As the Doodlebugs thread came out of my way of paying tribute to the late Ian Hewitt (who did a few Doodlebugs in the actual YS, including the final one) and he was very pleased about my YS mock-up, I think the first issue should first be actually printed and sold to retrogamers, with the cover price covering the cost of printing and the rest of it going to Cardiff Foodbank (a charity Ian's family raised money for, in his name)
This is my first draft mock-up of the cover...
Now, denizens of this forum will already know the main cover feature - the A-Z of the best Speccy homebrew games - but rather than simply being a list of the results, each of the 27 games could be summarised to introduce readers to their existence, and note a few decent second and third-placed games.
There's a lot to get sorted, and please treat the mock-up as a work in progress. Contents subject to change.
I've changed my mind on it being an A5 publication, as you can only get ~300 words on an A5 in 10pt (and that's leaving out any images, headlines, etc). A4 allows for 650 (again, that's not the desired target, as pages will need images and other things).
If I do a print run of 300 physical magazines at 32 pages, then the print costs are less than a quid per issue, which makes at least £2 for the nominated charity.
Shifting a batch of 300 could be a big ask, but if I get this all ready for Digitiser Live on 4th September in London, then I reckon I could sell quite a respectable number there before the show kicks off. (The pre-show gathering of 2019 was pretty epic for being, well, retrogamers drinking in a car park and also playing with old bits of kit in a nearby annexe - trust me, it is more fun than the way I've just described it.)
I know 32 pages isn't a lot, but for £3, it's pretty much all ZX Spectrum content (and a bit of daftness), no adverts. Which makes it better value than a certain monthly retrogaming magazine that rather too focused on 1990s and 2000s gaming for my liking. And I'm making no money out of this, quite the opposite.
Obviously, I'm still tweaking things. That cover is inspired by the typical cover you'd have in the twilight of the Future era, with a nod to the early Dennis issues. I don't want it be a facsimile of Your Sinclair as such, I've no plans to do Progam Pitstop, Tipshop, etc or anything like that under different names. It's primarily about the classic and homebrew games on the Speccy, with a load of YS-style humour thrown into it
Oh, I suppose I best get permission off RetroWorks to use that Sword Of Ianna artwork!
Anyway, I have enough resources to put out an issue every quarter if I'm to do it all on my own, and I think the physical sales should raise funds for a different charity each time. If there's a good way to sell a digital version online for when it's current, then that too should go to charity, and then back issues end up on SpectrumComputing for nowt.
Hope this makes sense. Feedback very welcome...
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