The Def Guide to Zzap!64

Wasteland was reviewed... it was done by Philippa Irving I believe!

Let's check... issue 41, here we go...

http://www.zzap64.co.uk/cgi-bin/display ... azine=zzap

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Another visitor... stay awhile... stay forever!

Firstly, I understand about leeching, but cannot see the scanned page you had a link to as it said cookies were not enabled. Well, they are, in both Firefox and IE, but couldn't see the page.

Luckily, I splurged on your wonderful DVD of ZZAP goodness and checked out issue 41 - and there it was on page 56!

So I have to say sorry; you can have the other 17 pints now; but why do you keep this classic under a bushel? It's about the only game I haven't found when I do a search for "ZZAP64 xxx review" in a search engine. It's usually found on your site or gamebox or GB64.com; but nothing on Wasteland.

Don't know how easy it is to make new "ZZAP64" Web content, but I don't see why you don't have a subscription service of £6-£12 a year to access the back catalogue pages. Practically everybody has broadband, so downloading them rather than buying the DVD wouldn't be a hardship for most. But then also offer editorial web content on the C64 scene then and now. Do "ZZAP" reviews of those games that weren't reviewed or weren't given the coverage they deserved, etc to give a little added value. Maybe interviews with people of the time, etc. With print magazines on the wane, a "web" magazine that emulates a printed one (rather than a "gaming website", which is different) could work!

Have a thread on one game a month and talk about it (like book of the month on Oprah!) and having subscibers makes it "exclusive"! I can see how between the ZZAP scans and a little more editorial content you could get a reasonable number of subscribers to make it worthwhile. Between the 10 years that the C64 was around and the active retro scene we have now (which is 90% C64) there must be a market!

John

Obviously Iain will answer this at some point, but you have to consider that this site and forum is done as a hobby - Having subscriptions would turn it into a business and people would expect (as you said) more updates etc. I'm pretty sure Iain is still at Uni. Plus I'm not sure exactly who owns the IP for ZZAP! these days, but I can't see them being too happy if the name was exploited in that way.

Have you read the two new ZZAP! issues? They had some cracking reviews and interviews (though I'm biased as I did a few review comments on the latest one).

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Contributor to Def Tribute to ZZAP!
Compilation64 - http://compilation64.zzap64.co.uk/
Crazy about the C64? - www.lemon64.com
Amiga Anguish? - www.lemonamiga.com

I finished the masters a few months ago and have now gotten a job again (first proper one in 4 years!) although it means I have to get up at 7am and don't get home until nearly 7pm so there's not much time for anything, let alone much Zzap stuff

Regarding subs for more content. I don't think that woul be a good idea at all, since:

1. I don't own any of the copyright and directly charging for exclusive access to it would be a bad idea!...

2. I doubt many people would pay money for it anyway, unless there was a hell of a lot of new content and lots of people would have to be paying to make it worth while to write all that content

The italian version of TGM did go online subs only though. Is that still around?

Sometimes it was kind of cool to buy a game that hadnt been reviewed... it was that will it be great/will it be crap... the screen shots look great etc etc feeling... perhaps thats just me... I was around when the early Mastertronic games had artwork on the from cover and a description inside... you never knew what you were going to get... but that was part of the fun!