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diving intoanarticle,it’s an entertaining and
healthy waytorelax awayfrom ascreen.
Fanzines provide atangible,focused
experience: gentle,pleasing, even uplifting.It
makes us misty-eyed just thinking about it.”
ALLABOUTTHE HYPE
HyperPlayRPGisn’t rushed. The writers will
work their waythrough games taking more
than 100 hours and take them apart. Their
classic reviews will spread over at least eight
pages, and they’ll delve deep intothe
gameplaymechanics of each RPG, drawing
parallels with contemporary games while
sourcing the best information and titbits
about the games’ development, right down to
the personality of the staff involved.
It’s unique content that’s not foundonline.
“Welook closely at afeatured game’s context
both in the genre and its place in wider
culture,” Kincl says.
“For the seminal PSOne JRPG Xenogears’
we seriously researched religion (Gnosticism,
Jewish mysticism) and philosophy (Jung,
Freud, Nietzsche,Schopenhauer).
“Welearned about the ins and outs of
the human psyche (identity,ego,super-ego),
along with demiurge,nihilism and aesthetic
again, and what better waytodothat than to
writeabout it? More to the point, what better
format to do it in than afanzine?”
Colour Personal Computingdoesn’t sell
many copies. The first issue was backed by
just 55 people and the circulation of the third
doesn’t top90. Ford writes the entire fanzine
himself,however, andhebelieves that we
should always look forward, even though he’s
inspired by days gone by.
“The thing that got me back intousing the
Amstrad was not the opportunity to play
through all of the same old games again. I’d
done that to death with emulators in the late
1990s/early 2000s,”heexplains.
“Rather,when Istarted reading about the
new developments in terms of hardware and
software forthe CPC, it was clear that the
machine was having abit of asecond coming.
“This was what Iwanted to writeabout –
the CPC todayand what it means to be using
the computer in the current times, because
it’s clear that machines like the CPC do have
aplace in the modern world.
“More and more people are becoming
interested, or re-interested, in old computers
and consoles. Printed fanzines are ideally
placed to serve them.”⬆The editor ofHyperPlayRPGsays fanzines are abetter read than websites: “Human eyyes scan screens, hands swipe at speed – heck,
even emails don’t get read properly”.KilobyteMagazineis afree PDF,with 12 issues under its belt in the past four years
contemplation –wetry todoitproperly.
Turning all that learning intosomething
entertaining takes time,and some serious
editing.”Certainly,gettingthat in your mitts
with great artwork and design is more
pleasurable than reading on ascreen.
It’s oftenthe case that patience is
rewarded.Computer Shopperwas mightily
impressed bythe third issue ofColour Personal
Computing(www.cpcstore.co.uk), edited by
James Ford, which rolled off the presses two
years after the second. James had wanted to
createafanzine since reading about them in
Amstrad Actionmagazine in June 1992.
“Printed magazines seem to be rapidly
becoming athing of the past –where
newsagents would once have whole rows of
computing titles, there’s now acouple of
magazines tucked awaybehindAngler’s
Monthly,” he says. Noticing acurrent lack of
fanzines dedicated to the Amstrad CPC, he
took the plunge.
“I’d seen there were these fantastic-looking
new games and an annual game development
competition called #CPCRetroDev, which
seemed to have given the platform anew lease
of life,”hetells us. “I wanted away to express
my joyand experiences of using this machine