I ever read.

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http://www.shops-flower.com/c64/

My first issue of Zzap was somewhere around issue 11-14. I managed to track down some of the earlier issues at a later date, and all the covers came off those first issues, so it's all a bit blurry.

I continued to buy it through to the end of Zzap, and for a good while after that when it was Commodore Force. I didn't even have a C64 then. No, I don't quite understand it either.

I even bought an issue of *cough*Crash*cough*. I ran into the news agents, grabbed the magazine with the Oli Frey cover I'd never seen before, and developed an instant cold sweat when I opened it back in the car. It was interesting reading about the Spectrum, but I'm glad I had a C64.

Zzap changed over the years, and I wasn't happy about the tweaks. The change in cover art reflected the changes inside, and I always thought it was at its best when the entire cover was a complete cover-sized Oliver Frey painting, with no black outlines around anything.

I never understood the shift. It seemed to be aiming and lower and lower age groups, when I thought the average reader age would have been going up. And it was that dark, moody style of the first years that hooked us all in when we were younger.

My favorite parts were the game diaries and the big Gold Medal reviews. And of the many magazines I bought every month for some ten years, Zzap remains my favourite.

Paul Sumner wasn't a real person?? Hot damn. That's hilarious.

I guess a lot of people "upgraded" to Amigas etc. and gave their old C64 to their younger brothers, or parents bought a cheaper first computer for their younger kids...

That's exactly correct, and just what I was about to say!

Remember how the kiddie PlayStation magazines only came out in the machine's autumn years? Did you notice how the last games to be released on the PSone were all children-orientated, something we'll soon see on the PS2 and Xbox? That's because at the tail end of a format's life, the average age of the readers goes down.

I was lucky enough to be there from the start... I remember my mate telling me there was a new Commodore mag at the news agent so I went along and bought it... and the rest is history... I was hooked from issue 1. I remember being a bit gutted that two guys had completed the Staff of Karnath... and got some trophy... the reason I was so gutted is that Id only had the game for a few weeks and I only had a couple of items left to find! I also remember reading the Elite review over and over... I wanted that game big time! Happy memories!

Hi everyone.
First issue.. The first one i bought was (as i remember) issue 26 (it was the one with the tape stuck to the front cover - the first tape to be bundled with the mag if memory serves. At least i think 26 was the number of it). I had been reading them before that as my friend had been getting them for around a year or so before and when i went around to his house i got to read them.
I don't have any of them now, having got rid of them a good few years ago but no games magazine has ever had the impact upon me that Zzap! 64 had.

It was issue 26 all right. I would imagine the circulation of that issue was pretty high, although possibly not too much higher since it was another while before they started having more megatapes on the cover...

Issue 45

I saw it in Bicester Town Centre with a free tape on the cover which was Parallax and a Robocop demo.