Money bags Roger Kean, Franco Frey Slavedriver Chris Anderson Tape collector Bob Wade Joystick junkies Gary Penn, Julian Rignall Typing queen Lucy Anderson White wizard contacter Steve Cooke Art supremo Oliver Frey Layout loonies David Western, Gordon Druce Gentle persuader John Edwards Fe-Mail order Carol Kinsey Subscriber’s friend Denise Roberts Writing palace (reviews, news, comps, etc) Zzap! 64, 1 Church Terrace, Yeovil, Somerset BA20 1HX (Tel 0935-78511) Home base (advertising, subscriptions, mail order, etc) Newsfield Ltd, 1-2 King Street, Ludlow, Shropshire, SY8 1AQ. (Tel 0584-5851) - Colour magic brewed at Scan Studios, Wallace Road, London NI. - Transfer to paper achieved by Redwood Web Offset, Yeoman Way, Trowbridge, Wiltshire BA14 0QL. - Distribution throughout known universe by COMAG, Tavistock Road, West Drayton, Middlesex UB77QE. Circulation Manager Tom Hamilton All circulation enquiries should ring 021-742 5359 Now get this, people. Every word and picture in this mag has been sweated over and is OUR copyright. You can’t go pirating it without our written say so. OK? Also, since we’re pretty busy people, we can’t promise to return things you send to us unless you include a suitable stamped addressed envelope. For the record the company who publish us each month are Newsfield Ltd (see Home base address above). Pretty cool they are, too. © 1985 Newsfield Limited Cover by Oliver Frey

WELCOME to the first issue of Zzap!64, the magazine dedicated to entertainment on the world’s greatest home computer.

Without being too immodest, we happen to think the magazine you are holding is going to cause quite a stir. Until now Commodore 64 fun - lovers in search of a good read have had to choose between the general games magazines (and put up with boring stuff about Spectrums, etc) and the oh-so-serious Commodore magazines (and put up with pages of complex computer jargon written by unintelligible boffins).

Which is strange, because by far and away the most common use of a 64 is running the superb games and entertainment software available for it.

Zzap! 64 is dedicated purely and simply to helping you get the most out of these programs. It should help you decide which of them are worth buying, and it should help you get more pleasure out of those you already own. It’s a mag which we hope every 64 owner can understand, get to know and come to love.

We’ve had an amazing time putting this first issue together. Hope you have an amazing time reading it.

See you next month.
Happy zzapping

What you WILL find in Zzap! * Page after page of ultradetailed up to the minute reviews by our expert game playing team on just about every new 64 game. * A unique ratings and comment system designed to make crystal clear the games’ strong and weak points. * Detailed playing tips maps and cheat methods on dozens of different games to allow you more enjoyment of the titles you already own. * A large section dedicated to 64 adventuring. * The most exhaustive and up to date news and gossip on the game-playing scene. * A comprehensive list of natonal high scores on 64 games plus regular playoffs against the record holders. * Special features on the 64 games-scene’s key people, products and issues. * A regular column by the amazing Jeff Minter. * Stacks of competitions with great prizes.

What you WON’T find in Zzap! * Type-in program listings. (What’s the point of spending hours typing in a crummy program which probably won’t ever run?) * Articles on interrupts, interfaces, operating systems, registers or program stacks. (We don’t really know what they are. We don’t really WANT to know what they are.) * Half-baked reviews by cleverdick journalists who care more about trying to be funny than game-playing. (We’re games fanatics.) * Anything to do with business software. (It’s a HOME computer.)

How Zzap was born Like most living things, Zzap! 64 has parents. Its Ma and Pa are the magazines Crash and Personal Computer Games. Er, respectively. It was Ma who started it off, Crash had had an incredible impact on the Spectrum games industry during 1984 and sold every month like hot cakes, So it was natural that the guys behind it would want to try to do the same for the 64. Late in the year they printed an enticing ad: Editor wanted. It was spotted by PCG’s editor, who adored working on PCG, except it meant commuting to London. From Somerset. The people at Crash were amused to receive his application, since it was he who had started a slanging match with Crash at the start of the year with an unfortunate gossip item in PCG.

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