Legendary UK magazine Crash to return for one more annual
Another Crash Smash from the vaults of Lloyd Mangram.
Back in the heady days of the ZX Spectrum's prime in the UK, there were three big magazines out there: Your Sinclair, Sinclair User, and Crash. People certainly had their preferences, but in the end? Newsfield's Crash Magazine might just be the most loved UK gaming magazine of them all, certainly in its prime. It had everything: Good reviews, all the cheats, hints n' tips you could want, a solid sense of community, all the best news, and perhaps most memorably of them all the incredible, often fantasy-tinged front cover art courtesy of Oliver Frey -- there's certainly no other mag that can hope to match Crash in that department...and now it's going to come back for one more annual, all thanks to Kickstarter.
The return of Crash has come courtesy of one Chris Wilkins, who runs Fusion Retro Books here in the UK and is one of the most experienced Kickstarter operators around with 10 successful campaigns under his belt for books based on the likes of Ocean Software, U.S. Gold, and the Oliver Twins. What with the magazine being such an important touchstone for Speccy fans, it should come as no surprise that this campaign's already a hit -- doubling its £12,000 goal after just a week. The old Crash team will return for this new issue too -- Roger Kean, already a frequent collaborator with Wilkins and former editor of Crash, will take the reins once more, and Oliver Frey will be providing the art.
The aim of the new Crash isn't just a nostalgia trip, mind you -- the annual aims to cover a lot of what's going on in the Spectrum scene right now, with reviews covering the best of the games that people have released on the computer over the past 20 years, as well as features on the computer's best art over the years and looks at some new games, including the new Dizzy game that's set to appear on the Spectrum Next. All of the magazine's old features will be returning, from full-colour maps for games to Nick Roberts' Playing Tips, a JETMAN comic strip and the Readers' Letters, answered as ever by the charismatic enigma himself, Lloyd Mangram.
Honestly, there's not a whole lot to say that's bad about this Kickstarter -- it's a well organised project with a firm release date of November this year, run by folks who have a fair bit of experience in this department...it's also a good way for Crash to get a proper sign-off. The magazine had something of a lousy fate in the day -- it got swept up in the covertape wars, in which the size of the magazine was cut in half in order to accomodate the tapes stacked with programs that were on the cover. In 1991, Crash's publisher Newsfield went bust, and the magazine was published by EMAP -- who also published Sinclair User...ultimately Crash suffered the ignominy of being merged into Sinclair User magazine, before just disappearing completely and never getting a proper chance to say goodbye (as the other two mags eventually did). With this brand issue 99, the magazine's legion of fans will finally get a chance to put a proper full stop on Crash's legacy as one of the UK's greatest gaming reads.
