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first issue

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 5:59 pm
by farhan
My first issue was #37, May 1988, the one with the Pac-land review and a big Mr. Pac on the cover. The oldest Zzap issue I ever laid my hands on was issue 11, the one with the Mercenary review.

Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2005 6:04 pm
by dust
ah, Mercenary.. the other wire-3d game that I literally had to wait MONTHS to play after reading its Gold Medal review. Another wait that nearly killed me! ;)

Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2005 6:55 am
by Fizza
I started reading Zzap! since Issue 1 and stopped around issue 36 or so, when I got an Amiga. My small, but probably oft mentioned claim to fame is that I won a compo in Issue 1 and had my name printed in Issue 3. Shame it wasn't one of the good prizes though :( I entered about four of them and came out with Penetrator & Dark Castle.. better than nothing though, and I thought Penetrator was rather good.. Dark Castle was average at the most...

Posted: Wed Aug 03, 2005 8:40 am
by BryHam
To my utter shame I had every single Zzap! 64 from issue 1 until about four years ago I binned them all as I didn't have room for them anymore.
It remains the only computer magazine of any sort that I always read cover-to-cover, and went back to again and again.

Posted: Tue Aug 09, 2005 3:24 pm
by darren
My first ever issue of Zzap was issue 34. I had owned a commodore 64 since 1983 and was just getting into it again after not using it for many years.

I Read those early issues constantly and always bought them on the day they came out on my walk home from School. Issue 41 is one I remember well as I wanted Last Ninja 2 SO badly (must have read that review every day). I ordered it via mail order and had an agonising wait (seem to remember it was months) before it finally arrived complete with plastic throwing star and ninja mask.

I think the last issue I ever bought was issue 71 although I don't really remember any of them that well after issue 56. The magazine was never the same after the Gordo years.

They were all in my parents loft until about 5 years ago when they moved house. I couldn't be bothered to go and collect them so they took them to the tip. :roll:

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 12:57 pm
by Lloyd Mangram
BryHam wrote:...years ago I binned them all as I didn't have room for them anymore...
Welcome to the club! :)
And then there was eBay, and this board! Hurrah!

Re: first issue

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 1:56 pm
by Sixteen Plus
mine was #36, well that was the issue when i started to buy Zzap on a regular basis, but my first ever issue was #31 (the 3D issue)...and i think that was shortly before i owned a C64...if it was as i can't quite remember, it must've swayed my decision to upgrade from my humble C16 which was in it's death throes anyway.

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2005 9:23 pm
by richard
I remember a lovely sunny day wandering about Dublin, checking out all the computer shops, and there it was zzap64 issue 48 - the one with blasteroids on the cover. Read it till the covers fell off :lol: That dungeon master review just made me want to cry..it looked amazing. I wanted an amiga so badly, never did get one though.

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2005 7:50 pm
by Iain
richard wrote:I remember a lovely sunny day wandering about Dublin, checking out all the computer shops,
What were your ccomputer shop haunts back then?

I had a almost set pattern I'd folow x-) Clery's -> Eason's -> Peat's -> Virgin, none of this "Game" and "Electronic Bouque" (??!) back then!

Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2005 4:40 pm
by richard
There was loads of them back in the 80's mate :D Pretty much followed the same route you did. Tomorrows world in the ilac centre was good, a couple of small shops on parnell street for really obscure games you wouldn't get anywhere else. A fairly good shop selling nothing but c64 stuff on kildare street.

And surely the crappest electronics shop in Ireland....Peats! I think every game I bought there had to be returned. Of course everything I returned would work on their test computers :? They were, and still are a bunch of tossers. I can still remember the disapointment of rushing home with a freshly purchased copy of knightmare, only for the sodding thing not to work!

Iain, do you remember that "computer club" that used to meet in the Ormond hotel?(think it was the ormond hotel!) Turned out to be a fairly big games copying club from what i remember!

Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2005 6:44 pm
by Iain
Ah Peat's. Indeed I always thought the sales people in there were arrogent tossers! Games were expensive as well, although I do remember buying some 15 game compilation in there. It was crap!

Tomorrow's World in the Ilac, how could I forget that! I brought my C128 in there, and then had to bring back the cassette deck about 10 times!! The games were very expensive in there as well :(

A complete C64 shop on Kildare street? :-o Why was I never told of this!! It wasn't on the corner where Compustore was?

Posted: Mon Aug 22, 2005 9:30 pm
by richard
Nice trip down memory lane :D .The shop on kildare street, now has an estate agents office in it. Quite close to cafe en seine. My memory is a bit hazy, it was back in 1988!

Posted: Fri Sep 23, 2005 6:28 pm
by andy vaisey
Issue 5 from a local, grotty little newsagent in Pontnewydd, Cwmbran, South Wales, where I lived as a kid. 8)

Posted: Fri Feb 10, 2006 5:00 pm
by Subculture
Issue 3 was my first from a little newsagents called "leemings" in duke street in hartlepool (it's now a londis or something like that).

They used to reserve it for me every month after that, I think I stopped reading it at about issue 51 when they suddenly got rid of all the staff in one go, plus I had an amiga by that point and had also just discovered alcohol :).

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2006 11:22 am
by blim2
Issue 4 from Wm. Low, Crieff Road, Perth. I got it monthly from our local newsagents after that. Zzap! was the centre around which my childhood from age 11-14 revolved, influenced my turns of phrase and inevitably influenced me and a mate to create our own fanzine of Fighting Fantasy gamebooks, using little thumbnail sketches of ourselves. Last issue was 35 - less than 3 years but somehow it seems to occupy a much longer space when i think back.