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Author Topic:   Questions to ask old staff

iain posted 04-05-2000 04:47 PM GMT
I've gotten a few more emails of old staff members so I think it's about time I did a few more interviews with them. I have my own standard questions that I can ask them.
But do any of you have questions you'd like asked or information about their Zzap days you want to know? Post them here or email them to me at [email protected]

CapTVK posted 04-05-2000 08:32 PM GMT
I would like to now what happened to Philippa Irving, odds of finding a female gamer AND a strategy fan are one a in a billion.
My other question would be...Whatever happened to the unfinished story of "the terminal man"? It ended sort of abruptly because the artist (Oli Frey) was sick or something. But they never continued after that, just a polite excuse that we had to wait till next month. Why did they scrap it?
For all I know he's been standing on that barge filled with drugged teenagers waiting for that spaceship to land.;)
iain posted 05-05-2000 09:59 AM GMT
Was Terminal Man not canned because it wasn't very popular?, the same seemed to go for most of Mel Crouchers stuff! :(
iain posted 18-05-2000 10:34 AM GMT
Come on, surely you have more questions to ask?
I've got Robin Hogg's and Gary Penn's email, ready to get some Q's together and mail them off, could probably come up with another couple of staff members emails as well.
Mayhem posted 18-05-2000 02:47 PM GMT
Well I'm looking to put together some sort of Zzap!64 article for the "Retrogamer" fanzine sometime in the future. The old interviews with Glancey, Houghton (yes he was big in real life!) and Hamza are a start at least. Rignall, Penn, Hogg (whom I have met, nice bloke!) and Jarrett interviews would be a next step at least. I know most of the old editorial crew (such as Franco Frey and Roger Kean) were at Prima, but is that still the case (anyone out there care to confirm or deny)? Rignall is at IGN I think, and Penn contributes occasionally to Future magazines. I wouldn't mind knowing where Sean Masterson and Paul Sumner ended up as they were both prominent reviewers in the early days.
As for questions, well some easy ones are:
1) How precisely they came to be recruited into the Zzap! fold and what they were doing before that job.
2) The reasons for them leaving and what they are doing now.
3) What Lloyd was really like.
4) Life in the Towers, anecdotes, staying up until 2am to write reviews etc.
5) Favourite and loathed games.
6) Hairstyling tips (this goes out to Jaz and Gaz of course)
iain posted 18-05-2000 05:56 PM GMT
Great! One of my questions is what you were doing before and after Zzap, but how they actually got the job is an interesting side to that as well. Ta for them!
According to what I've read on Crash sites, Paul Sumner wasn't actually a real person! They used a photo of some Crash reviewer and got different people to write under his name and also used him to make the editorial staff look "fuller" when it wasn't!
Mayhem posted 19-05-2000 10:20 AM GMT
Interesting theory that.... he did disappear sometime in the mid #30s... though I heard it was that he went off to finish his studies or something.
However... who is the guy playing the Zzap! Challenge against Rignall in issue #4? Certainly looks like the man called Paul. So it could be an anonymous Crash reviewer challenging (then) the hardest gamesplayer in the country? Truly suicidal...
Mort posted 28-05-2000 11:13 PM GMT
My questions are as follows:
1.Did Lloyd Mangram actually exist or which staff writers actually wrote the column over the 90 odd issues?
2.Why did the Mama Llama review cause such a controversy,It was a shame because Jeff Minter was one of the best contributers to the early issues of the magazazine,I liked the game but I admit it was bloody hard,It should have had two scores depending on the players preference in difficulty/wierdness!
3.Once again why was Terminal Man 2 canned?
Mayhem posted 30-05-2000 11:39 AM GMT
1) I'm sure pretty sure he was a writing alias but you never know... no one has coughed up and admitted he never existed as of yet.
2) Games generally will always have two camps: those who like it and those who hate it. Zzap! reviewers in general were Minter fans, and the fact that ML got a bad review in the first issue was a surprise to many. Minter countered with adverts in issue #4 of Zzap! with all the positive reviews (press and fans) that ML had gotten. Personally, yes the game is bloody hard though perhaps Zzap! were too harsh on it. 70% would be more my mark for it.
