Hello, dear friend! This page is here to inform you about the history and significance of our beloved magazine.
In the early 1980s, long before the Internet reached our homes, information sources about video games in Italy were scarce. We could only find a few publications, including a monthly magazine called Video Giochi, published by Gruppo Editoriale Jackson, and a few smaller magazines. However, when the Video Giochi team (Studio Vit) left Jackson to work on the Italian edition of Zzap!64, a new and exciting era began. In Italy, Zzap!64 became a multiformat magazine, dropping the “64” from its title. Each month, it offered translations from Newsfield publications as well as original content created by the Italian team. With its friendly and accessible approach, Zzap! quickly became Italy’s best-selling video game magazine. It initially covered all formats but later focused on 8-bit systems, while a new magazine, The Games Machine, was launched to cover the more powerful 16- and 32-bit platforms.
As an independent publication, Zzap! released 73 issues from May 1986 to December 1992. It then continued as a 16-page detachable insert within The Games Machine for another year, until its final issue (#84) in December 1993. Later, the magazine took on a new life as a website. Then in May 2002, Xenia Edizioni, which held the Italian rights, allowed a group of volunteers (including some former Zzap! editors) to publish issue #85 in PDF format. This issue, inspired by Gordon Houghton’s Zzap!64 #107, was a hit, downloaded thousands of times ever since.
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| All 84 issues of italian Zzap! have been digitized by "Progetto Zzap! Italia" and are now available at www.zzap.it |
Fast forward to December 2020: some of those original volunteers reunited to establish Airons di Vigevano, a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to celebrating gaming and supporting new game development for classic platforms—a unique twist on the usual concept of retro gaming. With a goal to revive and publish the most beloved magazine of their era, Zzap!, they received permission to use the Zzap! name and logo from Chris Wilkins, Oliver Frey, and Roger Kean. And so, a new chapter began. Now, a few hundred copies of the Italian Zzap! are printed on paper and sent to association members, with a limited number of extra copies later available on our e-shop. Each issue, featuring a minimum of 48 full-color pages, covers new games for classic platforms like the Amiga, Commodore 64, Plus/4, Vic 20, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST, 400/800XL, 7800, MSX, Nintendo, SEGA, Atari consoles, and other popular systems from the 1980s and 1990s.
Of course, this isn't our main job; it’s a passion project we work on in our spare time. Some of us are still professional journalists writing for mainstream magazines and websites, while others are employed or working as professionals in the IT world. We’re committed to publishing at least three to four issues of Zzap! each year, ensuring that readers receive a new edition of their favorite magazine every 3-4 months. We do not offer traditional subscriptions, but membership to our cultural association (which includes the magazine) is available for residents of Italy only. However, extra copies from our e-shop can ship worldwide, with shipping fees and any restrictions set by mail carriers due to specific political or emergency situations in certain countries.
