A Year In The Life Of Zzap!64.
By No Name
I hate Zzap!64. There. I’ve finally admitted it.
Don’t get me wrong, it was a decent magazine: raw, energetic, enthusiastic, and staffed by people whose opinions you trusted, despite their hair. It had nice covers, if you liked that sort of thing. It was cheap as chips. And when I worked there I experienced a kind of pseudo-homosexual male bonding that’s been missing from my life since.
The Reactolite Rapide-ed author (right) at the Zzap office. Oh, the hair.
But I hate talking about it. Ever since I got my first e-mail address in 1994, the same questions have appeared in my inbox, with frightening regularity, at least once a month. What was it like to work there? What happened to that Katakis tape? Was Julian Rignall really a game god? Were you bribed by Newsfield to give Hawkeye a good mark? Yada yada yada, blah blah blah... I don’t want to sound ungrateful: it’s just I can’t understand the interest. It’s not like I was Chris Anderson, Gary Penn or Roger Kean. I was the fat bloke who did all right for a bit, then screwed things up around issue 46.
Sick!64.
So I’m not going to write another homage to Zzap!. Google wisely, and you’ll find all that crap elsewhere, some of it by me. Instead, I’ll give some background information about my time there — the ambient remix, if you like — along with some handy issue numbers for reference. Beginning with...
Issue 35 (Apollo 18).
My first month at Newsfield. I wrote a few Spectrum reviews for CRASH, Zzap!’s idiot sister. It was like working in a downbeat funeral parlour staffed by morons. I would stare across the divide at the Zzap! lads and wish that I, too, could laugh. On top of all this, CRASH was run by a bully — a guy whose management style incorporated sarcasm, deprecation, contempt, mockery and stupidity. On bad days, he was even worse.
The author at the time, on the brink. The TV in the background
has Bubble Bobble on it, but you can’t see. The snake is real.
Issue 36 (Dan Dare).
I used to drive a white 2CV. It wasn’t my fault, it belonged to my girlfriend. One cold January morning it refused to start until we shoved it downhill in first gear. This was my first week on Zzap!, and I was late, so I sped to work. It was foggy, the road was icy, and I tried to overtake a Ginster’s van on a blind bend. A lorry was coming the other way. I braked, hit the van, spun round and slammed into a wall. Afterward, the 2CV looked like a concertina. I had killed my girlfriend’s car.
It has a removable rear seat, as well!
Issue 39 (Skate Crazy).
Julian Rignall’s last issue in charge. Yes, he was a gaming god. Nice tits, too. We went to Southampton together, not because we were in love, but because we had to interview some arse-heads at Activision about some game or other. On the way back I almost navigated us into the sea. I often wonder how magazines like C&VG might have developed differently had Jaz ended up at the bottom of the Solent that day.
Issue 40 (Barbarian).
More nice tits. To celebrate my appointment as editor, I visited the dentist. In 1988, Ludlow was a town emerging from the 1950s. Ludlow’s dentists, on the other hand, were strictly nineteenth century. Mine had the glasses of Dr Crippen and the hands of a plasterer. He gave me six excruciatingly painful fillings, all of which had to be refilled within two years. If I ever see him again, I’ll kill him.
Issue 42 (Katakis).
After crashing the 2CV, we moved to a guest house in Ludlow. Our room was pleasant enough: its former occupant had just been thrown out for storing bottles of piss in the wardrobe. Later, we annoyed our nearest neighbour by playing the C64 version of Bubble Bobble for five nights in a row. He was the kind of guy the police describe as “a quiet lad, who kept himself to himself”. But, driven crazy by the music, he burst into our room and shouted, “COULD! YOU! TURN! THAT! FUCKING! THING! OFF!” The house mongrel used to lick its own bottom. It had a tongue like wet sandpaper.
Cock horse gets more hits on Google than Cybernoid 2.
Issue 43 (Cybernoid 2).
When we moved in, we told the landlady we’d be staying for “Ooh, two weeks, tops”. Six months later we left. We rented a holiday flat on a farm about ten miles outside Ludlow. The farm looked like something out of Withnail And I. Its good points were that it stank of cow shit and had slugs crawling up the walls. Its bad point was the farmer’s wife. Every morning at six o’clock she stood outside our bedroom window and battered a cow with a stick. Then she would shout “Geeeeddddoooooverun!” at 110 decibels.
Issue 44 (Thunderblade).
Thunderblade was shite. I caught chickenpox in the slack week between issues, which was also shite. I came into the Zzap! offices to show them I had chickenpox, but they chased me out again, so I went home. After a couple of days some scabs fell off, which I was tempted to eat, and then did eat. The texture was Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire Puddings, but the flavour was fat man’s arse.
The author. “I used to love Blackpool, but then I stepped in some shit
when exploring the beach with my brother”.
Issue 46 (Total Eclipse).
There was an off licence directly beneath Zzap!’s offices, which sold crisps, Coke and chocolates. Being editor, I couldn’t use my legs, so I sent the staff writers down three flights of steps to get supplies. Soon, I didn’t fit into my pants. When I walked, my hips clicked. I had flab hanging off my flab. During this issue, I finally achieved something I’d been striving for all my life: the fifteen stone mark.
Chan and Chan: not the PC Engine’s finest hour, but
another nice pair of tits.
Issue 47 (Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders).
Somehow, a PC Engine ended up in our flat, instead of appearing as a competition prize in Zzap! It was the result of a verbal misunderstanding between me and the guy who was offering the prize. I thought he said, “Shh! Just stick it under your desk, don’t tell anyone, take it home, it’s yours”. But he claimed otherwise. In any case, I still have it, and it still works, and Gunhed is a lovely shoot ’em up, though Super Star Soldier, R-Type and Galaga ‘88 run it close.
Issue 49 (Renegade III).
We went for a two-day trip to London. Newsfield paid for it. We didn’t tell them they were paying for it. But that’s irrelevant, because on that trip we discovered three very important things about the capital: it had a large selection of pornography, its hotels had well-stocked mini-bars, and you could combine the two. It was an eye-opener. Ludlow had told me that ladies who wore skirts above the knee deserved to be burned at the stake, and men who wasted their spermatozoa while pleasuring themselves were Satan’s henchmen.
After glimpsing a better, more pornographic world, we couldn’t stay. Also, we were sacked. So we finished issue 50 and buggered off. They changed the locks when we left, so we couldn’t steal anything. We didn’t care. We were happy, and free, and we’d already stolen everything we wanted anyway.
June 2005
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