3) From what I've read and heard, Oli came down with a serious bout of flu and got behind working on it. With all his other commitments art-wise plus an increased workload in general, he never got round to actually drawing any more of it. That and the fact it was never a popular part of the magazine to begin with meant it never came back when he recovered.
BazzaBaby posted 31-05-2000 11:26 PM GMT
I've seen an interview with Maff Evans (Might even be on this site), where he openly admitted that Paul Sumner was an alias and everyone had a go at writing his reviews. The face drawings were of an student who worked at CRASH mag at some point.
I'd like to see a where are they now for some of the old programmer legends. eg
1) Andrew Braybrook
2) Stavros ????? (of Sanxion fame)
3) Tony Crowther
4) Jeff Minter
and others
Bazza
Mayhem posted 01-06-2000 10:20 AM GMT
So my question still stands then... who played Rignall in the Challenge in issue #4? This self same student from Crash? Looks much like the drawings used in the mag. Seems a strange way to do a cover-up to me...
As for the people you ask about...
Braybrook is working on computers somewhere so I hear, but what and where I don't know. Stavros Fasoulas is still in Finland, he ended up writing books after his compulsary stint in the army. No idea on Crowther. Minter, after a time over in California, is back in this country. He was working on stuff for the (now seemingly) vanished Nuon or Project X chip thingy.
Mort posted 01-06-2000 10:14 PM GMT
I have no idea what`s happened to Tony Crowther since he helped code Legends of Valour for the Amiga back in 93 and Liberation Captive 2 for the Cd32(good game) .
Jeff Minter is very much alive and busy finishing Tempest 3k for the Nuon I have included the web site address so you can all read about his antics and start saving up for a new DVD player.VLM look cool read the page!http://www.magicnet.net/~yak
Alex Ward posted 02-06-2000 02:32 PM GMT
Crowther is still working in the games industry, up at Sheffield House (formerly Gremlin) His latest coding is Wacky Racers for Dreamcast.
Andrew Braybrook is reputed to be out of the industry working on business software. His last game was a tank combat game for Perfect Entertainment. The game was canned.
Stavros was last doing some stuff with Finnish coders Housemarque in Helsinki, but as far as I know he did not contribute to their latest, Supreme Snowboarding for Infogrames.
BazzaBaby posted 05-06-2000 01:16 AM GMT
Well Iain, how about adding these guys to your email list with a few questions about how they got started, most enjoyable game, memories of Zzap64 etc etc
BazzaBaby posted 05-06-2000 01:36 AM GMT
Actually Saun Southern "Trailblazer" is working at Magnetic Fields (Rally Championship 2000). He'd be another good one to add to the list as well as John Ritman (head over heels< Match Day). I guess the list could go on.
Ahhh, I love nostalgic moments.
iain posted 08-06-2000 05:24 PM GMT
Well I'll start with the Zzap guys before even trying to contact regular C64 programmers!
BazzaBaby posted 12-06-2000 12:46 AM GMT
How about
1) what was the last c64 game you remember playing
2) what was the last c64 game you remember enjoying and why
3) did you ever get into the Amiga scene
4) first encounter with the c64
Maz posted 23-06-2000 02:46 AM GMT
Excellent site Iain! I hope there will be more info on the early days. It sounded idyllic to be playing games in sunny Somerset for a living. I once went on a Zzap!64 pilgrimage to Ludlow. What a lovely little town to work in. So it would be great to find out about life in those times. Was it really a time of games, tea and beer in the pubs? I remember that Rignall used to recieve fan mail from admiring girls. Did he used to reply to them? He was a good gamesplayer. I had an old C&VG in which Jaz (with flat hair) won an arcade games competition and I think he was photographed with DLT (Dave Lee Travis - a hairy old Radio One DJ). Yep, more stuff about the early days please Iain.
Mayhem posted 23-06-2000 01:21 PM GMT
Jaz was C&VG's arcade champion of 1983, something which helped to get him the job on Zzap!64. Gary Penn apparently was a finalist too so I hear...
Alex Ward posted 28-06-2000 06:20 PM GMT
That's right. He was a finalist in the Personal Computer Games Player of the Year competition. The prize was the pseudo model of Vvyan from The Young Ones that they once ran on the cover.

