Boy howdy! Annual must mean these take me all year to read! Really what happens is that I only read them for 15 minutes at a time at work and I had not been working for several months so did not read them. I don’t want to just rust through them every year when I get them as they would be over too soon and I would be sad.

Even though there are other annuals these days and the more regular magazines and other activities such as the ZZAP Live event, you can tell this annual was the first as it seems to have a lot of love an attention given to it and feels a bit different than the others in a way I can’t really explain.

I never actually owned a C64 as a child but was always on other people’s when I was around at their place so I am always looking forward to new news about new games and other developments for the system. This magazine is always very game-heavy being primarily a games publication but they do seem to be having more of the music, art and maker scenes come into it such as the interview with Rocky Bergen who makes cardboard models of retro machines that you can print out and fold yourself.

There does seem to be a lot of variety in the annual with games reviews all mixed in with the other articles and different features so it doesn’t get boring reading through a wall of reviews to get to the good stuff. I could see myself if I sat down properly reading through this in a few hours like with the old UK gaming magazines when I got them in the 1990s.

As with the other annuals I would recommend this one if you are into retro gaming of the era and want to see the games people are still putting out for the systems. They seem to have not sold as many this year in particular and are still trying to get rid of copies that would have already been sold out at the same time in previous years. Who knows how many are going to be actually printed this year or if they are indeed going to do the full set of annuals so get this one now.

Rating: 5/5

Book details:

Editor: Chris Wilkins

Cover Art: Oliver Frey

Layout: Davi Perkins, Ben Honebone

Contributors: Paul Davies, Graeme Mason

Others: Mat Allen (reviewer), Simon Butler (art gallery), Christian Simpson (Prof. Brian Strain), Paul Morrison (reviewer/article), Stefan Vogt (Professor Norman Nutz), Robin Hogg (reviewer), Ian Osbourne

Publisher: Fusion Retro Books

Hard cover, 116 pages, colour

Contents:

Editorial

Soccer the First XI

ZZAP Files: Wizball

ZZAP Live

Parasol Stars Investigation

SIDLY The Best

ZZAP CHATZ: Andrew Braybrook

Technical Bit in the Middle

MEGA 65 Corner

ZZAP MEGA TAPES

CHIP SID Show Interview

INUFUTO Ingenuity

Unveiling the Yuletide Magic

ZZAP Files: International Karate

Game Cover Crackers

Interview: Joining the Fold

Game Reviews:

Lester

Cursed Tomb

PSSST

Balls Like A Frog

Metal Dust

OOZE

Penguin Tower

A Pig Quest

ZETA Wing 2

BOFH – Servers Under Siege

TENEBRA 2

Duck Hunt 2

Grell & Falla

Acipital

Gallery: