Retro Gaming Culture

Video gaming magazines may have become a thing of the past, but in the 80s and 90s there were thriving publications, full of information for gamers hungry for news, interviews, reviews & previews. The words contained within these magazines were the lifeblood for readers wanting to be connected and up to date on the goings on in the industry and their particular system(s) of choice.

The magazines were household titles and the British seemed to have had a monopoly on churning out quality publications – from their mesmerising covers to their ribald humour, there were many ingredients that endeared us to their magazines. I vividly recall rushing to the newsagent every month to grab the latest Zzap!64 (or simply just, Zzap!), Your Commodore, Your 64, Commodore Format and C&VG (Computer and Video Games). The cover price wasn’t cheap and they were three months old by the time they reached our shores, but goddamn they were worth every cent (and the wait)! Who could forget Yob ripping into the punters that dared to send in mail – absolutely priceless! I tried reading a few US based magazines, with the exception of RUN, I found the rest to be too serious, too dry and devoid of humour and fun, so the British magazines reigned supreme in this part of the world in the 80s and early 90s.

I knew it was going to be interesting when I posed the question of “what was your favourite Commodore 64 related magazine” to the Reset team. Once the dust settled and the passionate discussions quietened down, this is what each of them had to say about their favourite old school magazines:

Rob Caporetto: As a kid, I missed out on the golden age of C64 magazines (considering, I’m only a few years older than Zzap!, that shouldn’t be a surprise), so coming into things later on did make for a unique perspective on things.

I started out by borrowing a fair few issues of RUN from my local library. With its angle being less games, and more general Commodore usage, it was great to see a wider angle of the landscape (including more exotic peripherals), as well as learn some programming bits and pieces.

Games-wise, the first mag I really got into was Zzap! – even though it was way after its heyday (and in fact, probably at its lowest point, though it recovered a bit before changing into Commodore Force). It was solid enough, and whilst there were features I liked more than others (mainly the roundups covering genres or highlights in the C64’s history), it was solid enough reading each month.

I got into Commodore Format a bit later (mainly as it was trickier to find for a while) and overall, I think it was the better read at that point. Having regular columns devoted to programming tricks was great when starting to try and get a grip on C64 programming, along with Gamebusters (hey, I appreciated having cheat listings for the cover tape games for a change). Though, I do remember seeing the start of its descent as the C64 market died off – and of course was shocked to see how long it eventually survived for!

Kevin Tilley: I was a bit late to the party for the UK gaming magazines. By the time I discovered Zzap! and Commodore Format, they were already in decline and their best years were well behind them.  But before that, my father used to religiously buy Compute’s Gazette! – which is the magazine I remember most fondly. Originating from the US, I grew up with this magazine, its type-ins and cover disks (which I could also use with my VIC20!). I spent countless hours typing in many programs in BASIC and machine code via Automatic Proofreader and MLX respectively, with my father. Not just games, but other programs such as Speedscript, which I went on to use for many years to publish school projects. The articles were informative and challenging.

Compute’s Gazette was a wealth of useful information, not just a collection of cheap gags, innuendo and mediocre game reviews which plagued the later era of UK gaming magazines. It had depth and substance, and will always be my favourite of the many different C64 publications I purchased over the years.

Merman: The first C64 magazine I saw was Zzap! issue 18, with the gory Beyond The Forbidden Forest cover. 25 years later I got to interview the artist Oli Frey and publisher Roger Kean at the Replay retro event, talking about the history of their magazines.

After buying a few issues of Your Commodore (which swallowed up Your 64), we subscribed to Zzap! from issue 31, getting a free Quickshot Joyball with the subscription. Zzap! became our guide to buying good games and it rarely steered us wrong. What made it special was the way there was more than one opinion on a game.

My first brush with publications came through Commodore Disk User. Starting out bi-monthly, this publication came with a disk full of programs (to save you typing them in) then became monthly and asked for reader submissions. I sent several programs, got signed contracts for publication – and then suffered the heartache of seeing the company fail.

Then in 1993, after a brief gap when Newsfield became Europress Impact, two things happened – I wrote to Zzap! suggesting a technical column, after their reader survey had asked if people would be interested. My letter went to Phil King, but it was Steve Shields who wrote back telling me about the other big news – Zzap! was rebranding itself as Commodore Force, and my technical column would feature from the first issue.

I wrote for all 16 issues of Commodore Force incorporating Zzap! as Professor Brian Strain (the Mighty Brian, so-called because of Commodore Format’s Mighty Brain). In fact, I wrote an extra 3 pages for issue 17 at 48 hours notice – but with deadlines close, that text became part of issue 16. I was a freelancer, writing my text using a C64 word processor (Word Writer v5) and printing it out to send in. The magazine closed, I wrote for several issues of Commodore Format before it closed and years later I became a regular on Retro Gamer. It was Retro Gamer that gave me the chance to be a Zzap! reviewer, appearing in the incredible DEF Tribute to Zzap! supplement.

I will always remember Zzap! for giving me the chance to be a professional writer, even if it can be a precarious profession at times.

Frank Gasking: In a typical UK answer, my favourite two magazines were both Commodore Format and Zzap! (later Commodore Force).  I had previously read Lets Compute! and Your Commodore, which were shockingly bad at the time, but the main pull for Your Commodore was the free tape on the front.

Commodore Format caught my eye due to its brightly coloured red and white banner head. I spotted it in my local newsagent when I had popped down to get some sweets. I ended up buying issue 11 (with the Terminator 2 cover) due to it not only having a fantastic tape with two full games and two demos, but also a map of Fantasy World Dizzy, which was one of my favourite games at the time.  It was aimed at a sort of teenage market, so the magazine was up my street.  I loved it due to the regular excellent tapes, which were great for someone with not a huge amount of money to even get budget games.  The tips section was fantastic, and reading about new games was a great thing.  It sadly declined in my opinion after the redesign (and certainly when it shrank down in page size), but I have many fond memories of getting up at 7am to get it at the paper shop and dreaming what was on the tape!

Then comes Zzap!/Commodore Force – ironically, I first got the magazine with its Terminator 2 issue (78) – which was almost its last when Newsfield went under.  The tape pulled me in, but it wasn’t as great as the Commodore Format tape.  At the time, I didn’t feel the magazine was as good as Commodore Format, but it was different enough to be enjoyable.  Once Mrs. Whiplash was rid of, the magazine actually got better and more so when they put two tapes on the cover each month, which was just amazing.  I actually liked the transition to Commodore Force at the time (the quality of games were unbelievable as the market died – like Blues Brothers on one issue only a year after it first came out). Looking back, I would have preferred to have started with Zzap! in its heyday – but I was far too young!

Cameron Davis (Gazunta): Now I know it sounds a bit hyperbolic to say that my life would be not the same without Zzap! – it’s the magazine that inspired me to get into the games industry, and through it I made lifelong friends and a great career – but today i want to shine the spotlight on a truly under-appreciated Commodore mag: the one and only Commodore Computing International (CCI).

CCI looked different from the likes of Zzap!, Commodore User or C&VG. It was hard bound, for one thing, and considerably more drab looking than its competition. If there were any artistically-inclined people on the magazine layout team, I would be surprised. Every cover looked like it was laid out by a high school art student with scissors and glue, made from whatever promotional pamphlets were laying about the office at the time.

Inside, full colour screenshots were rare, and in fact the majority of each issue was spent on full-page text pieces sometimes paired with blurry, monochrome images taking up minuscule space in the corner. It wasn’t uncommon to see 10 pages of BASIC listings just…sitting there, waiting to be laboriously typed in. The news section had page after page of stories about new printers, mice, modems and dodgy light pens that cost a fortune but never worked right. It was not a visually enticing publication by any stretch of the imagination.

But there was…something that lured you in. Scribbles of the magazine’s mascot, Felix, adorned the pages with little sarcastic quips about the editors. He was not as funny as Rockford and Thingy, but he had more character, helped by the fact he had his own column in the magazine where he talked about the latest happenings in the software industry. All the writers were largely anonymous, and they were clearly just writing about what interested them, rather than what was considered ‘hot’ at the time. This ended up making the magazine feel really enthusiastic even if a lot of it went over my head.

One of the things that appealed to me about it is that it was obvious the magazine was aimed for (and made by) people much older than the Zzap! / CU crowd, who were not really the typical gaming demographic. I’d hazard a guess that many of them were just interested in the serious side of computers and just put games stuff in there as an afterthought, but their heart wasn’t really into such frivolous activities. With the exception of their keen interest in the latest role playing games (their monthly column devoted to exploring every inch of The Bard’s Tale was a must-read), even the best action or arcade games were afforded passing reviews, in a “I guess this is OK if you’re into this sort of thing, have fun with it” kind of way. You know, the way you might talk to your kids after they pressure you into playing the latest Pokémon game with them or whatever.

But that was kind of the appeal, at least for me: If Zzap! was the cool older brother who you idolised, then CCI was the slightly weird uncle who never moved out of his parent’s place and everything he said was a bit out of your comprehension but he was awesome anyway.

And speaking of weird but cool uncles, the jewel in CCI’s crown for me was the monthly column by Jeff Minter. While Zzap! pioneered the ‘diary of a game’ feature with his, CCI just gave Jeff a page (often more) to just let loose on any subject that took his fancy. His development antics (by this point he had well and truly moved on to the Amiga and Atari ST, and was heavily into the evolution of Colourspace) were often mentioned briefly if at all, and columns would instead be focused on the latest Pink Floyd gig, or the hot new exotic imports like Super Mario Brothers or the fabled PC Engine. Reading these really opened my eyes to a world beyond my own. There was one article in particular where he wrote about the future of computers, and predicted Google Earth and monitors with retina displays – it was pretty mind blowing stuff!

While CCI never got the fan following that the usual suspects enjoyed, I urge you to seek out a couple of issues and see a different side of the world from that era. You might just get a taste for it.

Roberto Dillon: In Italy we actually had a rather lively scene regarding C64 magazines back in the day. Needless to say, the Italian edition of Zzap!64, simply named “Zzap!“, was the favourite of many. Published from May 1986, it was a high quality localisation that left all the great content of the original British magazine intact and also added a few original articles, making the likes of JR (Jaz Rignall) and GP (Gary Penn) well known to a new crowd of fans.

But Zzap! wasn’t the first, and those like me who were also keen to tinker and mess around with their C64, had other resources as well: Commodore Computer Club for example, was a very good magazine, officially endorsed by the Italian branch of Commodore, that started publication as early as 1982. Besides game reviews, it featured technical articles including a few type-in listings. The latter also had magazines entirely dedicated to them, like the “Paper Soft” weekly series started in June 1984. Only listings there, nothing more, nothing less, for those who really wanted to spend the whole weekend at home by typing new games and programs that never worked at first but could provide a true cathartic experience when the last bug and typo were finally fixed!

It is saddening to see magazines going out of print or confining themselves to an online presence. Going to the newsagent isn’t what it used to be – nothing can replace flicking through magazines and having dog-ears on pages for future reference. For those that had foresight and kept their old magazines, I commend you – please ensure they never end up in landfill! For those of us that threw them out and are now wanting to rebuild their magazine library, I salute you! Nostalgia is a powerful force – it is great to see that our loyalty for certain publications was, and still is, as fierce as our loyalty for our chosen system(s). Let the schoolyard argument of which magazine is best, begin!

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Images source: various – supplied on request