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Author	Topic: Questions to ask old staff
iain	posted 04-05-2000 04:47 PM GMT I've gotten a few more emails of old staff members so I think it's about time I did a few more interviews with them. I have my own standard questions that I can ask them. But do any of you have questions you'd like asked or information about their Zzap days you want to know? Post them here or email them to me at [email protected]
CapTVK	posted 04-05-2000 08:32 PM GMT I would like to now what happened to Philippa Irving, odds of finding a female gamer AND a strategy fan are one a in a billion. My other question would be...Whatever happened to the unfinished story of "the terminal man"? It ended sort of abruptly because the artist (Oli Frey) was sick or something. But they never continued after that, just a polite excuse that we had to wait till next month. Why did they scrap it? For all I know he's been standing on that barge filled with drugged teenagers waiting for that spaceship to land.;)
iain	posted 05-05-2000 09:59 AM GMT Was Terminal Man not canned because it wasn't very popular?, the same seemed to go for most of Mel Crouchers stuff! :(
iain	posted 18-05-2000 10:34 AM GMT Come on, surely you have more questions to ask? I've got Robin Hogg's and Gary Penn's email, ready to get some Q's together and mail them off, could probably come up with another couple of staff members emails as well.
Mayhem	posted 18-05-2000 02:47 PM GMT Well I'm looking to put together some sort of Zzap!64 article for the "Retrogamer" fanzine sometime in the future. The old interviews with Glancey, Houghton (yes he was big in real life!) and Hamza are a start at least. Rignall, Penn, Hogg (whom I have met, nice bloke!) and Jarrett interviews would be a next step at least. I know most of the old editorial crew (such as Franco Frey and Roger Kean) were at Prima, but is that still the case (anyone out there care to confirm or deny)? Rignall is at IGN I think, and Penn contributes occasionally to Future magazines. I wouldn't mind knowing where Sean Masterson and Paul Sumner ended up as they were both prominent reviewers in the early days. As for questions, well some easy ones are: 1) How precisely they came to be recruited into the Zzap! fold and what they were doing before that job. 2) The reasons for them leaving and what they are doing now. 3) What Lloyd was really like. 4) Life in the Towers, anecdotes, staying up until 2am to write reviews etc. 5) Favourite and loathed games. 6) Hairstyling tips (this goes out to Jaz and Gaz of course)
iain	posted 18-05-2000 05:56 PM GMT Great! One of my questions is what you were doing before and after Zzap, but how they actually got the job is an interesting side to that as well. Ta for them! According to what I've read on Crash sites, Paul Sumner wasn't actually a real person! They used a photo of some Crash reviewer and got different people to write under his name and also used him to make the editorial staff look "fuller" when it wasn't!
Mayhem	posted 19-05-2000 10:20 AM GMT Interesting theory that.... he did disappear sometime in the mid #30s... though I heard it was that he went off to finish his studies or something. However... who is the guy playing the Zzap! Challenge against Rignall in issue #4? Certainly looks like the man called Paul. So it could be an anonymous Crash reviewer challenging (then) the hardest gamesplayer in the country? Truly suicidal...
Mort	posted 28-05-2000 11:13 PM GMT My questions are as follows: 1.Did Lloyd Mangram actually exist or which staff writers actually wrote the column over the 90 odd issues? 2.Why did the Mama Llama review cause such a controversy,It was a shame because Jeff Minter was one of the best contributers to the early issues of the magazazine,I liked the game but I admit it was bloody hard,It should have had two scores depending on the players preference in difficulty/wierdness! 3.Once again why was Terminal Man 2 canned?
Mayhem	posted 30-05-2000 11:39 AM GMT 1) I'm sure pretty sure he was a writing alias but you never know... no one has coughed up and admitted he never existed as of yet. 2) Games generally will always have two camps: those who like it and those who hate it. Zzap! reviewers in general were Minter fans, and the fact that ML got a bad review in the first issue was a surprise to many. Minter countered with adverts in issue #4 of Zzap! with all the positive reviews (press and fans) that ML had gotten. Personally, yes the game is bloody hard though perhaps Zzap! were too harsh on it. 70% would be more my mark for it. 3) From what I've read and heard, Oli came down with a serious bout of flu and got behind working on it. With all his other commitments art-wise plus an increased workload in general, he never got round to actually drawing any more of it. That and the fact it was never a popular part of the magazine to begin with meant it never came back when he recovered.
BazzaBaby	posted 31-05-2000 11:26 PM GMT I've seen an interview with Maff Evans (Might even be on this site), where he openly admitted that Paul Sumner was an alias and everyone had a go at writing his reviews. The face drawings were of an student who worked at CRASH mag at some point. I'd like to see a where are they now for some of the old programmer legends. eg 1) Andrew Braybrook 2) Stavros ????? (of Sanxion fame) 3) Tony Crowther 4) Jeff Minter and others Bazza
Mayhem	posted 01-06-2000 10:20 AM GMT So my question still stands then... who played Rignall in the Challenge in issue #4? This self same student from Crash? Looks much like the drawings used in the mag. Seems a strange way to do a cover-up to me... As for the people you ask about... Braybrook is working on computers somewhere so I hear, but what and where I don't know. Stavros Fasoulas is still in Finland, he ended up writing books after his compulsary stint in the army. No idea on Crowther. Minter, after a time over in California, is back in this country. He was working on stuff for the (now seemingly) vanished Nuon or Project X chip thingy.
Mort	posted 01-06-2000 10:14 PM GMT I have no idea what`s happened to Tony Crowther since he helped code Legends of Valour for the Amiga back in 93 and Liberation Captive 2 for the Cd32(good game) . Jeff Minter is very much alive and busy finishing Tempest 3k for the Nuon I have included the web site address so you can all read about his antics and start saving up for a new DVD player.VLM look cool read the page!http://www.magicnet.net/~yak
Alex Ward	posted 02-06-2000 02:32 PM GMT Crowther is still working in the games industry, up at Sheffield House (formerly Gremlin) His latest coding is Wacky Racers for Dreamcast. Andrew Braybrook is reputed to be out of the industry working on business software. His last game was a tank combat game for Perfect Entertainment. The game was canned. Stavros was last doing some stuff with Finnish coders Housemarque in Helsinki, but as far as I know he did not contribute to their latest, Supreme Snowboarding for Infogrames.
BazzaBaby	posted 05-06-2000 01:16 AM GMT Well Iain, how about adding these guys to your email list with a few questions about how they got started, most enjoyable game, memories of Zzap64 etc etc
BazzaBaby	posted 05-06-2000 01:36 AM GMT Actually Saun Southern "Trailblazer" is working at Magnetic Fields (Rally Championship 2000). He'd be another good one to add to the list as well as John Ritman (head over heels< Match Day). I guess the list could go on. Ahhh, I love nostalgic moments.
iain	posted 08-06-2000 05:24 PM GMT Well I'll start with the Zzap guys before even trying to contact regular C64 programmers!
BazzaBaby	posted 12-06-2000 12:46 AM GMT How about 1) what was the last c64 game you remember playing 2) what was the last c64 game you remember enjoying and why 3) did you ever get into the Amiga scene 4) first encounter with the c64
Maz	posted 23-06-2000 02:46 AM GMT Excellent site Iain! I hope there will be more info on the early days. It sounded idyllic to be playing games in sunny Somerset for a living. I once went on a Zzap!64 pilgrimage to Ludlow. What a lovely little town to work in. So it would be great to find out about life in those times. Was it really a time of games, tea and beer in the pubs? I remember that Rignall used to recieve fan mail from admiring girls. Did he used to reply to them? He was a good gamesplayer. I had an old C&VG in which Jaz (with flat hair) won an arcade games competition and I think he was photographed with DLT (Dave Lee Travis - a hairy old Radio One DJ). Yep, more stuff about the early days please Iain.
Mayhem	posted 23-06-2000 01:21 PM GMT Jaz was C&VG's arcade champion of 1983, something which helped to get him the job on Zzap!64. Gary Penn apparently was a finalist too so I hear...
Alex Ward	posted 28-06-2000 06:20 PM GMT That's right. He was a finalist in the Personal Computer Games Player of the Year competition. The prize was the pseudo model of Vvyan from The Young Ones that they once ran on the cover.